Astronomy

Is the evolution of our nearest planetary neighbor into a nightmarish hellscape typical? If it is, should Earthlings be worried? To find out, astronomers have proposed using the James Webb Space Telescope to look at five exoplanets in the Venus Zone.

Astronomers have reclassified a radio galaxy in the sky after it was found to have redirected a jet of radiation straight towards Earth. This marks the first observation of a reorientation so dramatic that it changes the category a galaxy fits into.

Millions of planets have sides permanently bathed in the light of their star, and sides always cloaked in darkness. Between these two sides lies the "terminator zone," a logical place to search for extraterrestrial life, says a new study.

If you could zoom way out to look at the universe at its largest scale, you’d see that it’s made up of a colossal cosmic web. Now, astronomers have detected shockwaves moving through this web, providing new insights into large-scale magnetic fields.

Astronomers have discovered a bizarre star system containing two ultra-cool dwarf stars that are so close together they orbit each other in less than a day. Oh, and they’re invisible to the human eye.

In September, NASA deliberately crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid to test a potential planetary defense technique. To mark the publication of four scientific papers, NASA has released a video of the impact captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Astronomers have been tracking a mysterious object near the center of the galaxy for decades, and now a new study has shed light on its identity – and its fate in the coming years, when it will be slurped up by the supermassive black hole there.

The James Webb Space Telescope keeps challenging our models of the universe, seeing farther away than ever before. Now it’s discovered “impossibly” gigantic galaxies that contain more mass than was thought to exist in the whole universe at that time.

Astronomers are tracking nearby asteroids, but there’s one glaring blindspot in the sky – the Sun. Thankfully, ESA plans to plug the gap soon with NEOMIR, a mission that will give us advance warning of any Earth-bound rocks from that direction.

A groundbreaking new study could answer a perplexing astrophysics mystery without complicating our current models. Physicists suggest that black holes could contain a strange form of energy that’s accelerating the expansion of the universe.

Astronomers have classified planetary systems into four distinct categories, based on the sizes and arrangements of their planets. As it turns out, the architecture of our own solar system is the rarest kind.

Astronomers have put together one of the most comprehensive maps of all the matter in the universe. The huge undertaking hints at a slightly smoother universe than we thought, suggesting that something might be missing from our models.