At just 25, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin applied quantum physics to a treasure trove of astronomical observations to show that stars are mostly hydrogen and helium.

Chemistry in the first 50 million to 100 million years after the Big Bang may have been more active than we expected.

Astronomers studying how elements heavier than iron were produced in the early Milky Way have identified a distinct series of epochs of galaxy-wide chemical formation. This evolutionary timeline, ...

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin discovered the composition of stars at the age of 25: hydrogen, helium, and traces of nearly all other elements. Her 1925 discovery was one of the earliest successful attempts ...

Besides being a point of light, a star is a luminous, spherical mass of plasma, enough to hold itself together under its own gravity. On its own, though, gravitational rounding isn't enough. What ...

The James Webb Space Telescope caught the birth of an enormous star with particle beams cutting across a stretch of ...

The precursors of heavy elements might arise in the plasma underbellies of swollen stars or in smoldering stellar corpses. They definitely exist in East Lansing, Michigan. The Facility for Rare ...

Luke Keller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their ...