astrophysics

Even at this early stage in our space faring age, humanity has already begun sending probes that will eventually reach other solar systems, even if that was not their original intention. Five robotic explorers - Pioneer 10 and 11, Voyager 1 and 2, and New Horizons - are all on escape velocities out of the solar system, and might someday enter another one. They will no longer be operational at tha…

An artistic representation of WASP-94A b, a gas giant in the Microscopium constellation, shows how clouds build on the dark side of the planet and are blown to the dayside, where they dissipate. This leaves the morning edge of the planet, where the winds move from nightside to dayside, permanently overcast. Credit: Hannah Robbins/Johns Hopkins University

James Webb has revealed that the sunrise and sunset sides of WASP-121 b have surprisingly different atmospheres. Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have discovered striking differences between the morning and evening sides of the atmosphere of WASP-121 b, an ultra-hot gas giant located far beyond our solar system. The findings provide the [...]

A team of astronomers has found strong evidence that a star similar to our sun may have eaten one of its own planets. The star, known as TOI-5882, is located about 1,300 light-years from Earth. Researchers discovered that it contains an unusually high amount of lithium, a chemical element that may reveal a dramatic event […] The post Astronomers discover Sun-like star that likely swallowed one of…

"With its unprecedented observational quality, JWST gives us the most detailed glimpses into distant planets to date."

In high school Anna Ho became so fascinated with neuroscience that she wrote to neurologist and author Oliver Sacks, asking whether he needed an intern. A representative for Sacks politely declined, she recalls, but encouraged her to pursue her passions. She did, and it led her on a transformative journey into space science. Ho is now an assistant professor at Cornell University working on astron…

Erini Lambrides was set on becoming an actor when astrophysics cast her onto a more universal stage. Now she’s a research fellow at NASA and the University of Maryland studying supermassive black holes and the phenomenon called Little Red Dots. These dots are pockmarks in images from JWST that seem to indicate the brief—in universal time—period when these black holes were growing. There are so ma…

Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  June 15: Mercury at greatest eastern elongation The Moon passes 3° north of Mercury at 4 P.M. EDT. Looking west again after sunset this evening, the Moon now sits above Mercury, forming a triangle with Mercury and Jupiter.  Half an hour after Continue reading "The Sky Today on Tuesday, June 16: The Moon meets up with Mer…

The European Space Agency (ESA) officially committed to launching the Arrakihs mission to study the faint and invisible galaxy halos.

When stars like our Sun age, they puff up into red giants. Their bubbling outer mass gradually escapes into space, and their remaining cores contract into white dwarfs. Since most stars end their lives this way, the universe is teeming with white dwarfs. A new study from Caltech’s Jim Fuller, professor of theoretical astrophysics, proposes a […] The post A star’s death throes involves a lot of ki…

Our search for technosignatures – clear signs of advanced civilizations beyond Earth – takes many forms. Many are driven by the famous Drake equation, which attempts to estimate how many technological civilizations there are in the Milky Way. However, there’s a big fat question mark at the end of that equation in the form of […] The post The best place to look for alien megastructures might be mo…

Our search for technosignatures - clear signs of advanced civilizations beyond Earth - takes many forms. Many are driven by the famous Drake equation, which attempts to estimate how many technological civilizations there are in the Milky Way. However, there’s a big fat question mark at the end of that equation in the form of a variable intended to account for the “longevity” of a civilization. An…

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying 24 Starlink satellites lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Monday, June 15, 2026.

Meet Dr. Carolyn Kierans: 2025 HEAD Early Career Prize winner and the astrophysicist chasing the antimatter at the center of our galaxy.

The aftermath of a supernova, a stellar explosion, is usually a slowly fading cloud of hot gas. So when astronomers pointed NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory at the nearby galaxy Messier 83 (M83), they did not expect to find a population of supernova remnants, or the debris from these explosions, showing dramatic changes in their brightness. […]

This guest post was written by Aylin Garcia Soto, a graduating Ph.D. student from Dartmouth University studying M dwarf variability. She will start a postdoc at Boise State University working with Dr. Brian Jackson on tidal decay in exostellar systems. Outside of research, she enjoys reading, watching K dramas (and other dramas), playing guitar, and […]

Everything but Exoplanets: The Transformative General Astrophysics of the Habitable Worlds Observatory. Monday, June 15th, 10:00am -11:30am PT The post TODAY COR at AAS 248 | Everything but Exoplanets appeared first on NASA Science .

Astronomers have directly detected the neutral gas that fueled star formation in some of the universe’s earliest galaxies, marking a major step toward understanding cosmic origins.

NASA's Chandra X-ray spacecraft has detected the supernova wreckage of a dead star that erupted 1,700 years ago and ejected debris at 2 million miles per hour.

Nature Astronomy, Published online: 15 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41550-026-02841-6 By counting single atoms of 60Fe (which have a supernova origin), 244Pu and 247Cm (both formed via the r-process and independent of regular supernovae) in a deep-sea crust, the last actinide-producing r-process event near Earth is found to have occurred >100 Myr ago.