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.
The James Webb Space Telescope detected an 8-light-year stellar jet in the Sharpless 2-284 nebula, located 15 000 light-years from Earth in the outer Milky Way, according to a study accepted in The Astrophysical Journal on September 10, 2025.
Liquid water flowed on the parent body of asteroid Ryugu more than 1 billion years after its formation, according to a study published on September 11, 2025, based on Hayabusa2 mission samples.
Magnetic activity cycles were detected in 138 Sun-like stars in a study led by Macquarie University, Australia, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on May 8, 2025.
A dark companion to the Sun may be hiding in the Oort Cloud. If confirmed, it would reshape our understanding of Solar System dynamics and mark one of the most significant discoveries in modern astronomy.
The traditional picture of galaxies places black holes in their centers, where abundant gas and stars fuel their growth. But this view is increasingly challenged. Astronomers now know that some black holes wander away from the nucleus, either because of gravitational recoil after mergers or interactions with other massive objects. These “off-nuclear” or “wandering” black…
Astronomers detected a highly unusual gamma-ray burst (GRB), designated GRB 250702B, that repeated multiple times over the course of nearly 24 hours. The initial detection came on July 2, from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which recorded three distinct bursts from the same source within several hours. Retrospective analysis of data from the Einstein Probe,…
Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is revealing dust unlike any known in the Solar System. Its extreme polarization pattern, a deep negative dip and delayed inversion, suggests dust grains with properties never seen before, pointing to an origin in very different planetary conditions.
Some stars don’t simply fade into quiet obscurity, they are hurled from their homes at unimaginable speeds, becoming hypervelocity white dwarfs. These burned-out stellar cores can race through the galaxy at more than 2 000 km/s (1 240 miles/s), fast enough to escape the Milky Way entirely. A new study shows how such runaways are forged in violent mergers, rewriting what we know about supernovae and the universe’s expansion.
NASA’s Perseverance rover may have found the strongest evidence of past life on Mars. In a new study, scientists report that samples from Jezero Crater contain compounds with potential organic origins, a discovery that could reshape our understanding of the Red Planet’s habitability.
Researchers at Tohoku University, Japan, have validated in laboratory experiments a cusp-type bidirectional plasma thruster designed for contactless removal of orbital debris. The design eliminates destabilizing reaction forces while achieving 25 mN of thrust at 5 kW, marking a step toward scalable active debris removal in increasingly congested Earth orbit.
