https://phys.org/ en-us Latest news from Subaru Telescope Observations conducted with the Subaru Telescope and its first-generation wide-field camera, Suprime-Cam, have revealed new insights into the relationship between the color and size of Jupiter Trojan asteroids. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-subaru-telescope-jupiter-trojan-asteroids.html Astronomy Fri, 10 Apr 2026 16:40:03 EDT news695045701 An international team led by a researcher at the Chiba Institute of Technology has discovered an extremely rare phenomenon: a galaxy about 10 billion light-years away whose brightness dropped to one-twentieth of its original level in just 20 years. By combining multiwavelength observations with archival data spanning several decades, the researchers concluded that the fading was caused by a rapid decrease in the gas flowing into the supermassive black hole at the galaxy's center. The discovery shows that the activity of supermassive black holes can change dramatically on timescales short enough to be observed within a human lifetime. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-distant-galaxy-decades-supermassive-black.html Astronomy Wed, 25 Mar 2026 21:40:01 EDT news693664772 NGC 941 is located approximately 55 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus. This faint galaxy is classified as an intermediate spiral, exhibiting characteristics between a barred spiral with a central bar and an unbarred spiral. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-image-intermediate-spiral-galaxy-ngc.html Astronomy Thu, 26 Feb 2026 11:20:04 EST news691324771 How did the construction of the Subaru Telescope transform Japanese astronomy? A new study provides a quantitative answer by analyzing scientific publications and their citation impact during the telescope's early years. Drawing on large-scale publication data, the research shows that the Subaru Telescope generated many internationally influential results and significantly enhanced Japan's global visibility in astronomical research. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-subaru-telescope-papers-world-average.html Astronomy Tue, 24 Feb 2026 09:17:27 EST news691147017 An international research team led by scientists at Waseda University and Tohoku University has discovered an extraordinary quasar in the early universe that hosts one of the fastest-growing supermassive black holes known at this mass scale. Observations with the Subaru Telescope reveal a striking, rule-breaking combination: the quasar is undergoing extremely rapid accretion while simultaneously shining brightly in X-rays and producing strong radio emission from a jet—features that many theoretical models do not expect to coexist. This unexpected juxtaposition of phenomena offers a new perspective on how supermassive black holes grow in the early universe. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-supermassive-black-hole-early-universe.html Astronomy Thu, 22 Jan 2026 11:40:01 EST news688303615 Using the Subaru Telescope's wide-field camera, astronomers have discovered a previously unknown structure surrounding a tiny satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. The newly discovered structure exhibits features resembling the remnants of past galaxy mergers. This result provides compelling evidence that even extremely low-mass dwarf galaxies may have experienced mergers in their past. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-mass-dwarf-galaxies-merge-clues.html Astronomy Wed, 14 Jan 2026 11:20:23 EST news687612001 By combining the power of ground-based and space-based telescopes, astronomers have discovered a new brown dwarf—a type of object that lies between a star and a planet—orbiting a small star about 55 light-years from Earth. In addition, infrared observations revealed variations in its brightness, suggesting that clouds and storms may be forming and moving within the brown dwarf's atmosphere. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-brown-dwarf-stormy-atmosphere-orbiting.html Astronomy Tue, 21 Oct 2025 08:04:04 EDT news680252642 Using the wide-field survey capabilities of the Subaru Telescope, astronomers discovered active supermassive black holes, or quasars, in the distant universe and then studied them with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). This work has revealed how galaxies and their central black holes grew 12.9 billion years ago. https://phys.org/news/2025-09-supermassive-black-holes-distant-dying.html Astronomy Thu, 18 Sep 2025 08:51:04 EDT news677404261 Astronomers have discovered "dust-shrouded supermassive black holes" in the early universe, less than 1 billion years after the Big Bang—a type of object that had previously escaped detection. https://phys.org/news/2025-09-supermassive-black-holes-shrouded-early.html Astronomy Tue, 09 Sep 2025 10:40:07 EDT news676632469 The universe captured by Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC), the ultra-wide field of view camera, is truly magnificent. In this image, two spiral galaxies in the lower right immediately catch the eye: NGC 7537 (right) and NGC 7541 (left). This galactic pair, located in the direction of Pisces, appears to be separated by about 160,000 light-years in the sky. https://phys.org/news/2025-08-image-spiral-galaxy-ngc.html Astronomy Fri, 22 Aug 2025 07:44:21 EDT news675067460 GJ504b is an exoplanet orbiting a sun-like star GJ 504. It is estimated to be three to six times more massive than Jupiter, making it the lowest-mass planet ever directly imaged. This faint and cold planet, often referred to as the "second Jupiter," was discovered as part of the Strategic Explorations of Exoplanets and Disks with Subaru (SEEDS) Project. The SEEDS project aimed to conduct direct observations of exoplanets to discover and explore their features using the coronagraph imager HiCIAO and the adaptive optics system with 188 elements AO 188. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-image-exoplanet-gj504b-jupiter.html Astronomy Thu, 19 Jun 2025 09:59:24 EDT news669545961 An international team of astronomers has solved one of the longstanding cosmic mysteries by uncovering direct evidence of a massive, long-lost object that collided with the Perseus cluster. Using high-resolution data from the Subaru Telescope, the researchers successfully traced the remnant of this ancient merger through the dark matter distribution. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-astronomers-uncover-merger-companion-dark.html Astronomy Mon, 21 Apr 2025 08:56:03 EDT news664444562 NGC 4496 in the constellation Virgo consists of two spiral galaxies, NGC 4496A (upper large galaxy) and NGC 4496B (lower galaxy). They are in the same line of sight from Earth but located at quite different distances, and they are not gravitationally interacting. https://phys.org/news/2024-12-image-twin-galaxies-ngc-4496a.html Astronomy Tue, 24 Dec 2024 09:56:02 EST news654256561 An international research team has used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to observe massive galaxies discovered by the Subaru Telescope in a corner of the early universe known as the Spiderweb protocluster. The JWST results confirm what had been suggested from the Subaru Telescope observations, namely that supermassive black hole activity can truncate the growth of galaxies. https://phys.org/news/2024-12-spiderweb-protocluster-captured-webb-supermassive.html Astronomy Wed, 18 Dec 2024 09:41:03 EST news653737261 NGC 5257 and NGC 5258 are gravitationally interacting galaxies of similar size and mass in the constellation Virgo. https://phys.org/news/2024-12-image-interacting-galaxies-ngc.html Astronomy Thu, 05 Dec 2024 12:12:51 EST news652623171 The Hubble Classification, also known as the Hubble Sequence, is a widely recognized method for systematically categorizing galaxy morphology. Galaxies are classified into elliptical, lenticular, and spiral (or barred spiral) galaxies. https://phys.org/news/2024-11-image-exceptionally-rare-triple-galaxy.html Astronomy Thu, 07 Nov 2024 11:19:02 EST news650200741 The Subaru Telescope's wide and deep imaging observations are contributing information to the New Horizons spacecraft as it moves through the outer solar system. By applying a unique analysis method to images of Kuiper Belt objects taken by the Subaru Telescope's ultra-wide-field camera, objects that have the potential to extend the Kuiper Belt region have been discovered. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-horizon-kuiper-belt-subaru-telescope.html Astronomy Wed, 26 Jun 2024 07:16:01 EDT news638604954 Building on the synergy between citizen astronomer classifications and AI, astronomers have discovered approximately 400,000 spiral galaxies and 30,000 ring galaxies in data from the Subaru Telescope. This is the first example of research building on the classification data from the citizen science project "GALAXY CRUISE." https://phys.org/news/2024-03-citizen-astronomers-ai-galaxies.html Astronomy Thu, 14 Mar 2024 11:50:03 EDT news629635801 Using some of the largest telescopes in the world, including the Subaru Telescope, a team of astronomers discovered three new natural satellites orbiting the outermost planets in our solar system—one around Uranus and two around Neptune. One of the new moons, initially detected by the Subaru Telescope, is the faintest moon ever discovered by ground-based telescopes. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-subaru-telescope-faintest-moon-icy.html Astronomy Wed, 06 Mar 2024 14:52:58 EST news628959176 The Subaru Telescope has spotted the terminal ends of dark matter filaments in the Coma cluster stretching across millions of light years. This is the first time that strands of the cosmic web spanning the entire universe have been directly detected. This provides new evidence to test theories about the evolution of the universe. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-cosmic-dark-web-coma-cluster.html Astronomy Thu, 08 Feb 2024 10:09:03 EST news626609341 Galaxy Cruise, a citizen science project led by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), has been sailing the cosmic ocean with citizen astronomers to uncover the secrets of galaxies since 2019. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-scientific-results-galaxy-cruise.html Astronomy Tue, 10 Oct 2023 10:27:03 EDT news616152421 Observations of a star forming region on the outskirts of the Milky Way galaxy, where conditions from the early universe are still preserved, found that the distribution of stellar masses is not radically different from what is observed near the solar system. This is an important step toward understanding the effect of the local environment on the mass distribution of stars. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-survey-star-masses-early-universe.html Astronomy Thu, 06 Jul 2023 13:45:49 EDT news607869946 Launched on July 1, 2023, the European Euclid mission will observe billions of galaxies over one-third of the sky to create a map of the Universe. But Euclid's map will be in black and white; telescopes in Hawai'i, including the Subaru Telescope, are needed to determine the colors of the galaxies. The color data will be used to deduce the distance, thus creating a 3D map, uncovering the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-hawaii-observatories-depth-european-euclid.html Space Exploration Mon, 03 Jul 2023 12:19:02 EDT news607605541 An international team of astronomers has reported the discovery of a structure thought to be a "protocluster" of galaxies on its way to developing into a galaxy supercluster. Located 11 billion light-years from Earth, the observations show the protocluster as it appeared when the universe was 3 billion years old, during an epoch when stars were produced at higher rates in certain regions of the cosmos. https://phys.org/news/2021-10-astronomers-massive-galaxy-shipyard-distant.html Astronomy Wed, 27 Oct 2021 09:58:28 EDT news554547498 A group of astronomers from the Astrobiology Center, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, the University of Tokyo, and other institutes, discovered two rocky super-Earth exoplanets lacking thick primordial atmospheres in very close orbits around two different red dwarf stars. These planets provide a chance to investigate the evolution of the atmospheres of hot rocky planets. https://phys.org/news/2021-09-super-earths-clues-evolution-hot-atmospheres.html Astronomy Mon, 27 Sep 2021 07:42:11 EDT news551947329 The "Subaru-Asahi Sky Camera" installed at the Subaru Telescope dome on Maunakea, Hawai`i, captured a rare "meteor cluster event" in the early morning of July 14 (Hawai`i time). https://phys.org/news/2021-08-subaru-telescope-maunakea-camera-captures.html Astronomy Wed, 04 Aug 2021 09:32:07 EDT news547288324 A new study of lithium production in a classical nova found a production rate of only a couple of percent that seen in other examples. This shows that there is a large diversity within classical novae and implies that nova explosions alone cannot explain the amount of lithium seen in the current universe. This is an important result for understanding both the explosion mechanism of classical novae and the overall chemical evolution of the universe. https://phys.org/news/2021-07-small-amount-lithium-production-classical.html Astronomy Wed, 07 Jul 2021 09:42:19 EDT news544869670 An international collaboration of astronomers led by a researcher from the Astrobiology Center and Queen's University Belfast has detected a new chemical signature in the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet—i.e., a planet that orbits a star other than our sun. The hydroxyl radical (OH) was found on the dayside of the exoplanet WASP-33b. This planet is a so-called 'ultra-hot Jupiter," a gas-giant planet orbiting its host star much closer than Mercury orbits the sun (Figure 1) and therefore reaching atmospheric temperatures of more than 2500 degrees C (hot enough to melt most metals). The lead researcher based at the Astrobiology Center and Queen's University Belfast, Dr. Stevanus Nugroho, says, "This is the first direct evidence of OH in the atmosphere of a planet beyond the solar system. It shows not only that astronomers can detect this molecule in exoplanet atmospheres, but also that they can begin to understand the detailed chemistry of this planetary population." https://phys.org/news/2021-04-astronomers-chemical-signature-exoplanet-atmosphere.html Astronomy Tue, 27 Apr 2021 10:13:26 EDT news538737202 Using the Cooled Mid-Infrared Camera and Spectrometer (COMICS) on the Subaru Telescope, astronomers have detected an unidentified infrared emission band from comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner (hereafter, comet 21P/G-Z) in addition to the thermal emissions from silicate and carbon grains. These unidentified infrared emissions are likely due to complex organic molecules, both aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons, contaminated by N- or O-atoms. Considering the properties of the dust and organic molecules, comet 21P/G-Z might have originated from the circumplanetary disk of a giant planet (like Jupiter or Saturn) where it was warmer than the typical comet-forming regions. https://phys.org/news/2019-11-subaru-telescope-mid-infrared-emission-band.html Space Exploration Tue, 19 Nov 2019 08:48:39 EST news493375714 Using the Subaru Telescope and Gemini-North Telescope, a team of astronomers has revealed that the supercluster CL1604, a distant supercluster located about 7.3 billion light-years away, is a large-scale 3-D structure extending over about 160 million light-years in the north-south direction. This is more than two times more extended than previously known. Until now, astronomers saw merely the "tip of the iceberg" of this supercluster. The wide-field capability of the Subaru Telescope enabled the team to survey the whole of the supercluster and the Gemini-North Telescope played a critical role in confirming the structures. This is the outcome of the synergy of the telescopes of the Maunakea observatories. https://phys.org/news/2019-10-picture-distant-supercluster-dimensions.html Astronomy Wed, 23 Oct 2019 08:33:20 EDT news491038392