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Astronomy news
Laser-blasted plasma shows how instabilities could heat the sun's corona
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 ...
Stellar collisions may have been common when the universe was young
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, ...
Astronomy
7 hours ago
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JWST and ALMA reveal a dusty, rapidly growing black hole in the early universe
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 ...
FAST and Arecibo point to possible dark galaxy with vast hydrogen reservoir
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 ...
Lumina simulation brings the early universe to life on a record-breaking scale
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 ...
Astronomy
22 hours ago
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Milky Way's disk grew 'upside down,' with younger stars forming in ever-thinner layers
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 ...
Astronomy
Oct 25, 2026
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How flare ribbons reveal hidden solar explosions on the sun
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 ...
Astronomy
Oct 24, 2026
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Stellar collision may explain why Orion Nebula's planet-forming disks appear younger than its stars
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 ...
Astronomy
Oct 23, 2026
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Black holes spinning near maximum rate could split in two, calculations suggest
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 ...
Astronomy
Oct 23, 2026
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ALMA spots 'dragon egg' that may represent the earliest stages of massive star formation
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, ...
NASA's Hubble charts path for Roman with gravitational lenses
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 ...
Astronomy
Oct 23, 2026
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Autonomous triangular modules could build tomorrow's mega-observatories
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 ...
Astronomy
Oct 22, 2026
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Webb captures stars in the early stages of life in a nearby stellar nursery
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 ...
Astronomy
Oct 22, 2026
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Webb image reveals young stars brewing in a nebulous cauldron
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, ...
Astronomy
Oct 22, 2026
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Supermassive black holes ejected from galactic centers? Quasar survey supports decade-old prediction
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 ...
Astronomy
Oct 22, 2026
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Black hole observations uncover evidence of solar storm–like magnetic eruptions
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 ...
Astronomy
Oct 22, 2026
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New study traces van Gogh's famed 'Starry Night' to an actual night sky from 1889
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.
Astronomy
Oct 22, 2026
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There should be black holes in our neighborhood. Can we find them?
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 ...
Astronomy
Oct 22, 2026
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Curtain-like plasma structures explain solar jets' apparent spinning in simulations
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 ...
Astronomy
Oct 22, 2026
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Hubble observations challenge supernova winds' role in cosmic reionization
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.
Astronomy
Oct 21, 2026
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Other news
Metalens microscope switches focus with voltage, not moving optics
Hidden chromosome structures reveal greater complexity in how roundworms organize DNA
Diamond defects confirm 80-year-old theory of crystal stress
Clouds on a lava planet challenge what astronomers expected
RNA archiving method reveals what a cell did days ago
An 'electron waiting room' helps blue titanium dioxide hold light energy longer
