Space

Nov 4th, 2025 - Astronomers have recently achieved a landmark feat: For the first time, they have captured an image of two black holes locked in orbit around each other . The discovery, led by Mauri Valtonen of the University of Turku in Finland, was published on October 9, 2025, in ) have long existed, this is the first time we have clearly seen two such titanic objects orbiting each other. The result strengthens our understanding of how black holes grow and merge, and it could even provide new observational ... [Read More]

Nov 4th, 2025 - Nov. 4 (UPI) -- Scientists have discovered a supermassive black hole flare, the largest seen in the universe, and it may be making a meal of an enormous star. The flare is 30 times more powerful than the previous most powerful active galactic nuclei transient, according to a study published in the journal Nature Astronomy. "Very few physical events in the Universe can liberate this much electromagnetic energy," researchers wrote in the study. While most stars eventually explode into supernovae ... [Read More]

Nov 4th, 2025 - It's quick and easy to access Live Science Plus, simply enter your email below. We'll send you a confirmation and sign you up for our daily newsletter, keeping you up to date with the latest science news. Recent observations of the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS show that it has developed a faint blueish hue, hinting at a potential color change. This is the third time experts have seen the comet's coloring shift since it was discovered. Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS may be developing a blueish hue ... [Read More]

Nov 4th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Astronomers stitched together a radio color map of the Milky Way that targets the southern stretch of its crowded midline. It captures low frequency structure across about 3,800 square degrees with crisp detail. The work comes out of Western Australia, where an international team processed mountains of data from the Murchison Widefield Array ( MWA ). They turned it into a public image and a matched catalog for scientists, students, and the simply curious. Radio color map ... [Read More]

Nov 4th, 2025 - After Christmas dinner in 2021, our family was glued to the television, watching the nail-biting launch of NASA's US$10 billion (AU$15 billion) James Webb Space Telescope. There had not been such a leap forward in telescope technology since Hubble was launched in 1990. En route to its deployment, Webb had to successfully navigate 344 potential points of failure . Thankfully, the launch went better than expected , and we could finally breathe again. Six months later, Webb's first images were ... [Read More]

Nov 4th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Astronomers have, for the first time, mapped magnetic fields inside a planet-forming disk and seen how those invisible forces shape the gas and dust into distinct patterns. The new study reveals a magnetic field about 10 milligauss in strength, gently guiding material around the young star TW Hydrae. The observations came from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array ( ALMA ) in Chile, a network of high-precision radio antennas that captures faint signals from ... [Read More]

Nov 4th, 2025 - SETI's 'Noah's Ark' – a space historian explores how the advent of radio astronomy led to the USSR's search for extraterrestrial life As humans began to explore outer space in the latter half of the 20th century, radio waves proved a powerful tool . Scientists could send out radio waves to communicate with satellites, rockets and other spacecraft, and use radio telescopes to take in radio waves emitted by objects throughout the universe. However, sometimes radio telescopes would pick up ... [Read More]

Nov 3rd, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google For the first time, scientists have created a 3D temperature map of a planet outside of our solar system. The exoplanet, WASP-18b, is a massive gas giant that whips around its star in less than a day. The planet is nearly 10 times the mass of Jupiter and so intensely hot that it can rip water vapor molecules apart. The new map doesn't just show where the heat is – it shows how temperature changes in every direction: north to south, east to west, and top to bottom. ... [Read More]

Nov 3rd, 2025 - The very first generation of stars, called Population III stars, are mostly expected to be too distant to see directly – but astronomers may have found some for the very first time We may have finally seen the first generation of stars. Astronomers have been looking for these primordial behemoths, called Population III stars, for decades. Now they have found what may be the most promising candidate yet. are expected to be very different from modern, or Population I, stars. They would have ... [Read More]

Nov 3rd, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google An international team of astronomers has witnessed a dramatic, multi-layered burst of magnetized plasma from EK Draconis, a young star often seen as a twin of our early Sun. The hottest material raced at up to 550 kilometers per second, tracked by Hubble and synchronized telescopes in Japan and Korea. Solar storms shape planets Kosuke Namekata of Kyoto University led the coordinated observing campaign using both space- and ground-based telescopes. Coronal mass ejections ... [Read More]

Nov 2nd, 2025 - It's quick and easy to access Live Science Plus, simply enter your email below. We'll send you a confirmation and sign you up for our daily newsletter, keeping you up to date with the latest science news. Quick facts What it is: M82, an edge-on spiral starburst galaxy Where it is: 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major When it was shared: Oct. 23, 2025 If you own a small backyard telescope , there's a good chance you've seen the Cigar Galaxy (M82) with your own eyes. Not ... [Read More]

Nov 1st, 2025 - Mercury switches from the evening to morning sky this month, while the giant planets dominate the night. The moons of Jupiter and Saturn offer many events. Venus stars on early November mornings, but drops lower day by day.  Mercury shines at magnitude –0.1 on Nov. 1 and hangs low in the southwest after sunset. It lies in Scorpius and makes a nice addition to the claws of the Scorpion on that date, 1° from 2nd-magnitude Delta (δ) Scorpii. The pair is 4° high in the ... [Read More]

Nov 1st, 2025 - An award-winning reporter writing about stargazing and the night sky. Each month, I pick out North America's celestial highlights for the weeks ahead (which also apply to mid-northern latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere). for more in-depth articles on stargazing, astronomy, eclipses and more. November 2025 offers stargazers plenty of drama — from bright "fireballs" and a once-in-a-lifetime comet to the biggest superman since 2019. There's also the return of iconic winter constellations ... [Read More]

Oct 31st, 2025 - It's quick and easy to access Live Science Plus, simply enter your email below. We'll send you a confirmation and sign you up for our daily newsletter, keeping you up to date with the latest science news. The James Webb Space Telescope ( JWST ) is celebrating Halloween with a stunning image showing never-before-seen details of the Red Spider Nebula. The image, snapped by JWST's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), shows dust and gas being shed by a dying star to form a planetary nebula , its ... [Read More]

Oct 31st, 2025 - Reading time: Reading time 3 minutes Every fall, Earth passes through the stream of debris shed by Comet Encke, showering our planet with beautiful fireballs that streak across the night shy. And every few years or so, these Halloween fireballs can become particularly spooky, as Earth encounters denser, pebble-sized fragments of the comet, creating a brighter, more colorful meteor shower. This annual sky-gazing spectacle, however, could in the coming years pose a danger to Earth if larger ... [Read More]

Oct 31st, 2025 - Galaxies are spooky places. Space itself is scary enough—dark, vast, cold and empty—but galaxies have all manner of terrifying beasts lurking inside. Most of these astrophysical monsters are stars with various behavioral issues, such as explosive supernovae or ridiculously powerful ( and tempestuous ) magnetars. Getting too close to one of these stellar tantrums guarantees a very bad time. On top of that, galaxies themselves can be terrifying. In a recent The Universe column , I ... [Read More]