Scientists have discovered the strongest evidence yet of a rocky planet with an atmosphere outside the solar system, challenging previous notions that small planets that orbit closely to their stars are unable to sustain a thick blanket of gases. TOI-561 b orbits a 10-billion-year-old star located about 280 light-years from Earth and has a vast […]
Wild New Image Shows a Twin of Our Solar System Being Born
The first-ever baby pictures of a solar system that’s not our own are finally here—and they’re beautiful—and as adorable as space entities can get. In a paper published today in Nature, astronomers presented HOPS-315: a Sun-like protostar cooking up a brew of hot minerals and silicon monoxide gas, located about 1,300 light-years away from Earth. […]
Image Reveals the Most Distant Galaxy Ever Seen, From Just 280 Million Years After the Big Bang
The James Webb Space Telescope’s latest find is yet another record-breaker: the most distant galaxy ever detected, shining just 280 million years after the Big Bang. Named MoM-z14 (cue the “your mama’s so old” jokes), the galaxy was spotted by JWST as part of the Mirage (or Miracle) survey, a program designed to confirm the […]
Scientists Track Methane Clouds Wafting Over Titan’s Lakes for the First Time
Saturn’s most metal moon just got more intriguing. On Titan, clouds of methane unleash a cold, oily rain—very different from the water-based downpours we see on Earth. For the first time, scientists have collected evidence of cloud convection in Titan’s northern hemisphere, observing the moon’s methane clouds shifting over time above its eerie lakes. By […]
The Coldest Planet Ever Seen Is Circling a Stellar Corpse
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have directly detected the faint glow of a planet that’s colder than any world whose light has been directly observed—an astonishing detection that reveals the extreme conditions of some worlds in our universe. The exoplanet, WD 1856+534 b, was first spotted in 2020 and is twice as old […]
Webb Telescope Reveals Astronomers Got It All Wrong About This Dying Planet
Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope just gave a cosmic mystery a serious plot twist. The event in question—a sudden brightening from a star about 12,000 light-years away—was initially chalked up to the star swelling into a red giant and engulfing a nearby planet, a typical tale in some star systems. But not this […]
This Is the First-Ever Image of Neptune’s Auroral Glow
The Webb Space Telescope has given us our first glimpse of Neptune glowing with bright auroras, a visually stunning phenomenon that has long evaded scientists studying the ice giant. Using Webb’s near-infrared spectrograph, astronomers have captured new images of Neptune that finally reveal the planet’s mysterious auroral activity. Faint hints of Neptune’s auroras were first […]
Webb Spots ‘Cosmic Tornado’ in Stunning Detail
Webb has imaged phantasmal billows of bright orange space gas, captured in vibrant detail 630 light-years from Earth. This is the dazzling power of the Webb Space Telescope on full display, revealing the protostellar outflow Herbig Haro 49/50 (or HH 49/50) from the telescope’s perch in space, about one million miles from Earth. Herbig-Haro objects […]
Webb Telescope Captures First Direct Evidence of Carbon Dioxide on an Exoplanet
NASA’s Webb Space Telescope has captured direct images of carbon dioxide in a planet beyond our solar system for the first time. The images feature HR 8799, a multiplanet system 130 light-years from Earth. The discovery not only reveals a chemical compound essential on Earth for processes including photosynthesis and the carbon cycle, but also […]
Are We Inside a Black Hole? Wonky Galaxy Movements Suggest It’s Possible, Physicist Says
One researcher’s analysis of Webb Space Telescope images could indicate that we’re all stuck in a black hole, according to research published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. “The main finding of the study is that the vast majority of the galaxies in the universe, as seen from Earth, rotate in the […]