No GroundDiscoveries
Findings that change how we see Earth, space, and ourselves.
Euclid Just Mapped 900 Million Galaxies
ESA’s Euclid space telescope released its first big batch of survey data: about 1,900 square degrees of sky, more than 900 million galaxies, and 15,000 cosmic lenses. It is only 14% of the job.
A Planet Vanished While Astronomers Were Watching
For seven years, NASA’s TESS watched a giant planet cross its star. Then the crossings stopped. A hidden neighbor is tilting its orbit, and it may not line up again for 30 to 50 years.
Some Stars Don’t Explode. They Just Vanish.
A new study of 257 black hole collisions suggests many giant stars may die without a supernova, collapsing quietly into black holes and leaving only a dark patch of sky.
Three Pale Rocks on Mars Glowed Like Rubies
Perseverance’s laser found tiny grains of corundum, the mineral behind rubies and sapphires, on the rim of Jezero Crater. Mars lacks the geology that usually makes it.
This Star Keeps Faking Its Own Death. Now We Know Why.
Every 113 days, a giant star in another galaxy flares up like a supernova and survives. NASA’s Chandra has found what sets it off: a black hole or neutron star on an oval orbit around it.
Hera’s First Close-Up of Didymos Shows the Side DART Never Saw
Hera photographed the 780-meter asteroid from about 60 km away, revealing boulders, craters and grooves on the side DART never saw.
A Giant Planet Was Hiding in Old Webb Images
FLIP recovered giant exoplanet 51 Eridani b in existing JWST images at 4.3 microns — the first detection at that wavelength — and boosted sensitivity by up to 15 times.
Astronomers find the first known green star
WD J1330+6435 would glow chartreuse green up close: sodium from swallowed rocky debris absorbs its orange light.
Webb finds the home of the most distant fast radio burst
A radio flash from 3 billion years after the Big Bang came from a tiny, young galaxy. The clue points to magnetars.
Saturn was at its best in early October
After Oct. 4 opposition: closest and brightest for 2026, up all night, rings opening again.
Webb peels open a stellar nursery in Cepheus
Gold hot atomic hydrogen on one side, red protostar shocks on the other — Webb’s new NIRCam portrait of NGC 7129.
A star is slowly eating a brown dwarf
Every 87 minutes, a strange triangle of light: a red dwarf feeding on a brown dwarf in an orbit that could fit inside the Sun. A first — and it could last billions of years.
A planet candidate risen from a dead star’s ashes
Hubble’s cold case on white dwarf HS 0209+0832 points to a suspected second-generation gas giant. Strong evidence — still a candidate.
Curiosity found Mars’s longest organic molecules yet
Decane, undecane, and dodecane in Cumberland mudstone may be fatty-acid fragments. Origin still unknown — not a life detection.
Webb finds dust from planet-shattering collisions
A rare class of warm dusty disks around young stars carries silica clues to Mars-sized smashups — the kind that may have made our Moon — and quieter Moon-sized grazes.
One star died. Earth will see it more than once.
On orbit 200,000, Hubble watched a galaxy cluster that can show the same star explosion more than once. Supernova Athena should reappear by early March 2027.
Webb finds brown dwarfs barely heavier than Jupiter
A huge NIRCam panorama of IC 348, 1,000 light-years away, frames brown dwarfs with mass estimates near two Jupiters — and jets from newborn stars.
First direct radio signal from an exoplanet
MeerKAT localized auroral radio bursts to Beta Pictoris b — the first unambiguous radio detection from an exoplanet rather than its host star. Preprint awaiting peer review.
Hubble tracks a new 10-sided storm on Saturn
Hubble’s OPAL images reveal a strengthening decagon wave near Saturn’s south pole — the first large regular-sided jet pattern seen in the southern hemisphere.
ESA’s Smile begins science operations
Smile is approved for science ops. UVI captured the full northern aurora ring in UV — the first since 2008.
The strange star that looks like a shrimp
In Cassiopeia, a white-dwarf remnant races through gas and piles it into a glowing bow shock — the Shrimp Nebula.
Earth from space: how small we really are
One pale sphere. No borders. A thin blue shell holding every person you have ever known.
What a black hole means for everyday life
They sound like science fiction. Their gravity shaped the galaxies we call home — including ours.