https://phys.org/space-news/ en-us The latest science news on astronomy, astrobiology, and space exploration from Phys.org. A Southwest Research Institute–led study used NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to examine ice grains streaming from interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, just the third object from beyond our solar system ever identified. The observations point to tiny aggregates of water ice and dust, about a micron or smaller. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-webb-links-interstellar-comet-3iatlas.html Astronomy Tue, 27 Oct 2026 10:00:13 EDT news712310882 The Lazuli Space Telescope will be the first private space telescope. It's the brainchild of Eric Schmidt, Google's former CEO. It will have a 3-meter mirror (9.8 feet), larger than Hubble's 2.4-meter mirror (7.9 feet), and will be launched by 2029. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-exoplanet-world-private-space-telescope.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 26 Oct 2026 20:00:06 EDT news712235447 A rocky lava planet once thought to be too extreme to have an atmosphere appears to be wrapped in one with a reflective layer of vaporized silicate mineral clouds, the same family of compounds that make up quartz and sand. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-clouds-lava-planet-astronomers.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 26 Oct 2026 13:20:01 EDT news712234995 From its visible surface, the sun radiates heat at a relatively cool temperature of 5,800 Kelvin. Yet within the thin outer layer of the sun's atmosphere known as the corona, electrons can reach temperatures of millions of degrees, for reasons astronomers have yet to fully explain. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-laser-blasted-plasma-instabilities-sun.html Astronomy Mon, 26 Oct 2026 13:00:10 EDT news712234865 In our solar system's corner of the galaxy, stars rarely collide. It makes sense: Space is vast, and stars have room to roam. Even in most of the present-day universe, stellar collisions are rare. The James Webb Space Telescope, however, peers deep enough into space to see the universe as it was not too long after the Big Bang. Its observations have revealed extraordinarily compact stellar systems, raising the possibility that collisions between stars were once much more common. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-stellar-collisions-common-universe-young.html Astronomy Mon, 26 Oct 2026 11:00:32 EDT news712225924 A new study reveals a dust-reddened quasar from a time when the universe was less than a billion years old. Located at a redshift of 6.5488, the object J1440+0019 contains a rapidly accreting supermassive black hole with a mass of about 1.1 billion suns. The paper was posted to the arXiv preprint server on Oct. 9. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-jwst-alma-reveal-dusty-rapidly.html Astronomy Mon, 26 Oct 2026 09:20:36 EDT news711982981 Astronomers have found a vast reservoir of hydrogen with something conspicuously missing: detectable starlight. The object, called AGC 322753, contains roughly 2 billion times the sun's mass in neutral hydrogen, a potential supply of material for making stars. Its radio signal suggests the gas may be rotating in a disk, yet deep astronomical images reveal no matching glow. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-fast-arecibo-dark-galaxy-vast.html Astronomy Mon, 26 Oct 2026 06:55:00 EDT news712216463 The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and Nancy Roman Space Telescope are revealing the universe's earliest chapters in detail. To help astronomers understand what they are seeing, researchers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian have developed "Lumina," one of the largest and most detailed simulations ever created of the early universe. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-lumina-simulation-early-universe-life.html Astronomy Sun, 25 Oct 2026 20:10:01 EDT news711978901 The Milky Way is home to hundreds of billions of stars arranged in a glorious spiral pattern. But beyond the obvious spiral, our galaxy has other physical characteristics. It's divided into a galactic bulge, a galactic disk and a galactic halo. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-milky-disk-grew-upside-younger.html Astronomy Sun, 25 Oct 2026 14:30:02 EDT news711894297 Many topics in astronomy and astrophysics are esoteric. There's not much of a relationship between something like the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way and the life of a regular person going about their business. But the sun is different. Its presence in our lives is inescapable. Its behavior, especially its flaring, has an impact. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-flare-ribbons-reveal-hidden-solar.html Astronomy Sat, 24 Oct 2026 14:00:01 EDT news711886210 NASA is moving fast on its plans to build a moon base and return astronauts to the lunar surface in as little as two years. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-nasa-apollo-urgency-moon-base.html Space Exploration Sat, 24 Oct 2026 05:28:00 EDT news712038417 Establishing a long-term presence on the moon will require solving challenges that are easy to overlook on Earth. Lunar temperatures, for instance, can vary from hundreds of degrees below zero to boiling, making effective insulation essential for lunar habitats. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-everyday-mylar-insulator-lunar-habitats.html Space Exploration Fri, 23 Oct 2026 15:20:01 EDT news711979621 The Orion Nebula is a large star-forming region visible to the naked eye. Some of the young stars in the nebula are surrounded by disks of gas and dust in which planets form. Radiation from the massive central star, 1 Ori C1 (Theta-1 Orionis C1), gradually strips material from these disks, giving them shapes that resemble tadpoles. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-stellar-collision-orion-nebula-planet.html Astronomy Fri, 23 Oct 2026 15:00:01 EDT news711977761 Two black holes can collide and merge into one. But could the opposite happen: could a single black hole split into two smaller ones? That question is explored in a new theoretical study: "When Black Holes Admit Pair-of-pants Topologies," published in the journal Physical Review D. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-black-holes-maximum.html Astronomy Fri, 23 Oct 2026 14:20:12 EDT news711976082 Astronomers identified an exceptionally tiny core that may represent an early stage in the formation of a massive star. Located in an infrared-dark area called Dragon Cloud, the core is nicknamed the "dragon egg." The paper, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics, was posted to the arXiv preprint server on Oct. 5. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-alma-dragon-egg-earliest-stages.html Astronomy Fri, 23 Oct 2026 12:50:01 EDT news711976208 Do cosmic radiation doses near the moon differ significantly from those received by astronauts in low Earth orbit? Experimental lithium fluoride detectors, installed aboard the Orion spacecraft during the Artemis I mission, have now made it possible to obtain preliminary estimates. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-artemis-crystals-experimental-detectors-doses.html Space Exploration Fri, 23 Oct 2026 11:40:01 EDT news711967966 With a successful Mars gravity assist in its rearview mirror, NASA's Psyche spacecraft has fired up its thrusters and is accelerating toward the metal-rich asteroid of the same name. During the first leg of its journey, following an October 2023 launch, the mission used its electric propulsion system intermittently to maneuver into the right position to harness Mars' gravity for a propellant-saving speed boost and a slight trajectory change. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-metal-nasa-psyche-asteroid-belt.html Planetary Sciences Fri, 23 Oct 2026 11:10:01 EDT news711962086 A sweeping barred spiral galaxy marks the spot in this image, but the real treasure is the gravitational lens in the lower-right corner, where a distant background galaxy is being magnified and distorted by the gravity of a closer galaxy. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-nasa-hubble-path-roman-gravitational.html Astronomy Fri, 23 Oct 2026 10:50:01 EDT news711961666 In the deepest region of the Earth's mantle, just above the core, much of the material consists of crystals of magnesium oxide. In larger rocky exoplanets called super-Earths, the higher pressures in the lower mantle may drive magnesium oxide to transform into a new high-pressure crystal structure or a metallic, electrically conductive liquid that generates a magnetic field. And in gas giants, magnesium oxide could exist in the cores themselves. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-mineral-planets-reveals-lesson.html Planetary Sciences Fri, 23 Oct 2026 03:42:44 EDT news711945720 Private companies are getting better at launching more mass into space with larger rockets. But there is still a major constraint on the size of objects we can get into orbit—fairing size. This places physical constraints on the overall shape of what we can launch and severely limits the sizes of, say, a communications array or a power satellite. But a new paper from researchers at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Beijing Institute of Technology offers a solution—a self-shaping, deployable module that can fine-tune both its positioning and its own dimensions. The findings are published in the journal Space: Science & Technology. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-autonomous-triangular-modules-tomorrow-mega.html Astronomy Thu, 22 Oct 2026 20:40:01 EDT news711905701 The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope continues to reveal hidden parts of the cosmos with its advanced suite of infrared instruments. In a newly released image, Webb revealed many stars previously hidden by the dust clouds of NGC 7129, a stellar nursery about 3,300 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cepheus. The image is already improving our understanding of how new stars are born and evolve with time. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-webb-captures-stars-early-stages.html Astronomy Thu, 22 Oct 2026 13:40:18 EDT news711878476 In this Picture of the Month from the NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope, we visit a turbulent cauldron of star formation to see what is brewing inside dense clumps of gas. This is a star-forming region named LHA 120-N 159, or simply N159, located 161,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), one of the satellite galaxies orbiting the Milky Way galaxy. This image spans about 230 light-years across. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-webb-image-reveals-young-stars.html Astronomy Thu, 22 Oct 2026 13:40:01 EDT news711892283 By analyzing data on around 100,000 quasars, or extremely luminous galactic nuclei, researchers at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) have found statistical evidence that some supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies are ejected from their positions after forming. The relationship now identified in the data was predicted 10 years ago by members of the same research group, Peter Raffai and Zsolt Frei, together with Zoltán Haiman. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-supermassive-black-holes-ejected-galactic.html Astronomy Thu, 22 Oct 2026 12:20:25 EDT news711886019 Technion researchers have presented evidence for the existence of solar-storm-like outbursts near supermassive black holes, which can be a million times larger than the sun or more. The phenomenon was discovered in the vicinity of the black hole in the galaxy NGC 3783, and the researchers' findings were published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-black-hole-uncover-evidence-solar.html Astronomy Thu, 22 Oct 2026 11:03:31 EDT news711885705 Scientists doubling as art detectives have traced Vincent van Gogh's "The Starry Night" to a celestial scene that suggests a new date for one of the world's most famous paintings. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-sky-van-gogh-starry-night.html Astronomy Thu, 22 Oct 2026 11:00:15 EDT news711804301 Scientific estimates show that there should be between about 100 million and 1 billion stellar-mass black holes in the Milky Way. But they aren't easy to locate. They're not like supermassive black holes (SMBH) at the centers of galaxies. Those are usually easy to spot for different reasons. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-black-holes-neighborhood.html Astronomy Thu, 22 Oct 2026 10:40:07 EDT news711871458 An international team of scientists from the University of Sheffield and the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, led by a postdoctoral research fellow from the University of Newcastle, Australia, has discovered that solar jets called spicules, which are 6–8 Mm long, take the form of warped, denser plasma sheets like pleated drapery. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-curtain-plasma-solar-jets-apparent.html Astronomy Thu, 22 Oct 2026 10:20:06 EDT news711877531 A new study suggests that some of the heaviest rocky planets ever reported may not be as heavy as they look. These so-called 'mega-Earths,' rocky planets weighing more than about 10 Earths, could be an illusion created by activity on their host stars. The paper was posted to the arXiv preprint server on Oct. 8. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-mega-earths-real-stellar-oversized.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 22 Oct 2026 09:50:01 EDT news711879490 A team of researchers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) has developed a new instrument designed to eliminate blind spots between lines of lidar data on Earth's surface. Built with support from NASA's Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO), the Concurrent Artificially-intelligent Spectrometry Lidar System (CASALS) could help researchers map the features of Earth's surface in detail. Rather than mechanically steering a laser with moving mirrors, CASALS steers light using wavelength itself, generating a continuous, 3D swath of the ground below. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-nasa-casals-instrument-bridges-gaps.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 21 Oct 2026 14:20:09 EDT news711795891 An international team of researchers, including members from the University of Michigan, has revealed surprising results that could rewrite our understanding of a key transition in the early universe. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-hubble-supernova-role-cosmic-reionization.html Astronomy Wed, 21 Oct 2026 13:20:15 EDT news711800461