https://phys.org/ en-us Latest news from Astrophysical Journal 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 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 Astronomers have detected extreme, never-before-seen behavior from a rare kind of pulsar and stumbled on a surprising link to one of astronomy's biggest current mysteries. Using 174 hours of radio observations, researchers detected PSR J1227-4853, a rapidly spinning neutron star known as a "transitional millisecond pulsar," which unleashes hundreds of ultrashort, ultrapowerful "giant pulses." Their paper was published in The Astrophysical Journal on July 31. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-rare-pulsar-unleashes-giant-pulses.html Astronomy Mon, 07 Sep 2026 09:50:01 EDT news707042987 Star formation in galaxies is closely linked to molecular gas. In the distant past, when galaxy interactions were more common, these encounters compressed molecular gas, causing dense clouds to collapse under their own gravity and form new stars. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-turbulent-star-formation-stephan-quintet.html Astronomy Fri, 04 Sep 2026 13:40:04 EDT news707739181 A Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) study of data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Solar Orbiter gives the most detailed view of the heliospheric current sheet (HCS) to date. The HCS is a sprawling, undulating surface emanating from the sun to beyond the solar system that serves as the boundary between the sun's north and south magnetic field hemispheres. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-solar-orbiter-ion-magnetic-boundary.html Astronomy Mon, 31 Aug 2026 12:40:04 EDT news707393821 Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have identified one of the most distant exploding stars ever confirmed. The supernova, SN 2023aeaf, was found at a redshift of 3.195—so far away that its light has been traveling for roughly 11.7 billion years. The study, published in The Astrophysical Journal on Aug. 13, offers a close-up look at how massive stars die in the young universe's primitive, metal-poor conditions. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-jwst-reveals-ii-supernova-universe.html Astronomy Mon, 31 Aug 2026 10:50:01 EDT news707389473 Astronomers may have finally solved the mystery behind a nearly two-decade-old cosmic explosion that seemed to break the rules of physics. The energy output of a powerful gamma-ray burst, GRB 061201, discovered in 2006, did not match well-established patterns seen in other similar explosions. Now, in a new study published in the Astrophysical Journal on Aug. 3, astronomers have revealed why. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-jwst-year-mystery-gamma-ray.html Astronomy Mon, 31 Aug 2026 07:30:01 EDT news707128089 In dark skies at night, distant starlight twinkles and speaks to vast cosmic histories almost as old as time itself. New data from instruments such as NASA's James Webb Space Telescope are helping astrophysicists probe deep cosmic mysteries, including the evolution of black holes and galaxies. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-astrid-billion-years-black-hole.html Astronomy Thu, 27 Aug 2026 17:10:01 EDT news707067781 Most of the stars in our Milky Way galaxy sit neatly on a flat plane. But the space around our galaxy is much more chaotic. Rogue bands of stars called "stellar streams" orbit the Milky Way much like planets in our solar system orbit the sun. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-milky-gravity-mimic-dark-clues.html Astronomy Thu, 27 Aug 2026 17:00:01 EDT news707063221 At the center of most galaxies lies a supermassive black hole, with a mass millions to billions of times that of our sun and some of the most extreme gravity in the universe. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-stellar-black-hole-flares-dimmer.html Astronomy Fri, 21 Aug 2026 12:00:01 EDT news706527070 A popular myth about black holes is that they act like giant cosmic vacuum cleaners, sucking in everything around them. But Wladimir Lyra's research found a new mechanism around supermassive black holes that is more like a cosmic nursery, giving birth to planets more massive than Jupiter. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-supermassive-black-holes-massive-planets.html Astronomy Thu, 13 Aug 2026 09:11:08 EDT news705831033 For more than two decades, the quasar PHL 1811 has been considered the prototype of a rare class of "intrinsically X-ray weak" quasars, thought to produce unusually little X-ray radiation. But in 2024, the Einstein Probe spacecraft caught the object in a bright X-ray flare. In a new study, astronomers combined that observation with more than 20 years of archival data to revisit the mystery. The findings were published in The Astrophysical Journal on July 28. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-famous-oddball-quasar-isnt-ray.html Astronomy Wed, 12 Aug 2026 12:40:01 EDT news705745952 Like a collage made of layered sheets of colored cellophane, a vibrant new image layers observations of a famous star-forming nebula from NASA's space telescopes. The resulting cosmic "craft" reveals new details about the star-forming region known as 30 Doradus, or the Tarantula Nebula. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-energy-loss-routes-tarantula-nebula.html Astronomy Tue, 11 Aug 2026 16:50:01 EDT news705681362 On Mother's Day weekend in May 2024, Earth experienced its most powerful geomagnetic storm in two decades, spawning auroras—the ribbony bands of light in the nighttime skies in the Northern and Southern hemispheres—that may have been among the strongest displays on record in the past 500 years. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-physicists-solar-outbursts-historic-mother.html Astronomy Fri, 07 Aug 2026 09:00:04 EDT news705227342 Astronomers have found evidence that one of the most massive white dwarfs known has an oxygen-neon core instead of the more common carbon-oxygen core. The finding is important because the composition of a white dwarf's core determines how it will evolve. A paper outlining this discovery was published in The Astrophysical Journal. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-ultramassive-white-dwarf-earth-size.html Astronomy Fri, 07 Aug 2026 08:00:01 EDT news705228617 Astronomers have speculated about the mysterious "little red dots" seen through the James Webb Space Telescope's images of the early universe: They could be galaxies, black holes, quasi-stars, starbursts ... or something else entirely. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-red-dots-pulsating-monster-stars.html Astronomy Wed, 05 Aug 2026 14:40:01 EDT news705151083 Since their discovery by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope in 2022, little red dots (LRDs) have been the subject of great interest to astronomers. Understanding the nature of these extremely distant, compact red sources has been a puzzling scientific endeavor. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-red-dots-temporary-black-hole.html Astronomy Wed, 29 Jul 2026 15:10:01 EDT news704551076 A new study using data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope finds that star formation in the nearby Andromeda galaxy has undergone a 500-million-year decline, with an even steeper drop in the last 40 million years. Andromeda, a spiral galaxy comparable in size to our Milky Way, is close enough to be seen with the unaided eye from areas with dark skies. Located about 2.5 million light-years from Earth—practically our cosmic backyard—Andromeda offers an opportunity for astronomers to examine its stellar populations in detail, leading to a better understanding of the past of galaxies like our own. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-hubble-star-formation-andromeda-galaxy.html Astronomy Mon, 27 Jul 2026 17:20:09 EDT news704382061 "Dead stars" known as white dwarfs have already shown the potential to help us better understand how planetary systems, including our own solar system, take shape and evolve. Now, research from the University of Michigan and the University of Colorado Boulder suggests that potential could be even greater than anticipated. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-dead-stars-healthy-appetites.html Astronomy Mon, 27 Jul 2026 15:40:03 EDT news704380621 Quasars, distant cores of galaxies powered by supermassive black holes, are among the most luminous objects in the universe. While not uncommon, their brightness can make it difficult to accurately measure the galaxies they reside in. This means scientists must use gravitational lensing to assist in analyzing these bright objects, a method that relies on studying how an object's strong gravity bends light around its host galaxy. Yet despite their own powerful gravity, quasars that can act as lenses are rare. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-quasar-lenses-emerge-ai-scan.html Astronomy Mon, 27 Jul 2026 15:20:07 EDT news704377501 The Whirlpool galaxy (M51) is a classic grand spiral galaxy. It was the first object identified as a spiral, way back in 1845. At the time, it and other galaxies were considered spiral nebulae, since astronomers didn't know other galaxies existed. Edwin Hubble finally proved that there were other galaxies in the early 1920s. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-astronomers-galaxy-spiral-arms.html Astronomy Wed, 22 Jul 2026 10:20:01 EDT news703930263 Cosmic rays are made primarily of protons with a few electrons sprinkled in, and they can reach energies even higher than what human-made accelerators can produce. Considering human-made accelerators, such as the Large Hadron Collider on the border of Switzerland and France, can move protons to near the speed of light, it's no wonder that these super-energetic particles can influence cosmic events across the galaxy. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-source-extremely-high-energy-particles.html Astronomy Fri, 17 Jul 2026 11:00:02 EDT news703496913 How do black holes at the centers of galaxies form and grow over time? To answer this question, scientists need to detect and study supermassive black holes at great distances that existed much earlier in the universe's history. New research suggests NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is on track to launch Aug. 30, 2026, will be able to detect these distant, ancient black holes that existed up to 11 billion years ago. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-roman-telescope-distant-black-holes.html Astronomy Tue, 14 Jul 2026 15:20:06 EDT news703254967 The planets that appear most common in the universe could have a lot of water—but it could be hiding where telescopes can't detect it, according to a new study led by scientists with the University of Chicago. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-distant-exoplanets-webb-telescope.html Astronomy Mon, 13 Jul 2026 14:00:01 EDT news703166987 For the first time, scientists have used NASA's IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) to directly measure the magnetic fields of PSR J1101−6101, a pulsar located within what is often referred to as the Lighthouse Nebula. The results provide new insight into the structure of some of the most extreme objects in the cosmos, as NASA continues to explore the secrets of how the universe works. A paper describing the results was published Thursday in The Astrophysical Journal. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-nasa-space-telescope-magnetic-fields.html Astronomy Fri, 10 Jul 2026 12:00:03 EDT news702896131 For the first time, astronomers have discovered stellar cocoons rich in complex organic molecules within a supernova remnant. A research team from Niigata University, Gifu University, RIKEN and Kyoto University in Japan used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to observe the remnant of a massive star that exploded about 1,600 years ago. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-newborn-stars-rich-gas-ancient.html Astronomy Thu, 09 Jul 2026 11:50:01 EDT news702814502 An international team led by Stefanie Komossa from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn has studied a galaxy that has been shining exceptionally brightly in the radio regime for more than eight years. Although it is only 1.8 billion light-years away from us, the central black hole in the galaxy exhibits properties typical of the early universe. New observations and archival data suggest that, for several years now, more matter has been falling into the black hole, triggering a high-energy particle jet. The discovery enables researchers to better understand the formation of jets and the growth of black holes in the early universe. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-nearby-black-hole-window-early.html Astronomy Sun, 05 Jul 2026 12:00:01 EDT news702290122 Short-lived sources of radio radiation in the sky, known as radio transients, can originate in the vicinity of supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies. They are the result of processes that take place under extreme physical conditions. While most radio transients associated with galactic centers last only days or weeks, the galaxy SDSS J110546.07+145202.4 has been shining very brightly in radio light for several years—the first source of its kind. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-radio-outburst-black-hole-properties.html Astronomy Fri, 03 Jul 2026 11:00:01 EDT news702290072 A researcher at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of The University of Alabama System, has published a new study in The Astrophysical Journal suggesting that tiny charged dust grains near the sun may significantly influence how energy moves through the solar corona, the outer atmosphere of the sun. The discovery potentially rewrites how scientists understand why the corona is millions of degrees hotter than the surface of the sun itself. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-cosmic-play-key-role-mystery.html Astronomy Wed, 01 Jul 2026 18:40:05 EDT news702142262 Astronomers have, for the first time, found a source in the process of becoming a Little Red Dot, using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Little Red Dots are likely early galaxies and some of the most intriguing objects found with JWST at high redshifts. The team, led by Karina Caputi of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, announced the detection at the annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society (EAS 2026) in Lausanne, Switzerland. The result has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. The paper is available on the arXiv preprint server. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-astronomers-enigmatic-source-red-dot.html Astronomy Tue, 30 Jun 2026 17:40:03 EDT news702042661