Astronomy Archives - Page 12 of 15

Hubble spies stellar blast setting clouds ablaze

This new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image captures a jet of gas from a forming star shooting across the dark expanse. The bright pink and green patches running diagonally through the image are HH 80/81, […]

The cosmic seesaw: Black holes eject material as winds or jets, but not both at once

Astronomers at the University of Warwick have discovered that black holes don’t just consume matter—they manage it, choosing whether to blast it into space as high-speed jets or sweep it away in vast winds.This post […]

Asteroseismology study probes properties of newly discovered pulsating white dwarf

Chinese astronomers have conducted an asteroseismology study of a newly discovered pulsating white dwarf designated WFST J053009.62+595557.0, or WFST J0530 for short. The new findings, presented January 2 on the arXiv pre-print server, provide more […]

Superheavy-lift rockets like SpaceX’s starship could transform astronomy by making space telescopes cheaper

After a string of dramatic failures, the huge Starship rocket from SpaceX had a fully successful test on Oct. 13, 2025. A couple more test flights, and SpaceX plans to launch it into orbit.This post […]

NASA’s Pandora telescope will study stars in detail to learn about the exoplanets orbiting them

On Jan. 11, 2026, I watched anxiously at the tightly controlled Vandenberg Space Force Base in California as an awe-inspiring SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carried NASA’s new exoplanet telescope, Pandora, into orbit.This post was originally […]

‘Death by a thousand cuts’: Pablo’s galaxy ran out of fuel as black hole choked off supplies

Astronomers have spotted one of the oldest “dead” galaxies yet identified, and found that a growing supermassive black hole can slowly starve a galaxy rather than tear it apart.This post was originally published on this […]

Persistent shock wave around dead star puzzles astronomers

Gas and dust flowing from stars can, under the right conditions, clash with a star’s surroundings and create a shock wave. Now, astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) have imaged […]

As puzzling as a platypus: The JWST finds some hard to categorize objects

The platypus is one of evolution’s lovable, oddball animals. The creature seems to defy well-understood rules of biology by combining physical traits in a bizarre way. They’re egg-laying mammals with duck bills and beaver-like tails, […]

Radio telescopes uncover ‘invisible’ gas around record-shattering cosmic explosion

Astronomers using the U.S. National Science Foundation National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NSF NRAO) instruments, the U.S. National Science Foundation Very Large Array (NSF VLA) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), have revealed a dense […]

X-ray spectra provide sharpest image to date of a rapidly spinning black hole

The X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM), a joint mission between the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and NASA, launched on Sept. 7th, 2023. Its advanced imaging filters and spectrometers were designed to study black […]