https://phys.org/space-news/astronomy/ en-us The latest science news on astronomy, space, and astrophysics. Astronomers have confirmed that one of the fastest-changing stars ever observed has entered a new stage of its evolution, offering a rare opportunity to watch a star's life unfold on human timescales. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-born-star-rare-chance-stellar.html Astronomy Wed, 16 Sep 2026 05:00:09 EDT news708680821 This starry view of the nearby star-forming region IC 348 is one of the largest images released to date from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. Using Webb, astronomers searched IC 348 for brown dwarfs, which are less massive than the smallest stars. The researchers discovered brown dwarfs just twice the mass of Jupiter, bringing the study of these curious objects into a new mass range and revealing new insights about the star-formation process. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-webb-reveals-dynamic-panorama-star.html Astronomy Tue, 15 Sep 2026 17:20:01 EDT news708697684 The sun is the reason life exists on our small, blue planet. It provides solar radiation that warms the planet and ignites intricate biochemical processes like photosynthesis, producing oxygen for life to breathe. However, while the sun is known for giving life, it can also take it away with solar flares, geomagnetic storms and solar radiation storms, collectively referred to as space weather. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-cubesat-instrument-solar-storm-10x.html Astronomy Tue, 15 Sep 2026 13:20:13 EDT news708696369 Astronomers have found that a nearby galaxy's black hole is blasting out a far more powerful and hidden gas outflow than previously realized. Studying NGC 1068, a well-known galaxy with an actively feeding black hole at its center, researchers combined new infrared observations with existing data to map how the black hole's energy is reshaping the surrounding gas. The results are reported in a paper published Aug. 6 in Astronomy & Astrophysics. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-famous-galaxy-black-hole-violent.html Astronomy Tue, 15 Sep 2026 07:20:01 EDT news707994714 When JWST's first science results started rolling in, it was a triumph for scientific vision and persistence. For years, the fate of the powerful space telescope was uncertain. It went way over budget, and for 25 years, troubling conversations accompanied its ongoing development. Several times, it seemed like it would be canceled, and in 2011, Congress came close to ending the program. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-dense-galaxies-early-universe.html Astronomy Mon, 14 Sep 2026 21:40:01 EDT news708611502 A new study of nine nearby galaxies has shown that actively growing supermassive black holes may contribute to, rather than prevent, star formation in their host galaxies. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-black-holes-reveal-star-nearby.html Astronomy Mon, 14 Sep 2026 16:20:10 EDT news708613982 Every second, particles zip through your body at nearly the speed of light. They rain down from a storm high in the sky, where cosmic rays, a powerful type of interstellar matter, constantly strike atoms in Earth's atmosphere. The impacts break them apart into a shower of particles that rain to the ground. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-physicists-birth-cosmic-rainstorms-cern.html Astronomy Mon, 14 Sep 2026 11:00:04 EDT news708599702 Astronomers have identified a peculiar radio transient in the Milky Way that has remained active for more than two decades, defying the behavior expected of known classes of galactic radio sources. The paper posted to the arXiv preprint server on Aug. 21 discusses the rare event that may have caused this bizarre radio emission. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-bizarre-galactic-radio-source-decades.html Astronomy Mon, 14 Sep 2026 08:00:05 EDT news707992863 A distant star has captured astronomers' attention over the past decade, teasing them with indications that it will soon explode as a supernova. But new research shows that something else entirely is behind the star's outbursts. Rather than an impending catastrophic explosion, a previously unseen companion may be responsible for the star's behavior. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-astronomers-unmask-supernova-impostor.html Astronomy Sun, 13 Sep 2026 17:00:03 EDT news708248428 Black holes are regions of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. When two black holes orbit each other and merge, they produce gravitational waves (i.e., ripples in spacetime) that can resemble those emitted by mergers involving other exotic compact objects. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-gravitational-analysis-narrows-black-hole.html Astronomy Sun, 13 Sep 2026 10:40:01 EDT news708084493 An international team, including researchers from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, has reached a major milestone in "precision cosmology" by measuring the amount of helium created in the universe's first five minutes with unprecedented accuracy. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-key-early-universe-precision.html Astronomy Sun, 13 Sep 2026 08:00:01 EDT news708186473 A new study suggests that the young stars orbiting the Milky Way's central black hole may have a surprisingly ordinary origin. But the black hole's influence may be what makes their origin look more exotic than it really is. Along with shaping their orbits, it may also destroy their stellar companions. The paper outlining this work was published in Astronomy & Astrophysics on Aug. 11. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-stars-galaxy-black-hole-companions.html Astronomy Sat, 12 Sep 2026 08:40:01 EDT news707989133 The COSMOS field, or Cosmic Evolution Survey Deep Field, is one of the most famous patches of the universe observed by astronomers. Located in the constellation Sextans, this region was photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in segments from 2003 to 2005 using its Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). With support from ground-based and other space-based telescopes, the resulting images were then stitched together to create a stunning picture of cosmic evolution. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-rubin-observatory-peers-deep-famous.html Astronomy Sat, 12 Sep 2026 08:00:08 EDT news708097543 As our telescopes have improved and we've been able to peer farther back in time, we've begun finding more fascinating features of the universe. But one thing we haven't found for sure is Population III (Pop III) stars. These were the earliest stars in the universe, formed completely from pristine hydrogen and helium, with no "metals" (i.e., elements heavier than those two) polluting their processes. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-big-universe-starbursts.html Astronomy Fri, 11 Sep 2026 19:20:01 EDT news708346759 The eROSITA (extended ROentgen Survey with an Imaging Telescope Array) telescope, the primary instrument aboard the Russian-German Spektr-RG space observatory, was developed by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) and collaborators to study the soft X-ray night sky. The mission launched in 2019 and has delivered deep, sharp images over very large areas of the sky to map the high-energy universe. This past summer, the German eROSITA Consortium made its second data release (DR2), the most comprehensive catalog of the X-ray universe ever released. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-erosita-comprehensive-high-energy-census.html Astronomy Fri, 11 Sep 2026 09:00:08 EDT news708330121 On a mostly flat plain an hour north of Stockholm lies a collection of large burial mounds dating from an ancient culture at least 2,500 years old. These people were not Vikings; they were northern Germanic Goths, pagan polytheists worshiping the precursors of Odin, Freyr and Thor. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-ancient-swedish-goths-accurate-calendars.html Astronomy Thu, 10 Sep 2026 16:20:06 EDT news708271681 For years, scientists have relied primarily on radio imaging from techniques like very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) to study jets from the active galactic nuclei of supermassive black holes. This allows for the detection of broad, unresolved features, called components, moving at what appear to be faster-than-light speeds. However, traditional imaging has poor resolution and treats each observation as a separate snapshot in time, limiting information about how the features move. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-video-black-hole-radio-theory.html Astronomy Thu, 10 Sep 2026 12:50:01 EDT news708258036 Astronomers have taken one of the deepest looks yet at Cloud-9, a candidate "dark galaxy," and found no trace of stars. The paper outlining this discovery was posted to the arXiv preprint server on Aug. 21. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-galaxy-stars-cloud-case.html Astronomy Thu, 10 Sep 2026 08:00:01 EDT news707749021 An international team led by researchers from the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil has developed an innovative method to identify stars that have consumed the planets around them. The technique detects variations in the abundance of beryllium, a relatively rare chemical element, and could open a new window into studying the evolution of planetary systems. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-beryllium-stars-swallowed-rocky-planets.html Astronomy Wed, 09 Sep 2026 17:30:01 EDT news708191461 Using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, scientists have discovered a new class of objects behaving unlike any they have seen before. Astronomers suggest these newly spotted objects in other galaxies may help solve not one, but two long-standing questions in astrophysics. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-chandra-uncovers-hypersoft-ray-sources.html Astronomy Wed, 09 Sep 2026 17:20:09 EDT news708182461 Love it or hate it, artificial intelligence is likely here to stay. Its ravenous need for computational power has overwhelmed chip manufacturers and power companies alike. While our current AI obsession is likely a bubble ready to burst, we won't simply stop using computers. Since their first invention, computers have continued to grow more powerful, and our civilization has grown ever more dependent on them. Computation defines our civilization. Perhaps computational power is what defines any advanced civilization. If that's the case, then the most advanced civilizations in the universe would push computing to its most powerful and efficient state. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-alien-civilizations-hyper-efficient-distinct.html Astronomy Wed, 09 Sep 2026 17:20:04 EDT news708177631 Toward the end of their lives, low-mass stars undergo an abrupt dip in brightness, also known as the luminosity bump. While the endpoint of this bump is well understood, its onset has remained elusive. Now, in a paper published by The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Saskia Hekker, leader of the Theory and Observations of Stars group at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS), finds that entropy is the key driver of the bump. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-discontinuity-disorder-luminosity-evolved-stars.html Astronomy Wed, 09 Sep 2026 15:00:01 EDT news708172681 New observations of the composition of distant galaxies offer insights into the earliest phases of the universe and confirm decades of scientific understanding of the elements and particles produced by the Big Bang, according to a new study. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-helium-conditions-seconds-big.html Astronomy Wed, 09 Sep 2026 14:40:03 EDT news708172561 A few hundred million years after the Big Bang, the first stars ignited—literally the "let there be light" moment for the universe. Now known to astronomers as Population III, or Pop III, stars, these giants were very different from the stars we know today. They formed from pristine hydrogen and helium, with almost no "metal" (i.e., other elements) holding them back. They were also huge, growing to tens to hundreds of times larger than the sun. And they died young, in many cases collapsing into the universe's earliest black holes. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-gen-gravitational-detectors-black-holes.html Astronomy Wed, 09 Sep 2026 11:00:11 EDT news708159902 Astronomers have found the first direct evidence that a wandering black hole can feed itself by dragging gas along in its wake as it moves through its galaxy. It's the first direct evidence of an accretion channel long predicted in theory but never before observed. The paper describing this discovery was posted to the arXiv preprint server on Aug. 11. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-black-hole-caught.html Astronomy Wed, 09 Sep 2026 07:30:02 EDT news706964431 Nearly every galaxy has a supermassive black hole. The few that don't have had theirs ejected during a galactic collision. That's because galaxies and their black holes have formed hand in hand. There is still some debate as to whether galaxies formed around the seeds of supermassive black holes or the other way around, but there is plenty of evidence to support the idea that the two evolve together. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-black-holes-faster-galaxies.html Astronomy Tue, 08 Sep 2026 20:40:01 EDT news708097594 An international team of astronomers has discovered the most distant progenitor to a galaxy supercluster ever. The discovery supports existing theories of how galaxy clusters evolve and reveals how they are connected to the larger cosmic web. The study relies largely on data from the ODIN survey, conducted with the U.S. Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera on the U.S. National Science Foundation Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope in Chile. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-extremely-massive-galaxy-proto-supercluster.html Astronomy Tue, 08 Sep 2026 18:00:03 EDT news708101641 Intense, brief flashes of radio light called fast radio bursts (FRBs) travel across billions of light-years to reach Earth, passing through a fog of matter along the way. The bursts' origins are unclear but may originate from highly magnetized dead stars called magnetars. The denser the fog through which FRBs travel, the more dispersed their signals become—similar to the way a prism splits white light into a rainbow of colors. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-fast-radio-disentangle-galactic-feedback.html Astronomy Tue, 08 Sep 2026 16:00:10 EDT news708093601 Active black holes are easy to detect. Their superheated accretion disks emit bright X-rays, and the jets streaming from their poles are easily seen at visible and radio wavelengths. But most stellar-mass black holes are inactive. They either drift through the galaxy alone or orbit a companion star without consuming its material. We can't observe inactive black holes directly. We can only observe their effects on nearby objects. We currently know of three such black holes thanks to the Gaia spacecraft. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-quiet-black-holes-stellar-companion.html Astronomy Tue, 08 Sep 2026 12:20:01 EDT news708080516 For the first time, scientists used the combined power of NASA's Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes to study some of the most far-flung bodies in our solar system, trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). Some are the smallest and faintest ever directly seen. The researchers unexpectedly found fewer small TNOs than expected and that the colors of these bodies followed the same relationships as those of their larger family members. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-hubble-webb-solar.html Astronomy Tue, 08 Sep 2026 12:05:13 EDT news708087880