Human eyes weren’t made to stare at the Sun, but telescope images like the one above expose dark spots on the otherwise blazing surface. They do look kind of like birthmarks. HD 166620 is only about ...

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Sunspots photographed in 2014. Spots that are this small are difficult to detect on distant stars ...

A network of powerful ground-based telescopes captured rare starspot-crossing events on TOI-3884b, revealing cooler patches on the star’s surface and rapid changes tied to its rotation. By combining ...

Photometry from Kepler has revealed the presence of cool starspots on the surfaces of thousands of stars, presenting a wide range of spot morphologies and lifetimes. Understanding the lifetime and ...

Astronomers have recently uncovered a fascinating discovery involving a distant star system. Observations of a planet transiting its parent star revealed a massive, persistent starspot that has been ...

We report 13 high-precision light curves of eight transits of the exoplanet WASP-52b, obtained by using four medium-class telescopes, through different filters, and adopting the defocussing technique.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The number of sunspots on our Sun typically ebbs and flows in a predictable 11-year cycle, but one unusual 70-year period when sunspots were incredibly rare has mystified ...

Thus we can distinguish a transit by the short duration of the dip. … so the dip of a transit is slightly “U-shaped.” The shape of the starspot dip has gentle sides and looks more “V-shaped.” ...