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What if you could photograph something completely invisible? To our rather limited eyes that’s what astronomers seem to do all the time with infra red and radio astronomy to name a few. But, astronomers can do this in a rather intriguing way with something that does seem to be truly invisible! A team of astronomers have captured the latest "image" of a dark matter object a million times more massive than our Sun, not by seeing it, but by watching how it warps the light from galaxies billions of light years beyond it. Using an Earth sized telescope network they have revealed one of the smallest dark matter clumps ever found, offering a glimpse into the hidden structure of our universe.

A decades-old technique from network science saw something in the papal conclave that AI missed

Despite early, and familiar, copyright growing pains, Sora may be the prelude to AI-generated on-demand TV and movies

Surgeons in China transplanted part of pig liver into a patient with an incurable cancerous tumor, and it functioned for more than a month

The strong nuclear force may abruptly loosen its grip on the fundamental particles that make up matter at a special “critical point” – researchers are now getting a clearer picture of when that point is reached

The strong nuclear force may abruptly loosen its grip on the fundamental particles that make up matter at a special “critical point” – researchers are now getting a clearer picture of when that point is reached

If you want to know where the best leaf peeping will be this year, climate science and weather can provide the answer

Phosphine has caused quite a stir in the astronomical world lately. That was largely due to its (still hotly debated) detection in the atmosphere of Venus. While the only known way for phosphine to be created on terrestrial worlds, like Venus, is through some sort of biological origin, it is relatively common among larger gas giants and even “brown dwarfs” - failed stars larger than Jupiter but not quite large enough to start their own hydrogen fusion process. Previously, we hadn’t yet seen phosphine in the atmosphere of brown dwarf in other solar systems, but a new paper from a diverse group of researchers, available in pre-print form on arXiv, used data collected by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to find it for the first time. They also realized the mechanism that made it so hard to spot in the first place - the object’s metallicity.

Applying a daily serum that contains extracts of a tropical plant improved hair density and strand thickness in just 56 days

Applying a daily serum that contains extracts of a tropical plant improved hair density and strand thickness in just 56 days

Week in images: 06-10 October 2025

Discover our week through the lens

By tracing when variations in the human genome first appeared, researchers have found that advances in cognitive abilities may have led to our vulnerability to mental illness

By tracing when variations in the human genome first appeared, researchers have found that advances in cognitive abilities may have led to our vulnerability to mental illness

Researchers hope the finding could point to new therapeutic approaches for the disease

Samples from the seafloor reveal evidence of several earthquakes along the West Coast’s two major fault zones happening in quick succession over the past 3,000 years

If you pick the right time, our home world and our moon could be easily visible from the Red Planet

A former White House physician reveals the medical realities of caring for the president of the U.S.

Never caught a double shadow transit on Jupiter? This week offers several chances. Meanwhile, Cassiopeia stands high and the Little Dipper leans over.

The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, October 10 – 19 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Image: This wide view of Copernicus Sentinel-3 shows Cyclone Errol heading towards the coast of Western Australia.