Astronomy News

ALMA Captures Sharpest Views Yet of Exoplanetary Debris Disks

This ARKS gallery of faint debris disks reveals details about their shape: belts with multiple rings, wide smooth halos, sharp edges, and unexpected arcs and clumps, which hint at the presence of planets shaping these disks; and chemical make-up: the amber colors highlight the location and abundance of the dust in the 24 disks surveyed, while the blue their carbon monoxide gas location and abundance in the six gas-rich disks. Image credit: Sebastian Marino / Sorcha Mac Manamon / ARKS Collaboration.
Jan 20, 2026 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have produced the unprecedented high-resolution images of 24 debris disks — the dusty belts left after planets finish forming — revealing the dynamic, transitional phase between planet birth and mature exoplanetary systems. This ARKS gallery of faint debris disks reveals details about their shape: belts with multiple rings, wide smooth halos, sharp edges, and unexpected...

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This composite image, derived from data collected by the JIRAM instrument aboard NASA’s Juno orbiter, shows the central cyclone at Jupiter’s north pole and the eight cyclones that encircle it. JIRAM collects data in infrared, and the colors in this composite represent radiant heat: the yellow (thinner) clouds are about 9 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 13 degrees Celsius) in brightness temperature and the dark red (thickest) are around minus 181 degrees Fahrenheit (83 degrees Celsius). Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / ASI / INAF / JIRAM.

Polar Cyclones Reveal Hidden Interiors of Jupiter and Saturn

Jan 20, 2026 by News Staff

New research by MIT planetary scientists shows how striking differences in the polar vortex patterns of Jupiter and Saturn may be driven by deep interior...

The SPHEREx 0.75-5.0μm imaging of 3I/ATLAS taken on December 8 to 15, 2025. Image credit: NASA / arXiv: 2601.06759 / Lisse et al., arXiv: 2601.06759.

3I/ATLAS Shows Signs of Full Cometary Awakening after Perihelion

Jan 19, 2026 by Natali Anderson

According to new observations by NASA’s SPHEREx mission, the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS has dramatically changed its behavior, developing the hallmarks...

Dark photons are hypothetical dark sector particles proposed as a force carrier similar to the photon of electromagnetism but potentially connected to dark matter. Image credit: University of Adelaide.

Physicists Challenge Long-Held Assumptions about Nature of Dark Matter

Jan 19, 2026 by News Staff

Dark matter may not have been ‘cold’ in the earliest moments after the Big Bang, as long believed; instead, new research from the University of Minnesota...

A composite image of the Ring Nebula constructed from four WEAVE/LIFU emission-line images. Image credit: Wesson et al., doi: 10.1093/mnras/staf2139.

Astronomers Spot Surprising Iron ‘Bar’ at Heart of Ring Nebula

Jan 16, 2026 by News Staff

Astronomers using the WHT Enhanced Area Velocity Explorer (WEAVE), a powerful new instrument mounted on the William Herschel Telescope on La Palma, have...

Little red dots are young supermassive black holes in dense ionized cocoons. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Webb / Rusakov et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-025-09900-4.

Early Universe’s ‘Little Red Dots’ Are Young Supermassive Black Holes, Astrophysicists Say

Jan 15, 2026 by News Staff

Astrophysicists at the University of Copenhagen show that the enigmatic ‘little red dots’ — red sources scattered across images of the early...

A screenshot of the SETI@home user interface on a desktop computer in 2009. Image credit: Robert Sanders / UC Berkeley.

Millions Joined SETI@home Project, Now Astronomers Zero In on 100 Promising Signals

Jan 14, 2026 by News Staff

SETI@home, the pioneering distributed-computing project launched in 1999 that enlisted millions of volunteers to analyze radio signals from space, produced...

The Hubble image shows the Circinus Galaxy, a spiral galaxy about 13 million light-years away in the southern constellation of Circinus; a close-up of its core from Webb shows the inner face of the hole of the donut-shaped disk of gas disk glowing in infrared light; the outer ring appears as dark spots. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Webb / Hubble / Enrique Lopez-Rodriguez, University of South Carolina / Deepashri Thatte, STScI / Alyssa Pagan, STScI / NSF’s NOIRLab / CTIO.

Webb Peers into Heart of Circinus Galaxy

Jan 13, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have captured the most detailed infrared view yet into the center of the Circinus Galaxy, one of...

COSMOS-74706: an unsharp mask overlaid onto the F200W, F277W, and F356W filter composition; the white lines are logarithmic spirals fitted to points along the arm structures and a line segment fitted to the approximately North to South aligned bar structure. Image credit: Daniel Ivanov.

Barred Spiral Galaxy Spotted Just Two Billion Years after Big Bang

Jan 13, 2026 by News Staff

Using the high resolution images from the NIRCam (Near-InfraRed Camera) instrument onboard the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have...

This artist’s impression shows the evolution of the Universe beginning with the Big Bang on the left followed by the appearance of the Cosmic Microwave Background. The formation of the first stars ends the cosmic dark ages, followed by the formation of galaxies. Image credit: M. Weiss / Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

New Solution to Cosmic Acceleration Challenges Dark Energy Paradigm

Jan 12, 2026 by News Staff

Physicists from the Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity at the University of Bremen and the Transylvanian University of Brașov have unveiled...

This image, taken with the MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, shows a shock wave around RXJ0528+2838. Image credit: ESO / Iłkiewicz et al.

Unexpected Shock Wave Detected around Nearby White Dwarf

Jan 12, 2026 by News Staff

Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have captured a breathtaking shock wave around the white dwarf star 1RXS J052832.5+283824 (RXJ0528+2838...

This artist’s concept shows the red supergiant star Betelgeuse and an orbiting companion star. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Elizabeth Wheatley, STScI / Andrea Dupree, CfA.

Astronomers Detect Celestial ‘Wake’ from Betelgeuse’s Companion Star

Jan 12, 2026 by News Staff

New multi-year observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory and Roque de...

An artist’s impression of the asteroid 2025 MN45. Image credit: NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory / NOIRLab / SLAC / AURA / P. Marenfeld.

Record-Setting Asteroid Found in Pre-Survey Data from Vera Rubin Observatory

Jan 9, 2026 by News Staff

Astronomers have detected an extraordinary asteroid, named 2025 MN45, in early data from the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Camera — the...

An artist’s impression of the forming galaxy cluster SPT2349-56: radio jets from active galaxies embedded in a hot intracluster atmosphere (red), illustrating a large thermal reservoir of gas in the nascent cluster. Image credit: Lingxiao Yuan.

ALMA Detects Superheated Intracluster Gas in Distant Galaxy Protocluster

Jan 8, 2026 by News Staff

New observations of the young cluster SPT2349-56 with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have revealed unexpectedly scorching intracluster...

This image shows the location of the RELHIC object Cloud-9. Image credit: NASA / ESA / VLA / Gagandeep Anand, STScI / Alejandro Benitez-Llambay, University of Milano-Bicocca / Joseph DePasquale, STScI.

New Type of Astronomical Object Discovered: RELHIC

Jan 6, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have confirmed the existence of starless, hydrogen-rich objects dominated by dark matter. Named Reionization-Limited...

An artist’s impression of a free-floating exoplanet. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Astronomers Measure Mass of Free-Floating Exoplanet for First Time

Jan 5, 2026 by News Staff

A population of free-floating planets is known from gravitational microlensing surveys. None have a directly measured mass, owing to a degeneracy with...

This image shows the massive star-forming region GAL316. Image credit: ESO / M. Mattern / André et al. / VVV.

CAFFEINE Provides New Insights into How Stars Form in Dense Gas

Jan 5, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers have released the new results from the CAFFEINE survey, shedding new light on a long-standing mystery: what controls the efficiency of star...

The Champagne Cluster appears here as a large collection of brilliant white lights, each a distinct galaxy. A neon purple cloud stretches across the cluster’s crowded core. Many of the hundred-plus galaxies in the cluster are in two clumps of galaxies towards the top and bottom of center. Some are encircled by a faint glowing haze, while a few foreground stars gleam with diffraction spikes. Some of the smaller galaxies are tinted blue, orange, or red, and some appear more oblong than round, suggesting spiral shapes viewed edge-on. The neon purple cloud sits at the heart of the image, surrounding the most densely-packed part of the cluster. This cloud, which spreads vertically across the cluster, is multimillion-degree gas observed by Chandra. The two clumps of observable galaxies, and the spread of superheated gas, reveal that the Champagne Cluster is in fact two clusters in the process of colliding. Image credit: NASA / CXC / UCDavis / Bouhrik et al. / Legacy Survey / DECaLS / BASS / MzLS / SAO / P. Edmonds / L. Frattare.

Champagne Cluster is Actually Two Galaxy Clusters in Process of Merging, Astronomers Find

Jan 2, 2026 by News Staff

Astronomers discovered an enormous galaxy cluster called RM J130558.9+263048.4 on December 31, 2020; the date, combined with the bubble-like appearance...

This image of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS was captured with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) instrument on December 27, 2025. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Hubble.

VLT Reveals Detailed Spectral Portrait of 3I/ATLAS

Dec 30, 2025 by Natali Anderson

An international team of astronomers from Chile, Europe, the United States, Canada and New Zealand has captured the most detailed spectroscopic glimpse...

An artist’s impression of a rare trio of merging galaxies, J121/1219+1035, which host three actively feeding, radio-bright supermassive black holes and whose jets light up the surrounding gas. Image credit: NSF / AUI / NRAO / P. Vosteen.

Astronomers Discover Triple System of Active Galactic Nuclei 1.2 Billion Light-Years Away

Dec 29, 2025 by News Staff

A rare trio of merging galaxies called J121/1219+1035 hosts three actively feeding, radio-bright supermassive black holes, according to a team of U.S....

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