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Astronomers

Cloud-9, shown in magenta. The circle represents the region where researchers focused their search for stars—the peak of radio emission.

Astronomers Find an Odd Space Cloud, Like a Galaxy Without Stars, That Could Shed Light on the Secrets of Dark Matter

Named “Cloud-9,” the discovery is a new type of celestial object known as a RELHIC, which is unlike anything scientists have ever observed

David Rankin, operations manager at the Catalina Sky Survey, keeps tabs on space rocks in search of new and potentially hazardous asteroids.

From a Remote Observatory, He’s Defending Our Planet. Get a Glimpse Inside the Life of a Doomsday Asteroid Hunter

David Rankin of the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona spends nights scanning the solar system for potentially catastrophic space rocks. Here’s what he has to say about that “high consequence” work, an interstellar comet and living with uncertainty

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft, which is investigating a group of asteroids that share Jupiter's orbit around the sun, snapped this image on September 16 as 3I/ATLAS approached Mars. 

Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Is About to Make Its Closest Approach to Earth. Here’s How to View It With Binoculars or a Telescope

On December 19, avid skywatchers can catch a glimpse of the mysterious visitor through powerful binoculars or a telescope when it’s around 170 million miles from our home planet

An image simulating the contamination from satellite trails in observations by ARRAKIHS, a European Space Agency telescope planned to launch in 2030

More Than 500,000 Satellites Are Set to Orbit Earth by 2040. They May End Up Photobombing the Images Captured by Space Telescopes

Fleets of satellites interfere with snapshots taken by Earth-bound observatories. But a new study suggests these orbiters will also contaminate observations by four space telescopes, including Hubble

A long-exposure view of the Milky Way, seen from Brandenburg, Germany, is cut through by the light trails of passing satellites.

Giant Mirrors in Space Could Bring Sunlight After Dark, One Startup Says—and Astronomers Are Concerned

Critics argue the satellites, billed as a way to harness solar energy at night, could hamper sky observations and may pose a threat to human and animal health

A remnant of a Type Ia supernova

The Universe’s Expansion May Be Slowing Down, Not Speeding Up, New Research Suggests

A new study challenges a long-held idea that the universe’s expansion is accelerating

An artist's concept of a supermassive black hole shredding a massive star

Astronomers Detect the Brightest and Most Distant Black Hole Flare Ever Seen

The enormous outburst was likely caused by an unfortunate star venturing too close to a supermassive black hole

Quasi-moons follow heliocentric orbits, centered around the sun, that are similar to Earth's.

Cool Finds

Astronomers Say Earth Has a Newly Discovered ‘Quasi-Moon,’ a Companion That Shares Its Orbit Around the Sun

Researchers are discussing 2025 PN7, a small celestial body that’s following a similar orbital path to our planet’s without being gravitationally tied to Earth

A coronal mass ejection erupts from the sun in 2013.

How Prepared Are We for a Rare and Powerful Solar Event?

A coronal mass ejection could knock out power and disrupt communication on Earth

Saturn will be at its brightest on September 21. 

Here’s How to See Saturn at Its Best and Brightest This Month

The giant planet will enter opposition, when the Earth will be between Saturn and the Sun, this weekend

GRB 250702B was spotted in July.

Astronomers Discover Unusual, Long-Lasting Gamma-Ray Explosion Outside Our Galaxy That Appeared Several Times Throughout a Day

The burst seems to have been caused by a highly extraordinary event, but scientists don’t yet know exactly what that could be

An artist's depiction of the newly discovered "quadruple system" within the Milky Way. In it, two brown dwarfs orbit each other at the right, and together, they orbit a pair of red dwarf stars at the left.

Astronomers Spot a Rare Quadruple Star System in the Milky Way, Shedding Light on Mysterious Brown Dwarfs

The discovery can help astronomers better understand these little-known objects nicknamed “failed stars”

The Perseid meteor shower in 2023. Although the prolific shower is not currently at its peak, astronomers recommend catching a glimpse before the moon gets too bright.

How to Watch This Week’s Stunning Dual Meteor Shower and More Upcoming Celestial Events

You can catch meteor showers and a special lunar display early this week, and keep an eye out for the popular Perseids

Scientists observed the faint companion star, shown in blue, by using a speckle imager mounted on the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii to capture several short exposures.

Astronomers Say They’ve Finally Spotted Betelgeuse’s Companion Star, Long Predicted to Exist but Never Seen

The discovery, if confirmed, could explain Betelgeuse’s mysterious six-year oscillations in brightness

An image from the ALMA telescope array in Chile shows jets of silicon monoxide blowing away from the young star HOPS-315. The blue jet is moving towards Earth, and the red jet is moving away from us.

For the First Time, Astronomers Capture ‘Smoking Gun’ of Early Solar System Formation

Telescopes detected the first stages of hot minerals condensing from gas around a young star called HOPS-315

An illustration of a red giant star and a white dwarf orbiting each other in a recurrent nova explosion.

Rare Appearance of Two Novas at Once Illuminates the Southern Sky. Here’s How to Get a Chance to See It

The “new stars” are best seen from the Southern Hemisphere, but people have spotted them from the United States by looking near the southern horizon

A section of the new view of the Sculptor galaxy, featuring thousands of colors

Stunning New Image of the Sculptor Galaxy Captures the Cosmic Landscape in Thousands of Colors

The galaxy sits in a sweet spot that allows astronomers to study it in ways that can’t be applied to even our own Milky Way

Water may have arisen as early as 100 million years after the universe began.

Did Water Form in the Earliest Years of the Universe?

A recent study suggests huge volumes of the molecule emerged during the cosmic dawn

The five dwarf planets recognized by the International Astronomical Union are Pluto, Ceres, Eris, Haumea and Makemake—and these are pictured with 2017 OF201 in a telescope image.

Astronomers Discover a Possible Dwarf Planet Far Beyond Neptune, Where There Should Have Only Been Empty Space

As it orbits the sun once every 25,000 years, the celestial body 2017 OF201 travels beyond the Kuiper Belt into a region thought to be largely devoid of objects

An ancient star map (not the document analyzed in the new research) unearthed in Dunhuang, China, in the seventh century C.E.

New Research

These Scientists Say They’ve Identified the Oldest Known Star Chart in the World

A new preprint suggests that an ancient Chinese star catalog dates to 355 B.C.E. But other researchers aren’t convinced, arguing that the original coordinates are misaligned by one degree

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