Where is this mystical land? (NASA/ESA/HST). Sometimes, words are not enough to describe views of the universe when captured through the lens of the Hubble Space Telescope. This is one of those moments. Kicking off its 20th anniversary (yes, that super-sized telescope has been in space that long —...

The Orion Nebula's star-forming region (NASA). Firstly, apologies that it’s been over a month since last posting to Astroengine.com. Call it slacking off, call it a sabbatical, either way, it’s not good. I’ve actually prepared several half-finished articles, but I just never got around...

"SuperNova" by Shadow-Trance (DeviantArt) I’m not kidding, last week was a huge mess of a supernova doomsday circus. It was like whispering “there’s a bomb under your chair” to the person next to you in a crowded theater and then watching the resulting flood of people...

One scenario: Exploding star flings binary parter away at high velocity (Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics) HC 271791 is a star with a problem, it’s moving so fast through our galaxy that it will eventually escape from the Milky Way all together. However, there is a growing question mark hanging...

Babylon 5's White Star approaches the Shadow's homeworld of Z'ha'dum on the Galactic Rim. It would appear that scientists have confirmed that the outer edge of the Milky Way is a bad location for life to even think about existing. This research reminded me of the “Galactic Rim” in the 90′s...

Why is the term “failed star” synonymous with brown dwarfs? On the one hand, brown dwarfs lack the mass to sustain nuclear fusion in their cores. On the other hand, who said brown dwarfs were trying to be stars? Who ever said that becoming a star was the pinnacle of stellar living? Perhaps...

In 2007, a very rare event was observed from Earth by several observers. An object passed in front of a star located near the centre of the Milky Way, magnifying its light. Gravitational lensing is not uncommon in itself (the phenomenon was predicted by Einstein in 1915), but if we consider what facilitated...

WR 104. A killer? Not so much. It’s interesting how astronomical harbingers of doom have the ability to pop up more than once on the ‘net. However, the doom isn’t quite as terrifying when you’ve sat through a conference presentation by a scientist who has exhaustively given every...

Dave Mosher, I’m pointing my finger at you for this late night effort! Usually I stay up late to write articles, but for the last 30 minutes I’ve been playing this game after Dave sent a message on Twitter saying he had been playing a “simple” and “addictive” star...

Strong tidal interactions are thought to shred any asteroids or comets as they get too close to a white dwarf (NASA) All the way back in January, I had the great fortune to attend the American Astronomical Society’s (AAS) conference in Long Beach, California. I had a lot of fun. However, between...