Space Telescopes News

January 26, 2025

Top Headlines

Astronomers Thought They Understood Fast Radio Bursts: A Recent One Calls That Into Question

Jan. 21, 2025 — Fast radio bursts are mysterious and brief flashes of radio emissions that were thought to be produced by magnetars, highly magnetized rotating neutron stars. Yet magnetars appear primarily in young ...

Extreme Supersonic Winds Measured on Planet Outside Our Solar System

Jan. 21, 2025 — Astronomers have discovered extremely powerful winds pummeling the equator of WASP-127b, a giant exoplanet. Reaching speeds up to 33,000 km/h, the winds make up the fastest jet-stream of its kind ever measured on a planet. The discovery provides ...

First Fast Radio Burst Traced to Old, Dead, Elliptical Galaxy

Jan. 21, 2025 — Astronomers previously thought all FRBs were generated by magnetars formed through the explosions of very young, massive stars. But new FRB is pinpointed to the outskirts of 11.3-billion-year-old galaxy without young, active stars -- calling those ...

NASA's Hubble Traces Hidden History of Andromeda Galaxy

Jan. 17, 2025 — In the years following the launch of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have tallied over 1 trillion galaxies in the universe. But only one galaxy stands out as the most important nearby stellar island to our Milky Way -- the magnificent ...

Latest Headlines

updated 6:05pm EST

This Tiny Galaxy Is Answering Some Big Questions

Jan. 16, 2025 — Leo P, a small galaxy and a distant neighbor of the Milky Way, is lighting the way for astronomers to better understand star formation and how a galaxy grows. Scientists have reported finding that ...

NASA's Pandora Mission One Step Closer to Probing Alien Atmospheres

Jan. 16, 2025 — Pandora, a small satellite mission poised to provide in-depth study of at least 20 known planets orbiting distant stars to determine the composition of their atmospheres cleared an important ...

Astronomers Observe Real-Time Formation of Black Hole Jets for the First Time

Jan. 16, 2025 — In 2018, a galaxy about 270 million light-years away from Earth exhibited a major increase in activity. It quieted down again by 2020 -- only to ...

Three Tiny 'Stellar-Ghost-Town' Galaxies Discovered

Jan. 15, 2025 — By combining data from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys and the Gemini South telescope, astronomers have investigated three ultra-faint dwarf galaxies that reside in a region of space isolated from ...

NASA Celebrates Edwin Hubble's Discovery of a New Universe

Jan. 15, 2025 — For humans, the most important star in the universe is our Sun. The second-most important star is nestled inside the Andromeda galaxy. Don't go looking for it -- the flickering star is 2.2 million ...

This Quasar May Have Helped Turn the Lights on for the Universe

Jan. 15, 2025 — Astronomers have detected an intensely brightening and dimming quasar that may help explain how some objects in the early universe grew at a highly accelerated rate. The discovery is the most distant ...

Super-Earth Vs. Sub-Neptune? The Winner Is Super-Venus!

Jan. 15, 2025 — New observational data and simulation models have confirmed a new type of planet unlike anything found in the Solar System. This provides another piece of the puzzle to understand how planets and ...

Not All Hot Jupiters Orbit Solo

Jan. 15, 2025 — Hot Jupiters are giant planets initially known to orbit alone close to their star. During their migration towards their star, these planets were thought to accrete or eject any other planets present. ...

Hubble Reveals Surprising Spiral Shape of Galaxy Hosting Young Jet

Jan. 13, 2025 — The night sky has always played a crucial role in navigation, from early ocean crossings to modern GPS. Besides stars, the United States Navy uses quasars as beacons. Quasars are distant galaxies ...

NASA's Hubble Tracks Down a 'Blue Lurker' Among Stars

Jan. 13, 2025 — The name 'blue lurker' might sound like a villainous character from a superhero movie. But it is a rare class of star that NASA's Hubble Space Telescope explored by looking deeply into the open star ...

X-Ray Flashes from a Nearby Supermassive Black Hole Accelerate Mysteriously

Jan. 13, 2025 — Astronomers observed flashes of X-rays coming from a supermassive black hole at a steadily increasing clip. The source could be the core of a dead star that's teetering at the black hole's ...

Beyond the 'Dragon Arc', a Treasure Trove of Unseen Stars

Jan. 6, 2025 — Taking advantage of a cosmic 'double lens,' astronomers resolved more than 40 individual stars in a galaxy so far away its light dates back to when the universe was only half its present ...

Citizen Science Reveals That Jupiter's Colorful Clouds Are Not Made of Ammonia Ice

Jan. 6, 2025 — Collaborative work by amateur and professional astronomers has helped to resolve a long-standing misunderstanding about the composition of Jupiter's clouds. Instead of being formed of ammonia ...

The Carbon in Our Bodies Probably Left the Galaxy and Came Back on Cosmic 'Conveyer Belt'

Jan. 3, 2025 — Scientists recently discovered that the giant 'conveyer belt' currents that push star-forged material out of our galaxy and pull it back in can also transport carbon atoms. That means that ...

Scientists Pin Down the Origins of a Fast Radio Burst

Jan. 1, 2025 — Astronomers pinned down the origins of at least one fast radio burst, a brief and brilliant explosion of radio waves emitted by an extremely compact object. The team's novel technique might also ...

Dark Energy 'Doesn't Exist' So Can't Be Pushing 'Lumpy' Universe Apart

Dec. 20, 2024 — One of the biggest mysteries in science -- dark energy -- doesn't actually exist, according to researchers looking to solve the riddle of how the Universe is expanding. For the past 100 years, ...

Supermassive Black Holes Halt Rapid Construction in an Ancient Celestial City

Dec. 18, 2024 — Galaxy clusters -- the big cities of the universe -- are home to many giant elliptical galaxies that have completed their growth and are not forming stars. However, it is still unclear what has shut ...

Event Horizon Telescope: Moving Towards a Close-Up of a Black Hole and Its Jets

Dec. 17, 2024 — After taking the first images of black holes, the groundbreaking Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is poised to reveal how black holes launch powerful jets into space. Now, a research team has shown that ...

Binary Star Found Near Our Galaxy's Supermassive Black Hole

Dec. 17, 2024 — An international team of researchers has detected a binary star orbiting close to Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. It is the first time a stellar pair has been ...

Astrophysicists Capture Astonishing Images of Gamma-Ray Flare from Supermassive Black Hole M87

Dec. 13, 2024 — The galaxy M87, located in the Virgo constellation, provided the first-ever photo of a black hole in 2019, when the Event Horizon Telescope captured an image of the supermassive black hole at the ...

Superflares Once Per Century

Dec. 12, 2024 — Stars similar to the Sun produce a gigantic outburst of radiation on average about once every hundred years per star. Such superflares release more energy than a trillion hydrogen bombs and make all ...

A New Galaxy, Much Like Our Own

Dec. 11, 2024 — Stunning new photographs by a team of astronomers have revealed a newly forming galaxy that looks remarkably similar to a young Milky Way. The extraordinary images give us an unprecedented picture of ...

NASA's Hubble Celebrates Decade of Tracking Outer Planets

Dec. 9, 2024 — A NASA Hubble Space Telescope observation program called OPAL (Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy) obtains long-term baseline observations of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune in order to understand ...

Universe Expansion Study Confirms Challenge to Cosmic Theory

Dec. 9, 2024 — New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope suggest that a new feature in the universe -- not a flaw in telescope measurements -- may be behind the decade-long mystery of why the universe is ...

Astronomers Find the Smallest Asteroids Ever Detected in the Main Belt

Dec. 9, 2024 — Astronomers have found a way to spot the smallest, 'decameter,' asteroids within the main asteroid belt. They used their approach to detect more than 100 new asteroids, ranging from the ...

Astronomers Witness the in Situ Spheroid Formation in Distant Submillimetre-Bright Galaxies

Dec. 5, 2024 — Researchers have used the ALMA telescope and found old elliptical galaxies in the universe can form from intense star formation within early galaxy ...

Astronomers Close to Solving Mystery of How Universe's Giant Galaxies Formed

Dec. 4, 2024 — Astrophysicists find the birth sites of gigantic elliptical galaxies which they say gives new clues about how they were formed. The galaxies look like bulging footballs and how they were created ...

New Planet in Kepler-51 System Discovered Using James Webb Space Telescope

Dec. 3, 2024 — An unusual planetary system with three known ultra-low density 'super-puff' planets has at least one more planet, according to new ...

Astronomers May Have Discovered the Answer to a Mysterious Stellar Event

Nov. 26, 2024 — Researchers have made a record-breaking astrophysical discovery while simultaneously uncovering a possible explanation for the rare and extreme astrophysical event known as long-period radio ...

Magnetic Tornado Is Stirring Up the Haze at Jupiter's Poles

Nov. 26, 2024 — Dark ovals in Jupiter's polar haze, visible only at UV wavelengths, were first noticed 25 years ago, then ignored. A new study shows that these dark UV ovals are common, appearing at the south ...