Astronomy

  1. An illustration of the dwarf planet Quaoar.
    Astronomy

    The Kuiper Belt’s dwarf planet Quaoar hosts an impossible ring

    Quaoar’s ring lies outside the Roche limit, an imaginary line beyond which rings aren’t thought to be stable.

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  2. An illustration of the Kepler-35 system with a planet in the foreground and two stars in the background.
    Astronomy

    Lots of Tatooine-like planets around binary stars may be habitable

    A new simulation suggests that planets orbiting a pair of stars may be plentiful, and many of those worlds could be suitable for life.

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  3. aerial photo of San Francisco at night
    Astronomy

    New data show how quickly light pollution is obscuring the night sky

    Tens of thousands of observations from citizen scientists spanning a decade show that the night sky is getting about 10 percent brighter every year.

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  4. The James Webb Space Telescope’s first image captured three “Green Pea” galaxies in the early universe (circled in green). The galaxies’ light has been stretched by the expansion of the universe, making them appear red.
    Astronomy

    The James Webb telescope found ‘Green Pea’ galaxies in the early universe

    The James Webb telescope spotted tiny “green” galaxies that might have helped trigger a dramatic cosmic makeover more than 13 billion years ago.

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  5. An illustration of an exoplanet passing in front of a star.
    Planetary Science

    Methylated gases could be an unambiguous indicator of alien life

    On Earth, methylated gases are produced by organisms cleaning up their environment — and by little else. The same might be true on some exoplanets.

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  6. A night photo of the Artemis I rocket launching
    Astronomy

    The James Webb Space Telescope wasn’t the only big space news in 2022

    DART crashed into an asteroid, Artemis went to the moon and we got a pic of our galaxy’s monstrous black hole. Space was a busy place this year.

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  7. An illustration of exoplanet GJ 1214b and its star.
    Astronomy

    The James Webb telescope is getting glimpses of small, far-off planets

    Hints of one exoplanet atmosphere’s chemical makeup and the discovery of a planet orbiting another star are two of the telescope’s early successes.

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  8. illustration of a planet spiraling into its star
    Astronomy

    The first planet found by the Kepler space telescope is doomed

    The exoplanet dubbed Kepler 1658b is spiraling toward its host star and will meet a fiery death in less than 3 million years.

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  9. Regions of sky, shown as rectangles, observed by JWST, against a black backdrop
    Astronomy

    How the James Webb telescope’s glances back in time are reshaping cosmology

    The observatory has found dozens of galaxies from less than 550 million years after the Big Bang, suggesting galaxies formed faster than once thought.

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  10. An illustration of a pair of compact stars merging (bright dots in the center) and emitting jets of radiation (green and purple beams)
    Astronomy

    A bizarre gamma-ray burst breaks the rules for these cosmic eruptions

    The 50-second gamma-ray burst is the first that unambiguously breaks the rule that long bursts usually come from supernovas.

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  11. Carina nebula image taken by JWST's NIRCam camera
    Astronomy

    In 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope brought us new views of the cosmos

    Science News looks back at some of the most stunning images from the James Webb telescope’s first year in space.

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  12. a snapshot of a computer simulation of the early universe, showing radiation as blue clouds emanating from dense filaments of stars and galaxies (shown as white specks)
    Astronomy

    A new supercomputer simulation animates the evolution of the universe

    The detailed simulation shows the cosmos changing from a dark, featureless gas to a web of stars and galaxies radiating light.

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