Astronomy News

Asteroids Bennu and Ryugu are Part of Polana Collisional Family, Webb Observations Suggest

This image of the asteroid Ryugu was captured by the Optical Navigation Camera - Telescopic (ONC-T) on JAXA’s Hayabusa-2 spacecraft on June 26, 2018, from a distance of 13.7 miles (22 km). Image credit: JAXA / University of Tokyo / Kochi University / Rikkyo University / Nagoya University / Chiba Institute of Technology / Meiji University / Aizu University / AIST.
Aug 26, 2025 by News Staff

The new Polana collisional family in the Solar System’s main asteroid belt is the hypothesized origin of the near-Earth asteroids (101955) Bennu, which was the target of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, and (162173) Ryugu, which was the target of JAXA’s Hayabusa-2 mission. Now, astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have obtained spectroscopic data from the parent body of the family, (142) Polana, and compared them with spacecraft...

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A high-resolution image of the flare from the Inouye Solar Telescope, taken on August 8, 2024, at 20:12 UT. The image is about 4 Earth-diameters on each side. Labels of the different relevant regions of the image are added for clarity: flare ribbons (bright areas of energy release in the dense lower solar atmosphere) and an arcade of coronal loops (arcs of plasma outlining magnetic field lines that transport energy from the corona to the flare ribbons). Image credit: NSF / NSO / AURA.

Inouye Solar Telescope Sees Unprecedented Fine Details in Coronal Flare Loops

Aug 25, 2025 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Visible Broadband Imager at NSF’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope captured dark coronal loop strands with unprecedented clarity...

This Hubble image shows Messier 96, a spiral galaxy some 34 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo. Image credit: NASA / ESA /Hubble / F. Belfiore / D. Calzetti.

Hubble Space Telescope Revisits Messier 96

Aug 25, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have produced a spectacularly detailed image of the asymmetric spiral galaxy Messier 96. This Hubble...

An infrared Webb image of the galaxy NGC 4141 containing the fast radio burst FRB 20250316A. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / CfA / Blanchard et al. / P. Edmonds.

Astronomers Discover One of Brightest Fast Radio Bursts Ever Detected

Aug 22, 2025 by News Staff

Labeled FRB 20250316A and nicknamed RBFLOAT (Radio Brightest FLash Of All Time), the event occurred in the outer regions of the nearby spiral galaxy NGC...

Ramiro Saide et al. explored how hidden electromagnetic leakage might look to extraterrestrials up to 200 light-years from Earth, if they had state-of-the-art radio telescopes like our own. Image credit: Gemini AI.

Astronomers Explore How to Improve Our Search for Alien Technosignatures

Aug 21, 2025 by News Staff

In a new study, a team of astronomers from Penn State and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory analyzed when and where human deep space transmissions would...

This Webb/ NIRCam image shows S/2025 U1 as well as 13 of the 28 other known moons orbiting Uranus. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI / M. El Moutamid, SwRI / M. Hedman, University of Idaho.

Webb Discovers New Moon around Uranus

Aug 19, 2025 by News Staff

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have detected a previously unknown tiny moon — provisionally designated S/2025 U 1...

An artist’s impression of the UPM J1040-3551 system against the backdrop of the Milky Way as observed by ESA’s Gaia satellite; on the left, UPM J1040-3551 Aa & Ab appears as a distant bright orange dot, with an inset revealing these two M-type stars in orbit; on the right, in the foreground, a pair of cold brown dwarfs -- UPM J1040-3551 Ba & Bb -- orbit each other for a period of decades while collectively circling UPM J1040-3551 Aab in a vast orbit that takes over 100,000 years to complete. Image credit: Jiaxin Zhong / Zenghua Zhang.

Astronomers Discover Extremely Rare Hierarchical Quadruple System

Aug 19, 2025 by News Staff

Named UPM J1040-3551 AabBab, the newly-discovered quadruple star system consists of a pair of cold brown dwarfs and a pair of young red dwarfs. An artist’s...

This Hubble image shows NGC 2835, a spiral galaxy some 35 million light-years away in the constellation of Hydra. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / R. Chandar / J. Lee / PHANGS-HST Team.

Hubble Space Telescope Captures New Image of NGC 2835

Aug 18, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

NASA has released a new image snapped by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of the nearby spiral galaxy NGC 2835. This Hubble image shows NGC 2835, a...

This artist’s impression shows a field of Population III stars as they would have appeared a mere 100 million years after the Big Bang. Image credit: NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / J. da Silva / Spaceengine.

Supermassive Black Holes are Remnants of Universe’s Very First Stars, New Theory Says

Aug 15, 2025 by News Staff

In his new paper, Professor Jonathan Tan, an astrophysicist at the University of Virginia and the Chalmers University of Technology, proposes that Population...

This artist’s concept depicts TRAPPIST-1d passing in front of its turbulent star, with other members of the closely packed system shown in the background. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Joseph Olmsted, STScI.

Could Exoplanets around TRAPPIST-1 and Other Red Dwarfs Be Habitable?

Aug 13, 2025 by News Staff

A protective atmosphere, a friendly Sun, and lots of liquid water — Earth is a special place. Using the unprecedented capabilities of the NASA/ESA/CSA...

Black holes are the sources of the strongest gravitational fields that can be found today in the Universe and are ideal laboratories for testing Einstein’s theory of general relativity in the strong field regime. In his article, Professor Bambi shows that the possibility of an interstellar mission to send a small spacecraft to the nearest black hole, although very speculative and extremely challenging, is not completely unrealistic. Image credit: Cosimo Bambi, doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2025.113142.

Astrophysicist Proposes Interstellar Mission to Study Black Holes

Aug 11, 2025 by News Staff

In a new paper published in the journal iScience, an astrophysicist from Fudan University discusses the possibility of sending a nanocraft to a black hole...

This Hubble image shows of the outer arms of NGC 45, a spiral galaxy some 22 million light-years away in the constellation of Cetus. The color image was made from separate exposures taken in the ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared regions of the spectrum with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) instrument. It is based on data obtained through seven filters. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / D. Calzetti / R. Chandar / M.H. Özsaraç.

Hubble Space Telescope Zooms In on Outer Arms of NGC 45

Aug 11, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have captured a stunning new image of part of a spiral galaxy called NGC 45. This Hubble image shows...

This artist’s concept shows what a gas giant orbiting Alpha Centauri A could look like. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI / Robert L. Hurt, Caltech & IPAC.

Webb Images Giant Exoplanet Candidate in Habitable Zone of Alpha Centauri A

Aug 8, 2025 by News Staff

This planet candidate, Alpha Centauri Ab, could be a gas giant, orbiting 1 to 2 times the distance between Sun and Earth, according to two papers to be...

Hubble captured this image of 3I/ATLAS on July 21, 2025, when the comet was 446 million km (277 million miles) from Earth. Image credit: NASA / ESA / David Jewitt, UCLA / Joseph DePasquale, STScI.

Hubble Captures Most Detailed Images Yet of Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS

Aug 7, 2025 by News Staff

According to an analysis of the new images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the nucleus of 3I/ATLAS is between 320 m (1,000 feet) and 5.6 km (3.5...

This Hubble image shows the Cosmic Horseshoe gravitational lens (to the right from the center): the newly-discovered ultramassive blackhole lies at the center of the orange galaxy; far behind it is a blue galaxy that is being warped into the horseshoe shaped ring by distortions in spacetime created by the immense mass of the foreground orange galaxy. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Astronomers Discover Most Massive Black Hole Yet

Aug 7, 2025 by News Staff

Astronomers have identified and measured the most massive black hole to date, which tops out at a mass of 36 billion solar masses. This ultramassive black...

Illustration of a merger of a white dwarf with sub-giant star (size not to scale) that would have occurred in past. Image credit: Snehalata Sahu / University of Warwick.

Hubble Finds Remnant of White Dwarf Merger 130 Light-Years Away

Aug 6, 2025 by News Staff

White dwarfs are the dense cores left behind when stars exhaust their fuel and collapse. They are Earth-sized stellar embers weighing typically half as...

Abell 3667 is featured in this DECam image. Image credit: CTIO / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / Anthony Englert, Brown University / T.A. Rector, University of Alaska Anchorage & NSF’s NOIRLab / M. Zamani & D. de Martin, NSF’s NOIRLab.

DECam Captures Elusive Intracluster Light in Galaxy Cluster Abell 3667

Aug 5, 2025 by News Staff

Intracluster light is a diffuse glow of stars stripped from galaxies during a galaxy cluster’s formation. Abell 3667 is featured in this DECam image....

This image shows the red supergiant star Stephenson 2 DFK 52 and its circumstellar environment. Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / Siebert et al.

Astronomers Discover Exotic Red Supergiant Star

Aug 5, 2025 by Natali Anderson

Designated Stephenson 2 DFK 52, the newly-discovered red supergiant resides in the massive stellar cluster RSGC2. This image shows the red supergiant star...

This Webb/NIRCam image shows NGC 6072, a planetary nebula approximately 4,048 light-years away in the constellation of Scorpius. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI.

Two Stars Contribute to Irregular Shape of NGC 6072, Webb Observations Show

Aug 4, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

Using two instruments onboard the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have captured new high-resolution images of the planetary nebula...

This Hubble image shows part of the Tarantula Nebula, a star-forming region some 163,000 light-years away in the constellation of Dorado. The color image is a composite of separate exposures acquired by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) instrument in the ultraviolet, near-infrared, and optical parts of the spectrum. It is based on data obtained through four filters. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / C. Murray.

Hubble Sees Dusty Clouds in Tarantula Nebula

Aug 4, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

A striking new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows incredible details in the Tarantula Nebula, a turbulent star-birth region located in...

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