NASA’s Webb Redefines Dividing Line Between Planets, Stars
Planets, like those in our solar system, form in a bottom-up process where small bits of rock and…
Astronomers Just Nailed Down the Universe’s Expansion Rate… and Now They Have More Questions
One major, unsolved problem in astronomy involves the Hubble constant, a number representing how quickly the universe expands.…
Hubble Spies an Active Spiral
A luminous swirl set against the deep black of space, the barred spiral galaxy IC 486 glows with…
Over 150 mergers reveal three different black hole origin stories
For years, astronomers treated merging black holes as if they all came from the same cosmic assembly line.…
This distant galaxy has lost 95% of its brightness in less than 20 years
ⓘ NASA – Unsplash An image showing a spiral galaxy. Astronomers have discovered a galaxy located about 10…
Gravitational waves may be responsible for dark matter in the universe
Dark matter is thought to exist everywhere, wrapping around galaxies and helping to shape the largest things in…
Distance in space is an illusion
Andromeda sounds far away because 2.5 million light-years sounds far away. It lands with authority. It feels exact.…
Astronomers Capture Two Giant Planets Forming Around Young Star WISPIT 2
Astronomers have caught two giant planets forming around WISPIT 2, an infant star just 5.4 million years old,…
NASA Webb, Hubble Share Most Comprehensive View of Saturn to Date
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope have teamed up to capture new views of Saturn,…
NASA-JAXA’s XRISM Telescope Clocks Hot Wind of Galaxy M82
For the first time, astronomers have directly measured the speed of superheated gas billowing from a cauldron of…
Expanding catalog of black hole collisions is rewriting the history of the universe
Between May 2023 and January 2024, a global network of gravitational-wave detectors picked up 128 new cosmic signals,…
Scientists are rethinking how young galaxies formed their magnetic fields
Magnetic fields that stretch across thousands of light-years should take a very long time to organize. Standard dynamo…