Astronomy

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have identified what may be the most distant barred spiral galaxy ever discovered, dating to a time less than 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang. The paper […]

Astronomers using computer simulations have investigated whether a class of star clusters nicknamed “cosmic wallflowers” could be the long-sought ancestors of the globular clusters we see orbiting galaxies today. Their paper, posted to the arXiv […]

Are we alone in the universe? Consider mysterious “extraterrestrial” radio signals. Unexplained gases on other planets. Things mistaken for UFOs.This post was originally published on this site

Last year, an interstellar traveler entered our solar system. Some speculated that it was an alien spacecraft, but it turned out to be a comet, 3I/Atlas, and it provoked interest from astronomers and astrophysicists eager […]

With new technologies come new opportunities. And that is especially true in astronomy—with every new advanced telescope, we have the potential to see (or in some cases, listen) farther and more clearly than ever before. […]

Scale in the universe is hard to understand from a purely human perspective. Many times, the math just doesn’t sit well with our brains, which evolved to capture and process data about the world around […]

In the course of studying planets beyond our solar system (6,316 confirmed exoplanets and counting), scientists have discovered some very interesting systems. Consider TOI-201, a compact system populated by three bodies, including a brown dwarf, […]

In new images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to celebrate its fourth science anniversary, a familiar galaxy transforms into something far richer and far more complex than ever seen before. Webb’s unprecedented sensitivity across […]

When massive stars die, they unleash some of the most powerful explosions in the universe. Yet not all supernovae are created equal. Some continue to shine brightly for months or even years as their expanding […]

Astronomers have used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) to study the composition of 3I/ATLAS, the brightest interstellar object ever seen, in detail. By measuring specific chemical fingerprints—the first observations of this […]