Category Astronomy/Space

Thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers racing to find some of the earliest galaxies ever glimpsed have now confirmed that a galaxy first detected last summer is in fact among the earliest ever found. The findings are published in the journal Nature.

Follow-up observations since first detection of Maisie’s galaxy have revealed that it is from 390 million years after the Big Bang...

The search for exoplanets—planets that orbit stars located beyond the borders of our solar system—is a hot topic in astrophysics. Of the various types of exoplanets, one is hot in the literal sense: hot Jupiters, a class of exoplanets that are physically similar to the gas giant planet Jupiter from our own neighborhood.

Unlike “our” Jupiter, hot Jupiters orbit very close to their stars, complete a full orbit in just a few days or even hours, and—as their name suggests—have extremely high surface temperatures. They hold great fascination for the astrophysics community...

Megastorms leave marks on Saturn’s atmosphere for centuries. They regularly appear on Saturn, marring the relatively bland surface before disappearing. But radio observations show that the storms have long-lasting effects deeper in the atmosphere, in particular in the distribution of ammonia...

An extreme star system is giving new meaning to the phrase “surf’s up.”

The star system intrigued researchers because it is the most dramatic “heartbeat star” on record. Now new models have revealed that titanic waves, generated by tides, are repeatedly breaking on one of the stars in the system—the first time this phenomenon has ever been seen on a star.

Heartbeat stars are stars in close pairs that periodically pulse in brightness, like the rhythm of a beating heart on an EKG machine. The stars in heartbeat systems loop through elongated oval orbits. Whenever they swing close together, the stars’ gravities generate tides—just as the Moon creates ocean tides on Earth...