Astronomy News

October 26, 2026

Top Headlines

A Train Was Delayed by a Solar Storm. but Something Didn't Add Up.

Oct. 21, 2026 Scientists have cracked a 178-year-old mystery surrounding a train delayed by a solar storm, revealing that the famous incident happened in 1848 rather than 1841. The discovery rewrites the early history of space weather and highlights a threat that ...

Astronauts’ Hearts Just Passed a Surprising Test for Mars

Oct. 21, 2026 A new study tracking 13 astronauts suggests that the human heart may be surprisingly well equipped for a journey to Mars, especially with regular exercise during spaceflight. Researchers found that astronauts' hearts adapted to months of ...

NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover Just Shattered the All-time Off-world Driving Record

Oct. 21, 2026 NASA’s Perseverance rover has shattered a historic space exploration record, traveling farther across another world than any vehicle before it. Its advanced self-driving system helped it surpass ...

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope Exceeds Expectations by Nearly 30%

Oct. 17, 2026 NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has exceeded expectations after engineers made incredibly tiny adjustments to sharpen its view of the universe. By moving a mirror just one-sixteenth the width of a human hair, the team helped bring its ...

SpaceX Just Delivered Some Very Strange Cargo to the International Space Station

Oct. 16, 2026 SpaceX just delivered some surprisingly strange cargo to the International Space Station, including tiny brain models, 3D heart tissue, and technology for making artificial retinas in space. ...

Europe's New Sentinel-3C Satellite Just Sent Back Spectacular Images of Earth

Oct. 12, 2026 Europe's Sentinel-3C satellite has returned breathtaking images of Earth just two weeks after launch, revealing the snowy Alps, frozen Arctic islands, and brilliant turquoise Caribbean waters. Its ...

NASA Is Searching for Hidden Caves to Build Its First Moon Base

Oct. 8, 2026 NASA is preparing for humanity’s first Moon base with three investigations that will hunt for underground shelters, uncover hidden ice, and track dangerous conditions on the lunar surface. The findings could reveal how astronauts can survive and ...

Earth’s Center Is Moving, and NASA Just Measured It

Oct. 7, 2026 Earth’s center of mass is constantly on the move, shifting by a few millimeters as enormous amounts of water, ice, and even air migrate around the planet with the seasons. NASA scientists have developed a more precise way to track these tiny ...

This Mysterious Hole on the Moon May Open Into a Giant Cave

Oct. 5, 2026 NASA has selected the GIMLI project to investigate whether the Marius Hill Pit opens into a vast underground cave or lava tube. Using radar, seismic sensors, gravity measurements, and cameras, researchers will search beneath the lunar surface and ...

A Meteor Hit Oklahoma 100 Million Years Later Than Scientists Thought

Oct. 4, 2026 A meteor crater buried beneath Oklahoma has turned out to be nearly 100 million years younger than scientists thought. Zircon crystals show the Ames impact occurred about 370 million years ago, meaning it was not part of the mysterious Ordovician ...

Powerful Simulations Reveal How the First Stars Changed the Universe

Oct. 3, 2026 Ultra-detailed simulations are showing how the first stars lit up the dark Universe and seeded space with elements such as carbon, oxygen, and iron. The MEGATRON project could bridge JWST observations of the earliest galaxies with chemical clues ...

NASA’s Roman Telescope Just Opened Its Planet-hunting Eye

Oct. 2, 2026 NASA’s Roman Space Telescope has demonstrated remarkable pointing stability and given its powerful planet-imaging coronagraph its first look at the cosmos. The telescope can already stay locked on a target with precision comparable to aiming a ...

Latest Headlines

updated 8:38am EDT

A 2,700-Year-Old Solar Eclipse Just Revealed Something Surprising About Earth

Oct. 26, 2026 A solar eclipse recorded more than 2,700 years ago is revealing surprising secrets about Earth's rotation and the Sun's ancient behavior. By ...

Three Giant Black Holes Discovered in a Galaxy from the Dawn of Time

Oct. 25, 2026 Astronomers have discovered three actively feeding black holes inside a single galaxy more than 12.5 billion light-years away, revealing a remarkable scene from the universe’s infancy. Two of the ...

Astronomers May Have Discovered the First Moon Beyond Our Solar System

Oct. 24, 2026 Astronomers have uncovered evidence of a bizarre, potentially historic discovery: the first moon ever detected beyond our Solar System. Unlike familiar moons, this mysterious object is at least as ...

NASA’s Asteroid Bennu Samples Reveal a 4.5-Billion-Year-Old Secret

Oct. 24, 2026 Tiny samples from asteroid Bennu are rewriting scientists' understanding of how our Solar System formed. New evidence suggests that Bennu was born where material from the inner and outer Solar System ...

Astronomers Uncover a Mysterious Magnetic Web Above the Sun

Oct. 24, 2026 The Sun’s seemingly peaceful regions are hiding a surprisingly complex magnetic world. Using a balloon-borne telescope high above Earth, scientists discovered delicate, thread-like magnetic ...

Nearly 3,000 Exploding Stars Challenge Our Understanding of the Universe

Oct. 22, 2026 A massive analysis of 2,884 exploding stars has uncovered new evidence that dark energy, the mysterious force accelerating the universe’s expansion, may change over time. The findings challenge a ...

NASA’s Curiosity Rover Reveals a Spectacular New View of Mars With a Mystery on the Horizon

Oct. 22, 2026 NASA’s Curiosity rover has revealed a spectacular new view of mysterious, wind-carved cliffs on Mars that may hold evidence of ancient volcanic ...

Astronomers Uncover New Secrets of the Universe’s First Five Minutes

Oct. 20, 2026 Scientists have achieved a major breakthrough in understanding the Universe’s earliest moments, measuring the amount of helium formed in the first five minutes after the Big Bang with unprecedented ...

NASA Reveals 16 Stunning Galaxies Hiding Cosmic Chaos

Oct. 20, 2026 NASA's stunning new gallery of 16 galaxies reveals colossal black hole jets, explosive star formation, and spectacular cosmic collisions through the combined power of Chandra, James Webb, Hubble, and ...

NASA Solves a Strange Mystery Hidden Inside Asteroid Bennu’s Boulders

Oct. 19, 2026 NASA scientists have finally uncovered why asteroid Bennu loses heat so quickly despite being covered in massive boulders. Samples returned to Earth reveal that its rocks are filled with hidden ...

Astronomers Discover a Ghostly Green Star Unlike Any Known Before

Oct. 19, 2026 Astronomers have uncovered a surprising rainbow of dead stars, including the first known star that would appear genuinely green to human eyes. Researchers found that white dwarfs can glow in ...

NASA’s SpaceX Launch Lights Up the Sky With a Giant Glowing Jellyfish

Oct. 17, 2026 A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket created a dazzling, jellyfish-shaped glow across the eastern United States as sunlight illuminated its exhaust during an early morning launch. The mission delivered equipment ...

James Webb Reveals a Strange Bulge in an Alien Planet's Atmosphere

Oct. 16, 2026 Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered that a distant alien planet's atmosphere is surprisingly lopsided. Located 1,300 light-years away, the scorching gas giant ...

NASA Astronauts Splash Down After 100 Million Miles in Space

Oct. 8, 2026 NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 astronauts have returned to Earth after 237 days in space, traveling more than 100 million miles and completing over 3,792 orbits while conducting research to prepare for ...

NASA Spots a Giant Patch of Moon-Like Rock on Earth

Oct. 11, 2026 An astronaut aboard the International Space Station photographed a remarkable formation in Madagascar that looks surprisingly similar to the Moon’s bright highlands. Made of anorthosite, a rock ...

October’s Night Sky Is Full of Cosmic Tricks and Treats

Oct. 8, 2026 October’s skies are packed with celestial surprises, from Jupiter disappearing behind the Moon to two meteor showers lighting up the darkness. NASA highlights four must-see events, including ...

MIT Astronomers Catch a Star in a Feast That Could Last Billions of Years

Oct. 10, 2026 Astronomers have discovered a bizarre star system about 300 light-years from Earth where a small star is slowly devouring a nearby brown dwarf, an object too massive to be a planet but too small to ...

Hubble Space Telescope May Have Found a Planet Born After Its Star Died

Oct. 9, 2026 A strange chemical signature in old Hubble observations may point to a planet that formed after its star had already died. Astronomers found unusually high levels of niobium around the white dwarf HS ...

NASA’s Webb Finds Signs of Mars-Sized Worlds Smashing Together

Oct. 7, 2026 NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is giving astronomers a glimpse of the kinds of violent collisions that may have shaped our own solar system, including the giant impact thought to have created ...

Don't Miss: Watch Saturn Shine and Halley’s Comet Debris Streak Across the Sky

Oct. 5, 2026 October skywatchers can see Saturn at opposition, catch meteors from Halley’s Comet during the Orionid peak, and watch the Moon sweep past the famous Pleiades star cluster. Moonlight may obscure ...

A Record-Breaking X-Ray Flash May Reveal the Birth of a Magnetar

Sep. 30, 2026 Astronomers have found strong evidence that some mysterious, minutes-long X-ray flashes are produced when two neutron stars collide and create a magnetar. One record-setting event glowed in X-rays ...

Einstein Probe Reveals a Hidden Phase of Neutron Star Collisions

Oct. 8, 2026 Einstein Probe revealed nearly 10 minutes of soft X-ray activity following a short gamma-ray burst, exposing a phase of neutron star mergers that previous missions may have missed. The prolonged ...

Scientists Find a Surprising Clue to Why the Universe’s Expansion Doesn’t Add Up

Oct. 4, 2026 Tiny magnetic fields created shortly after the Big Bang may help explain the long-running disagreement over how fast the universe is expanding. Detailed simulations show that these primordial fields ...

Watch Live: NASA’s Crew-13 Could Make the Fastest U.S. Trip to the ISS Ever

Sep. 30, 2026 NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 mission is scheduled to launch four astronauts to the International Space Station on October 1. The Dragon could reach the orbiting laboratory in just 7 hours and 50 minutes, ...

The Ice Blasting from Saturn's Moon Enceladus Is Stranger Than Scientists Realized

Sep. 29, 2026 Enceladus may naturally separate and concentrate chemicals from its hidden ocean as droplets slowly freeze and shatter on their way into space. The process could explain Cassini’s puzzling ...

A 9-Billion-Year-Old Signal Could Help Explain Dark Energy

Oct. 9, 2026 A Canadian radio telescope has detected the faint glow of hydrogen from billions of years ago using only its own observations, proving a long-awaited way to map the distant universe can actually ...

ESA’s Juice Just Used Earth as a Slingshot to Jupiter

Oct. 3, 2026 ESA’s Juice spacecraft raced past Earth on September 28, using our planet’s gravity to dramatically reshape its path toward Jupiter without burning much fuel. The flyby changed its direction by ...

Chang’e-6 Lunar Soil Contains a Surprising Magnetic Time Capsule

Oct. 3, 2026 Scientists studying Chang’e-6 lunar soil have discovered a previously unknown magnetic mineral in natural Moon samples: a form of metallic iron called γ-Fe. Found inside tiny impact-glass ...

The Early Universe Wasn’t Nearly as Pristine as Scientists Thought

Oct. 2, 2026 JWST has revealed that galaxies were spreading carbon, oxygen, and other heavy elements through space just 500 million years after the Big Bang. The surprising discovery suggests the young universe ...

Black Hole Jets May Decide the Fate of Entire Galaxies

Sep. 30, 2026 Powerful jets from supermassive black holes can disturb star-forming gas far beyond a galaxy’s visible edge, leaving a glowing trail hundreds of thousands of light-years long. By keeping this gas ...