Astronomy

The aurora australis arcs above a partly cloudy Indian Ocean in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 269 miles above in between Australia and Antarctica on June 12, 2025.

Observations of a baby star may show the earliest stages of planet formation that astronomers have ever seen

Astronomers have witnessed the birth of an entirely new star system for the first time. The budding planets are forming around the infant star HOPS-315.

The LHCb experiment has observed a new difference between matter and antimatter in particles called baryons

NASA and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) tested a model of the X-59 experimental aircraft in a supersonic wind tunnel to measure the noise underneath the jet.

Researchers have discovered a rare ring-galaxy duo that appears to harbor a supermassive black hole formed through direct collapse

The post A Candidate Direct-Collapse Black Hole in the Infinity Galaxy appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

New research suggests that the Milky Way should be surrounded by as many as 100 undetected tiny and faint "orphan" galaxy companions.

A neurologist explains why weather changes from heat waves to thunderstorms might bring on painful headaches

"Our work is a new piece of evidence that suggests that Mars was once a much more complex and active planet than it is now."

China is poised to make space exploration history again with its Tianwen-3 mission launching in 2028. With the audacious plan to drill two meters beneath Mars' radiation blasted surface it aims to collect samples that could harbor ancient microbial life, and bring them back to Earth for the first time in human history! The mission's most intriguing challenge isn't the technical feat of interplanetary sample return, it’s the quarantine protocols required once these potentially life containing samples arrive on Earth making this mission as much about protecting our planet as it is about exploring another.

A 14year study of Hong Kong's Earth Hour participation has revealed that it's not the millions of apartment windows or office buildings that steal our night sky, but rather a small handful of brightly lit skyscrapers and LED advertising boards that have an outsized impact on darkness above cities. When these decorative lights and digital screens go dark, the night sky becomes up to 50% darker, offering a hopeful new strategy for tackling light pollution without requiring massive citywide changes. Could this be he the change that dramatically improve night sky visibility for stargazers, wildlife, and anyone hoping to reconnect with the the night sky above our urban landscapes?

When Einstein's predicted ripples in spacetime pass through magnetic fields, they cause the current carrying wires to dance at the gravitational wave frequency, creating potentially detectable electrical signals. Researchers have discovered that the same powerful magnets used to hunt for dark matter could double as gravitational wave detectors. This means experiments already searching for the universe's most elusive particles could simultaneously capture collisions between black holes and neutron stars, getting two of physics' most ambitious experiments for the price of one, while potentially opening entirely new windows into the universe's most violent events.

There are tens of thousands of pieces of space debris hurling around the Earth right now. Since it can cost tens of millions of dollars to remove just a single piece of space debris, which are the ones that we should be most concerned with? A few years ago, 11 teams of experts came together to rank the 50 most concerning pieces of debris, the ones that they think would be the highest priority. Although they used different approaches, 20-40% of the objects ended up on several experts' lists.

Portrait of a galaxy cluster

A massive filament eruption carved a 250,000-mile-long "canyon of fire" into the sun — and sent a CME sailing into space.

China is pulling ahead of the rest of the world in sinking data centers that power AI into the ocean as an alternate way to keep them cool

In human beings, egg cells need to survive for about five decades, much longer than most other cell types – and they may achieve this unusually long lifespan by slowing down their natural cell processes

In human beings, egg cells need to survive for about five decades, much longer than most other cell types – and they may achieve this unusually long lifespan by slowing down their natural cell processes

After 10 years of gravitational-wave research, the LIGO Lab team at MIT is getting ready for the next generation of detectors.