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Artist's illustration of black hole surrounded by a clearing cloud of dust and gas

Astronomy & Observing News

Astronomers Spot Possible Missing Link to Webb’s Little Red Dots

Astronomers may have found the missing link required to understand one of the James Webb Space Telescope’s most puzzling discoveries.

Comet 3I/ATLAS closeup

Astronomy & Observing News

Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Has Cold, Ancient Origins

The most recent interstellar visitor was crisscrossing our galaxy for some 10 to 12 billion years before it came near the Sun.

Nighttime view of Earth

Astronomy & Observing News

Light Pollution Is Increasingly Variable Around the World

Scientists have unveiled a new dynamic view of our world at night, showing for the first time a night-by-night view of changes in light pollution.

Webb's view of Saturn

Astronomy & Observing News

New Astro Images: Saturn, the Crab Nebula, and a Newborn Planet

Striking images from Hubble, Webb, and the Very Large Telescope dive into Saturn's atmosphere, capture the Crab Nebula's expansion, and reveal a newborn planet.

Artistic interpretation of the application of AI to astronomical targets like supernovae, asteroids, and AGN

Resources and Education

How AI Is Reshaping Astronomy

Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing our world — and how we interpret the heavens above us.

Art: A super-Earth we could call Vulcan

Astronomy & Observing News

Explore the Worlds of Project Hail Mary

When Andy Weir published Project Hail Mary, he based his novel on two worlds. We explore these planet candidates — and why they probably don’t exist.

central object surrounded by fluffy disk, with two jets emerging perpendicular to the disk

Astronomy & Observing News

Super-Bright Supernovae Are Birth Cries of Magnetars

The disk of gas that spirals onto a newborn magnetar wobbles, creating "bumps" in the brightness of the supernova that accompanied this object's birth.

Galaxies spot a black field

Astronomy & Observing News

AI Reveals New Galaxies in James Webb Space Telescope Images

Known as ASTERIS, the AI network removes noise from images to reveal features a full magnitude fainter than before.

Astronomy & Observing News

Infant Galaxy Clusters Grew Faster Than Expected

Astronomers have discovered three still-growing galaxy clusters in the early universe that point to a faster track of evolution than expected.

Near-infrared image of the Helix Nebula showing thousands of cometary knots

Astronomy & Observing News

What the Helix Nebula Has in Common with a Supernova Remnant

Sculpted gases in the Helix Nebula, revealed in a new Webb image, look like the firework-like tendrils in a distant amateur-discovered supernova remnant — here's why.

Solar flare

Astronomy & Observing News

Watch Stellar Explosions Near and Far (Videos)

New videos from the Solar Orbiter and the Chandra X-ray Observatory capture magnetic avalanches on the Sun and the exploding remnants of a star 17,000 light-years away.

Lensing galaxy cluster

Astronomy & Observing News

“Missing” Supernova Images Offer Measure of Universe’s Expansion

Astronomers have found two gravitationally lensed supernovae that are missing images. Those images' arrival will offer a measure of the universe's expansion.

Lazuli concept shown in space

Astronomy & Observing News

The Schmidt System: Four New Observatories in the Next Three Years

Schmidt Sciences has unveiled details on four ambitious observatories to monitor the dynamic cosmos, with data from all four expected by 2029.

dark hole surrounded by hot disk of swirling gas and shooting out a jet from its rotation axis

Astronomy & Observing News

Not Every Galaxy Has a Central Black Hole

Many less massive galaxies appear to lack something astronomers thought was ubiquitous: a central, supermassive black hole.

Averaged image of the solar south pole

Astronomy & Observing News

The Sun's Poles Are Different Than We Expected

A new analysis of the Solar Orbiter's unique views of the Sun's poles shows how a "conveyor belt" moves within our nearest star.

Super-Earth orbiting a red dwarf star

Astronomy & Observing News

A Super-Earth Candidate Less Than 20 Light-Years Away

Astronomers have discovered a ready-to-image super-Earth candidate less than 20 light-years away.

Gaia data outlines

Astronomy & Observing News

A “Great Wave” Is Crashing through the Milky Way

Precise measurements of stars’ motions show that a wave is propagating outward from our galaxy’s center — perhaps from a long-ago collision with another galaxy.

Pandora's Cluster of galaxies

Astronomy & Observing News

Early Galaxy Hosts Black Hole with the Mass of 50 Million Suns

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have confirmed that, just 800 million years after the Big Bang, there is a galaxy that contains a supermassive black hole — and not much else.

This release features a composite image of Cassiopeia A, a donut-shaped supernova remnant located about 11,000 light-years from Earth. Included in the image is an inset closeup, which highlights a region with relative abundances of silicon and neon. Over three hundred years ago, Cassiopeia A, or Cas A, was a star on the brink of self-destruction. In composition it resembled an onion with layers rich in different elements such as hydrogen, helium, carbon, silicon, sulfur, calcium, and neon, wrapped around an iron core. When that iron core grew beyond a certain mass, the star could no longer support its own weight. The outer layers fell into the collapsing core, then rebounded as a supernova. This explosion created the donut-like shape shown in the composite image. The shape is somewhat irregular, with the thinner quadrant of the donut to the upper left of the off-center hole. In the body of the donut, the remains of the star's elements create a mottled cloud of colors, marbled with red and blue veins. Here, sulfur is represented by yellow, calcium by green, and iron by purple. The red veins are silicon, and the blue veins, which also line the outer edge of the donut-shape, are the highest energy X-rays detected by Chandra and show the explosion's blast wave. The inset uses a different color code and highlights a colorful, mottled region at the thinner, upper left quadrant of Cas A. Here, rich pockets of silicon and neon are identified in the red and blue veins, respectively. New evidence from Chandra indicates that in the hours before the star's collapse, part of a silicon-rich layer traveled outwards, and broke into a neighboring neon-rich layer. This violent breakdown of layers created strong turbulent flows and may have promoted the development of the supernova's blast wave, facilitating the star's explosion. Additionally, upheaval in the interior of the star may have produced a lopsided explosion, resulting in the irregular shape, with an off-center hole (and a thinner bite of donut!) at our upper left.

Astronomy & Observing News

From the Sun to the Stars, Astronomy in Photos

New observations reveal turbulent flows in the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A and in the solar corona.

Lumpy Mars mantle

Astronomy & Observing News

Mars Might Have a Surprisingly Large, Solid Core, Marsquakes Reveal

Marsquakes reveal a lumpy, viscous mantle and a large, solid inner core, with profound implications for Mars past, present, and future.

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