The exploration of celestial bodies and cosmic phenomena beyond Earth. This field seeks to uncover the mysteries of the universe, including the nature of stars, planets, galaxies, and the laws governing space and time.
Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) detected heavy water in the planet-forming disk around V883 Ori, a young star 400 parsecs (1 300 light years) away in Orion. This first-ever discovery of doubly deuterated water (D₂O) shows that some planetary water predates the stars themselves.
Scientists have directly observed small-scale torsional Alfvén waves in the Sun’s corona for the first time using the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii, as reported in Nature Astronomy on October 24, 2025.
Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory’s La Silla facility in Chile have mapped the full magnetic rhythm of the young Sun-like star Iota Horologii, uncovering a magnetic cycle that flips every 2.1 years (773 days), roughly ten times faster than the Sun’s.
Scientists in China have identified rare meteorite fragments inside lunar samples returned by the Chang’e-6 mission, the first from the Moon’s far side, according to a study published on October 20, 2025, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Asteroid 99942 Apophis will sweep within about 32 000 km (19 900 miles) of Earth’s surface on April 13, 2029, passing inside the orbit of many geostationary satellites. ESA’s proposed Ramses spacecraft aims to fly alongside it and observe this near miss up close.
Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory confirmed that Betelgeuse, the red supergiant blazing in Orion’s shoulder, hosts a faint, low-mass companion star, ending decades of speculation about the famous star’s solitary status.
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and ALMA have identified a 20 000 light-year (6 kiloparsec) scar of gas and dust slicing through the spiral galaxy NGC 3627. The feature was likely created by a massive black hole or the nucleus of a dwarf galaxy that passed through the galactic disk about 20 million years ago.
An international team led by Leiden Observatory and the Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON) has developed the first unified physical model explaining the eastward and westward jet streams of all four giant planets, published in Science Advances on October 10, 2025.
New data from the European Space Agency’s Swarm mission show that the South Atlantic Anomaly, a weak region in Earth’s magnetic field over the South Atlantic Ocean, has expanded steadily since 2014, now covering nearly 1 % of the planet’s surface. The 11-year record marks the most detailed satellite observation of the field’s uneven weakening to date.
A radioactive signal hidden in Pacific Ocean crust may be the lingering trace of a massive star that exploded near Earth about 10 million years ago, according to new research published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
