astrobites

Today we interview Solar System scientist and expert in Rubin Observatory data, Prof. Mario Jurić from the University of Washington, for his Plenary Talk at #AAS248!

Meet Dr. Esra Bulbul: 2025 HEAD Mid-Career Prize winner, X-ray cosmologist, and the scientist mapping galaxy clusters to uncover the nature of dark energy.

Meet Dr. Sanmi Koyejo: Stanford computer scientist, AI researcher, and AAS plenary speaker working to make artificial intelligence a more trustworthy partner in scientific discovery.

GW231123 defies our best models of stellar collapse, hosting two black holes that shouldn't exist. A new paper proposes a radical solution: these monsters may have been born in the early universe as primordial black holes, quietly feeding for billions of years until they became the record-breakers we detected today.

As part of Black Space Week 2026, Astrobites is highlighting members of the Black in Astro community who will be presenting at the 248th AAS meeting starting next week! If you'll be attending, we encourage you to check out the presentation below.

Title: The JWST EXCELS survey: Insights into the nature of quenching at cosmic noonAuthors: Maya Skarbinski, Kate Rowlands, Katherine Alatalo, Vivienne Wild, Adam C. Carnall, Omar Almaini, David Maltby, Thomas de Lisle, Timothy Heckman, Ryan Begley, Fergus Cullen, James S. Dunlop, Guillaume Hewitt, Ho-Hin Leung, Derek McLeod, Ross McLure, Justin Atsushi Otter, Pallavi Patil, Andreea […]

There's a puzzling gap in the distribution of exoplanet sizes. Today's paper explores the role of photoevaporation and core composition on the formation of the radius valley.

Black hole accretion must be SANE or MAD, right? Maybe not...read to learn more!

Are fainter galaxies really different than brighter ones? This study reveals that, despite being dimmer, low surface brightness galaxies obey the same fundamental laws of galaxy formation, offering new clues about how galaxies and dark matter halos evolve.

There's a hard physical limit on spotting a planet next to its blinding star. However, it turns out today's telescopes aren't hitting it. New work maps out exactly how close in we could still detect the faint, Earth-like worlds we want to find the most.

Your humble laptop can only do so much. Here's your beginner's guide to computing clusters!

Today's authors hunt for evidence of a universal IMF using JWST observations of local relic galaxy Boötes I!

Scientists recently conducted a survey to determine the community's consensus on the Universe. The Big Mysteries Survey reveals an interesting insight into what Physics' brightest minds think about its biggest problems . This does not make Physics look weak. It makes physics look human. Perhaps that is the point. The frontier of physics is not a courtroom verdict. It is a living argument.

This post was written by the AAS Education Committee and is cross-posted from the AAS Education Committee Blog. The original post was authored by: Kevin Flaherty (Williams College), Briley Lewis (University of California, Santa Barbara), Emily Rice (CUNY Macaulay Honors College), and Jessica Harris (Jessica A. Harris, LLC). Attending your first conference can be challenging, […]

Today’s bite breaks down the Lomb–Scargle periodogram, a popular tool astronomers use to hunt for periodic signals, and explains how sometimes it fools us into seeing patterns that aren’t really there.

Ultrahigh-energy neutrinos can be our gateway to studying some of the Universe’s most energetic but least understood phenomena. Today’s paper presents a proof-of-concept for a new, promising way to detect these ultrahigh-energy particles.

In today’s beyond post, an anonymous author reflects on why being transgender in astrophysics often feels like something best left unspoken, and what can be done.

If our familiar red neighbor were a stranger light-years away, would we even know what we were looking at?

We pointed JWST at a galaxy magnified 5000 times by the universe–what did we learn by seeing the unseeable?