Space telescopes as a research area encompass the scientific and technical study, design, deployment, and utilization of astronomical observatories operating above Earth’s atmosphere to access wide spectral ranges (e.g., ultraviolet, X-ray, gamma-ray, infrared) and achieve high-precision photometry, spectroscopy, and imaging. The field addresses orbital dynamics, thermal and structural stability, detector and optics optimization, contamination control, and data calibration pipelines. Research includes mission architecture, survey strategies, multi-messenger and time-domain coordination, and methodologies for extracting cosmological, stellar, and planetary parameters from space-based observations, as well as technology development for next-generation observatories and constellations.
In the past decade, the European Space Agency's Gaia space telescope has revealed the nature, history, and behavior of billions of stars. Our pioneering stargazer has reshaped our view of the skies around us like no other, ...
Astronomy
Aug 26, 2025
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Scientists have devised a new method for mapping the spottiness of distant stars by using observations from NASA missions of orbiting planets crossing their stars' faces. The model builds on a technique researchers have used ...
Planetary Sciences
Aug 25, 2025
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As missions like Kepler and TESS discovered more rocky exoplanets in recent years, scientists looked forward to the launch of the JWST. The powerful space telescope has the ability to gather infrared spectra of exoplanet ...
Astronomy
Aug 22, 2025
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76
An international research team has reported remarkable findings from an XRISM observation of the black hole X-ray binary 4U 1630–472, located in our galaxy. XRISM is an X-ray astronomy satellite developed by Japan in collaboration ...
Astronomy
Aug 20, 2025
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65
Using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, a team led by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has identified a previously unknown moon orbiting Uranus, expanding the planet's known satellite family to 29. The detection was ...
Planetary Sciences
Aug 19, 2025
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113
Compact, reflective, easy-to-manufacture mirrors are a critical component for advancing astronomical technology in space. Mirrors are a key component in most telescopes, though they are notoriously hard to manufacture with ...
Astronomy
Aug 19, 2025
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47
Using NASA's Chandra and ESA's XMM-Newton space observatories, Indian astronomers have explored the population of ultraluminous X-ray sources in the galaxy NGC 5813, which resulted in the detection of a new source of this ...
In a new study, scientists at the University of Missouri looked deep into the universe and found something unexpected. Using infrared images taken from NASA's powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), they identified 300 ...
Astronomy
Aug 12, 2025
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413
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image captures incredible details in the dusty clouds of a star-forming factory called the Tarantula Nebula. Most of the nebulae Hubble images are in our galaxy, but this nebula is in ...
Astronomy
Aug 11, 2025
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52
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have observed 3I/ATLAS, only the third known object from outside our solar system to visit our neighborhood. This interstellar interloper is putting on quite a show as it approaches ...
Astronomy
Aug 11, 2025
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