Astronomy News

December 2, 2023

Top Headlines

Meteorites Likely Source of Nitrogen for Early Earth

Dec. 1, 2023 — Micrometeorites originating from icy celestial bodies in the outer Solar System may be responsible for transporting nitrogen to the near-Earth region in the early days of our solar ...

Discovery of Planet Too Big for Its Sun Throws Off Solar System Formation Models

Nov. 30, 2023 — The discovery of a planet that is far too massive for its sun is calling into question what was previously understood about the formation of planets and their solar ...

Rocky Planets Can Form in Extreme Environments

Nov. 30, 2023 — Astronomers have provided the first observation of water and other molecules in the highly irradiated inner, rocky-planet-forming regions of a disk in one of the most extreme environments in our galaxy. These results suggest that the conditions for ...

New Astrophysics Model Sheds Light on Additional Source of Long Gamma-Ray Bursts

Nov. 29, 2023 — Cutting-edge computer simulations combined with theoretical calculations are helping astronomers better understand the origin of some of the universe's most energetic and mysterious light shows -- ...

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updated 5:34pm EST

An Astronomical Waltz Reveals a Sextuplet of Planets

Nov. 29, 2023 — Astronomers have found a key new system of six transiting planets orbiting a bright star in a harmonic rhythm. This rare property enabled the team to determine the planetary orbits which initially ...

Building Blocks for Life Could Have Formed Near New Stars and Planets

Nov. 29, 2023 — While life on Earth is relatively new, geologically speaking, the ingredients that combined to form it might be much older than once thought. The simplest amino acid, carbamic acid, could have formed ...

Astronomers Discover Disc Around Star in Another Galaxy

Nov. 29, 2023 — In a remarkable discovery, astronomers have found a disc around a young star in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy neighboring ours. It's the first time such a disc, identical to those forming ...

Composition of Asteroid Phaethon

Nov. 28, 2023 — Asteroid Phaethon, which is five kilometers in diameter, has been puzzling researchers for a long time. A comet-like tail is visible for a few days when the asteroid passes closest to the Sun during ...

Solar Activity Likely to Peak Next Year

Nov. 28, 2023 — Researchers have discovered a new relationship between the Sun's magnetic field and its sunspot cycle, that can help predict when the peak in solar activity will occur. Their work indicates that the ...

Hydrogen Detected in Lunar Samples, Points to Resource Availability for Space Exploration

Nov. 21, 2023 — Researchers have discovered solar-wind hydrogen in lunar samples, which indicates that water on the surface of the Moon may provide a vital resource ...

New Way of Searching for Dark Matter

Nov. 27, 2023 — Wondering whether whether Dark Matter particles actually are produced inside a jet of standard model particles, led researchers to explore a new detector signature known as semi-visible jets, which ...

Alien Haze, Cooked in a Lab, Clears View to Distant Water Worlds

Nov. 27, 2023 — Scientists have simulated conditions that allow hazy skies to form in water-rich exoplanets, a crucial step in determining how haziness muddles important telescope observations for the search of ...

Telescope Array Detects Second Highest-Energy Cosmic Ray Ever

Nov. 23, 2023 — In 1991, an experiment detected the highest-energy cosmic ray ever observed. Later dubbed the Oh-My-God particle, the cosmic ray’s energy shocked astrophysicists. Nothing in our galaxy had the ...

Dwarf Galaxies Use 10-Million-Year Quiet Period to Churn out Stars

Nov. 21, 2023 — If you look at massive galaxies teeming with stars, you might be forgiven in thinking they are star factories, churning out brilliant balls of gas. But actually, less evolved dwarf galaxies have ...

Earlier Headlines

Summaries
Headlines

NASA's Webb Reveals New Features in Heart of Milky Way

Nov. 21, 2023 — The latest image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope shows a portion of the dense center of our galaxy in unprecedented detail, including never-before-seen features astronomers have yet to ...

'Triple Star' Discovery Could Revolutionize Understanding of Stellar Evolution

Nov. 21, 2023 — A ground-breaking new discovery could transform the way astronomers understand some of the biggest and most common stars in the Universe. Research by PhD student Jonathan Dodd and Professor René ...

Why the Vast Supergalactic Plane Is Teeming With Only One Type of Galaxy

Nov. 20, 2023 — Our own Milky Way galaxy is part of a much larger formation, the local Supercluster structure, which contains several massive galaxy clusters and thousands of individual galaxies. Due to its ...

'Teenage Galaxies' Are Unusually Hot, Glowing With Unexpected Elements

Nov. 20, 2023 — Using the James Webb Space Telescope, CECILIA Survey receives first data from galaxies forming two-to-three billion years after the Big Bang. By examining light from these 33 galaxies, researchers ...

An Old Star With Ring-Like Structure: ALMA Demonstrates Highest Resolution Yet

Nov. 15, 2023 — ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) has demonstrated the highest resolution yet with observations of an old star. The observations show that the star is surrounded by a ring-like ...

With Unprecedented Flares, Stellar Corpse Shows Signs of Life

Nov. 15, 2023 — After a distant star's explosive death, an active stellar corpse was the likely source of repeated energetic flares observed over several months -- a phenomenon astronomers had never seen ...

James Webb Space Telescope Detects Water Vapor, Sulfur Dioxide and Sand Clouds in the Atmosphere of a Nearby Exoplanet

Nov. 15, 2023 — Astronomers have used recent observations made with the James Webb Space Telescope to study the atmosphere of the nearby exoplanet WASP-107b. Peering deep into the fluffy atmosphere of WASP-107b they ...

Downloading NASA's Dark Matter Data from Above the Clouds

Nov. 14, 2023 — Data from a NASA mission to map dark matter around galaxy clusters has been saved by a new recovery system. The system allowed the retrieval of gigabytes of information, even after communication ...

'Bouncing' Comets Could Deliver Building Blocks for Life to Exoplanets

Nov. 14, 2023 — How did the molecular building blocks for life end up on Earth? One long-standing theory is that they could have been delivered by comets. Now, researchers have shown how comets could deposit similar ...

Using Eclipses to Calculate the Transparency of Saturn's Rings

Nov. 14, 2023 — A student has measured the optical depth of Saturn's rings using a new method based on how much sunlight reached the Cassini spacecraft while it was in the shadow of the ...

Galactic 'Lightsabers': Answering Longstanding Questions About Jets from Black Holes

Nov. 14, 2023 — The one thing everyone knows about black holes is that absolutely everything nearby gets sucked into them. Almost everything, it turns out. Astrophysicists have now determined conclusively that ...

Scientists Uncover Aurora-Like Radio Emission Above a Sunspot

Nov. 13, 2023 — Astronomers have detailed radio observations of an extraordinary aurora-like display -- occurring 40,000 km above a relatively dark and cold patch on the Sun, known as a ...

Second-Most Distant Galaxy Discovered Using James Webb Space Telescope

Nov. 13, 2023 — The second- and fourth-most distant galaxies ever observed have been discovered in a region of space known as Pandora's Cluster, or Abell 2744, using data from NASA's James Webb Space ...

Milky Way-Like Galaxy Found in the Early Universe

Nov. 9, 2023 — Astronomers have discovered the most distant barred spiral galaxy, similar to the Milky Way, that has been observed to ...

Glow in the Visible Range Detected for the First Time in the Martian Night

Nov. 9, 2023 — Scientists have observed, for the first time in the visible range, a glow on the night side of the planet Mars. These new observations provide a better understanding of the dynamics of the upper ...

Scientists Find 14 New Transient Objects in Space by Peering Through the 'Christmas Tree Galaxy Cluster'

Nov. 9, 2023 — Scientists have discovered 14 new transient objects during their time-lapse study of galaxy cluster MACS0416 -- located about 4.3 billion light years from Earth -- which they've dubbed as the ...

New Findings Support Long-Proposed Process of Planet Formation

Nov. 8, 2023 — Scientists just made a breakthrough discovery in revealing how planets are made. By observing water vapor in protoplanetary disks, they confirmed a physical process involving the drifting of ...

Mystery Resolved: Black Hole Feeding and Feedback at the Center of an Active Galaxy

Nov. 6, 2023 — Almost every large galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its center. An international research team has recently observed the Circinus galaxy, which is one of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way, ...

Studies of Geologic Faulting on Icy Moons Aid Exploration of Extraterrestrial Watery Worlds

Nov. 6, 2023 — Earth and space scientists document and reveal the mechanisms behind strike-slip faulting on the largest moon of Saturn, Titan, and Jupiter's largest moon, ...

Black Holes Are Messy Eaters

Nov. 2, 2023 — New observations down to light-year scale of the gas flows around a supermassive black hole have successfully detected dense gas inflows and shown that only a small portion (about 3 percent) of the ...

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