Astronomers have detected large amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere of one of the oldest and most elementally depleted stars known -- a 'primitive star' scientists call J0815+4729. This new finding provides an important clue on how oxygen and other important elements were produced in the first generations of stars in the universe.

The most distant dying galaxy discovered so far, more massive than our Milky Way -- with more than a trillion stars -- has revealed that the 'cores' of these systems had formed already 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang, about 1 billion years earlier than previous measurements revealed. The discovery will add to our knowledge on the formation of the Universe more generally, and may cause the computer models astronomers use, one of the most fundamental tools, to be revised.

A new study has found that collisions of supermassive black holes may be simultaneously observable in both gravitational waves and X-rays at the beginning of the next decade.

Astrophysicists have come a step closer to understanding the origin of a faint glow of gamma rays covering the night sky. They found that this light is brighter in regions that contain a lot of matter and dimmer where matter is sparser -- a correlation that could help them narrow down the properties of exotic astrophysical objects and invisible dark matter.

When it comes to the biggest and brightest explosions seen in the universe, astronomers have found that it takes two stars to make a gamma-ray burst.