Of all the moons in the Solar System, Europa is perhaps one of the most fascinating. With a thick ice shell surrounding a subsurface ocean, astrobiologists hope maybe there is life down there! Finding a way through the ice to explore...
The closest single star to our own Solar System is Barnard’s Star. It’s 6 light years away and astronomers have just found four new mini-Earth planets in orbit around this red dwarf star. The discovery was made with the MAROON-X...
Young stars grow by gobbling up nearby gas and dust. Over time, they can become extremely massive. The most massive stars we know of have up to 200 solar masses. But the flow of matter isn't a one-way street. Instead, young protostars...
The U.S. Space Force's X-37B spaceplane (which looks remarkably like a space shuttle that someone forgot to put the windows in!) completed its seventh mission this week, touching down at Vandenberg Space Force Base after 434 days in...
Astronomers know the Flame Nebula well—a stellar nursery around 1,400 light years away. It’s less than a million years old and is teeming with brown dwarfs, objects that never quite accumulated enough mass to begin fusing elements in...
Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost Mission has successfully touched down on the lunar surface and is now undertaking various experiments. Two of these experiments have been captured on video; the first is the LISTER drill, capable of...
In a recent paper, Adam Hibberd and Marshall Eubanks explore the feasibility of sending a mission to rendezvous with YR4, the asteroid that may pose a hazard to Earth someday.
Despite having recently officially ended its science operations in January, Gaia, one of the most prolific star explorers ever, is still providing new scientific insights. A recent paper pre-published on arXiv (which has not been...
Ask almost any physicist what the most frustrating problem is in modern-day physics, and they will likely say the discrepancy between general relativity and quantum mechanics. That discrepancy has been a thorn in the side of the physics...
Let’s face it: Space is a hostile environment for humans. Even on Mars, settlers might have a hard time coping with potentially lethal levels of radiation, scarce resources and reduced gravity. In “Mickey 17” — a new sci-fi movie from...
High-resolution near-infrared light captured by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope shows extraordinary new detail and structure in Lynds 483 (L483). Two actively forming stars are responsible for the shimmering ejections of gas...
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of a vibrant spiral galaxy called NGC 5042 resides about 48 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Hydra (the water snake). The galaxy nicely fills the frame of this Hubble image,...
A "classification" is when a volunteer or citizen scientist finishes marking up or sorting one image or other piece of data. Each classification done by volunteers for the Redshift Wrangler project tells us something about the distance...
Astronomers have discovered strong evidence for the closest supermassive black hole outside of the Milky Way galaxy. This giant black hole is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the nearest galactic neighbors to our own.
Explosions in the sky and explosions on land are literally worlds apart. A supernova and a land mine explosion don't seem like they would have much in common. But at the fine level, their mechanisms are not so different: the so-called...
Rolf Landauer showed that "information is physical" with every bit equivalent to a small amount of energy proportional to temperature. The Landauer equivalent energy of information carried, or represented by matter, effectively provides...
For decades, people have been trying to directly detect dark matter: the missing mass in our universe. Now, there's a new, super-sensitive detector on the case—and even though it's still in the research and development phase, it's...
Astronomers from Poland and Germany have performed photometric and spectroscopic observations of a blue variable object designated OGLE-GD-WD-0001. As a result, they found that the investigated object is an extremely hot pulsating...
Within the next decade, space agencies plan to bring samples of rock from Mars to Earth for study. Of concern is the possibility these samples contain life, which could have unforeseen consequences. Therefore, researchers in this field...
Studying the orbits of thousands of exoplanets shows that large planets tend to have elliptical orbits, while smaller planets tend to have more circular orbits. This split coincides with several other classic features in the exoplanet...
A fresh look at past data reveals that exoplanets with masses similar to Jupiter formed much sooner than previously thought, according to new research.
Astronomers have for the first time observed a recurring nova outside of the Milky Way in near-infrared light. The data revealed highly unusual chemical emissions as well as one of the hottest temperatures ever reported for a nova, both...
Nova explosions occur in binary star systems in which a white dwarf—the dense remnant of a dead star—continually siphons stellar material from a nearby companion star. As the outer atmosphere of the companion gathers onto the surface of...
Binary neutron star mergers occur millions of light-years away from Earth. Interpreting the gravitational waves they produce presents a major challenge for traditional data-analysis methods. These signals correspond to minutes of data...
With a sun more than 4.5 billion years old, our solar system is considered "middle-aged," and the pictures of what it might have looked like in its infancy are lost to time. Taking advantage of a sophisticated adaptive optics instrument,...
Using the ROentgen SATellite (ROSAT), astronomers have discovered a new cataclysmic variable system of the polar subtype. The new polar, which received the designation ZTF J0112+5827, has an orbital period of approximately 81 minutes....
The puzzle of predicting how three gravitationally bound bodies move in space has challenged mathematicians for centuries, and has most recently been popularized in the novel and television show '3 Body Problem.' There's no problem,...
After tracking a puzzling X-ray signal from a dying star for decades, astronomers may have finally explained its source: The old star might have destroyed a nearby planet.
The puzzle of predicting how three gravitationally bound bodies move in space has challenged mathematicians for centuries, and has most recently been popularized in the novel and television show "3 Body Problem." There's no problem,...
A recent study utilizing the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) has confirmed the "radio-quiet" characteristics of four magnetars and one magnetar-like pulsar. Conducted by Ph.D. student BAI Juntao under the...
Radio astronomers see what the naked eye can't. As we study the sky with telescopes that record radio signals rather than light, we end up seeing a lot of circles.
By analyzing multiwavelength data from various space telescopes and astronomical surveys, Chinese astronomers have explored the long-term variability of a blazar known as PKS 0727-11. Results of the new study, published in The...
Water may have first formed 100–200 million years after the Big Bang, according to a modeling paper published in Nature Astronomy. The authors suggest that the formation of water may have occurred in the universe earlier than previously...
Astronomers have performed a multiwavelength study of nine open cluster candidates. As a result, they found that all of them are genuine open clusters and characterized by their fundamental properties. The finding was reported in a...
In this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, Hubble once again lifts the veil on a famous—and frequently photographed—supernova remnant: the Veil Nebula. The remnant of a star roughly 20 times as massive as the sun that exploded about...
A team led by a member of Tokyo Metropolitan University has made advances in the search for dark matter, observing galaxies using new spectrographic technology and the Magellan Clay Telescope. With a mere four hours of observations,...
Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays are the highest-energy particles in the universe, whose energies are more than a million times what can be achieved by humans. But while the existence of UHECRs has been known for 60 years, researchers have...
Today, the European Space Agency's gamma-ray telescope ends its observations. During its 22 years in space, Integral has reshaped our view of the most dramatic events in the universe. The high-energy observatory played a pivotal role in...
When the sun hurled enormous amounts of radiation into space in an explosive eruption on February 22, 2024, the Indian space probe Aditya-L1, launched a few months earlier, was watching closely—and thus captured the first images of such...
Located 2.5 million light-years away, the majestic Andromeda galaxy appears to the naked eye as a faint, spindle-shaped object roughly the angular size of the full moon. What backyard observers don't see is a swarm of nearly three dozen...
How do rogue planetary-mass objects -- celestial bodies with masses between stars and planets -- form? An international team of astronomers has used advanced simulations to show that these enigmatic objects are linked to the chaotic...
Located 2.5 million light-years away, the majestic Andromeda galaxy appears to the naked eye as a faint, spindle-shaped object roughly the angular size of the full Moon. What backyard observers don't see is a swarm of nearly three dozen...
Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of astronomers has explored the atmosphere of a nearby brown dwarf binary designated WISE J045853.90+643451.9. As a result, they detected hydrogen cyanide and acetylene...
At the start of the year, the European Commission established the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) as a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC), furthering its mission to become the world's largest and most...
At the start of the year, the European Commission established the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) as a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC), furthering its mission to become the world's largest and most...
For centuries, lenses have worked the same way: curved glass or plastic bending light to bring images into focus. But traditional lenses have a major drawback—the more powerful they need to be, the bulkier and heavier they become.
Researchers are looking underfoot to uncover the mysterious past of Mars: Martian regoliths in the soil. Their water storage capabilities may help us understand the change in water on Mars over time.
On Wednesday 26 February, a thermal imaging camera blasted off to the Moon as part of NASA's Lunar Trailblazer mission. This aims to map sources of water on the Moon to shed light on the lunar water cycle and to guide future robotic and...