Phys.org Astronomy and Space

• Solar flares triggered by cascading magnetic avalanches, new observations reveal

  Just as avalanches on snowy mountains start with the movement of a small quantity of snow, the ESA-led Solar Orbiter spacecraft has discovered that a solar flare is triggered by initially weak disturbances that quickly become more violent. This rapidly evolving process creates a 'sky' of raining plasma blobs that continue to fall even after the flare subsides.

• SunRISE SmallSats ace tests, moving closer to launch

  When the six tiny spacecraft of NASA's SunRISE (Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment) mission settle into their orbits high above Earth after launching later this year, they'll function as one giant radio dish to track the rumbles of radio bursts coming from deep within the sun's atmosphere, or corona. Those bursts are generated by solar energetic particle events that could, in extreme cases, irradiate unprotected astronauts and satellites; tracking the radio waves they generate with SunRISE will help scientists mitigate their effects.

• Complex building blocks of life form spontaneously in space, research reveals

  Challenging long-held assumptions, Aarhus University researchers have demonstrated that the protein building blocks essential for life as we know it can form readily in space. This discovery, appearing in Nature Astronomy, significantly raises the statistical probability of finding extraterrestrial life.

• A century's worth of data could help predict future solar cycle activity

  Research conducted by an international team of astronomers from Southwest Research Institute, Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences in India and the Max Planck Institute in Germany could help predict upcoming solar cycle activity.

• South Pole Telescope detects energetic stellar flares near center of galaxy

  Researchers from the South Pole Telescope project team looked deep into the center of the Milky Way, discovering powerful, surprising bursts of light from two accreting white dwarf systems.

• Hubble tension: Primordial magnetic fields could resolve one of cosmology's biggest questions

  A Simon Fraser University cosmologist believes his team's new research may bring them a step closer to cracking one of science's biggest questions—the Hubble tension.

• Intricacies of Helix Nebula revealed with Webb

  NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has zoomed into the Helix Nebula to give an up-close view of the possible eventual fate of our own sun and planetary system. In Webb's high-resolution look, the structure of the gas being shed off by a dying star comes into full focus. The image reveals how stars recycle their material back into the cosmos, seeding future generations of stars and planets, as NASA explores the secrets of the universe and our place in it.

• SPHEREx imaging reveals increased sublimation activity on 3I/ATLAS

  The interstellar object, 3I/ATLAS, was first discovered in July 2025, and made its closest approach to the sun (perihelion) in late October. New observations of 3I/ATLAS were taken in December from the SPHEREx observatory—a near-infrared space observatory used for spectrophotometry. The analysis of these observations was recently discussed by a team of scientists in a paper on arXiv, and reveals some dramatic differences from the data taken before 3I/ATLAS reached perihelion.

• Water makeup of Jupiter's Galilean moons set at birth, new study finds

  While Io, the most volcanically active moon in the solar system, appears completely dry and devoid of water ice, its neighbor Europa is thought to harbor a vast global ocean of liquid water beneath its icy crust. A new international study co-led by Aix-Marseille University and Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) reveals that this striking contrast was established at birth, as they formed around Jupiter, not from later evolutionary processes.

• The alien hunter's shopping list

  We recently discussed the different types of worlds that the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) is expected to find that might have noticeable biosignatures. However, no matter how good the instrumentation on board the observatory is, the data it collects will be useless if scientists don't know how to interpret it. A paper explaining what data they need to collect before analyzing HWO data was authored by Niki Parenteau, a research biologist at NASA, and her co-authors, and is now available on the arXiv preprint server.

• Vast cluster of ancient galaxies could rewrite the history of star formation

  Astronomers have discovered a vast, dense cluster of massive galaxies just 1 billion years after the Big Bang, each forming stars at an intense rate from collapsing clouds of dust. Reported in Astronomy & Astrophysics by an international team, led by Guilaine Lagache at Aix-Marseille University, the structure appears to challenge existing models of how rapidly stars could have formed in the early universe.

• Sinking salty ice suggests pathway for life-sustaining conditions in Europa's ocean

  A recent study by geophysicists at Washington State University offers insight into how nutrients may reach the subsurface ocean of Europa, one of Jupiter's moons and a leading candidate for extraterrestrial life in the solar system.

• Gaia data release reveals four substructures in open cluster NGC 752

  By analyzing the data from ESA's Gaia satellite, Chinese astronomers have investigated the structure of a nearby open cluster known as NGC 752. The new study identified four substructures and delivered evidence for mass segregation in this cluster. The findings were presented Jan. 12 on the arXiv preprint server.

• Geomagnetic storm to bring northern lights to central US

  Meteorologists say a major disturbance in Earth's magnetic field Monday could mean the northern lights will be seen farther south than typical in the US, possibly even in Alabama or northern California.

• ALMA reveals teenage years of new worlds

  Astronomers have, for the first time, captured a detailed snapshot of planetary systems in an era long shrouded in mystery. The ALMA survey to Resolve exoKuiper belt Substructures (ARKS), using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), has produced the sharpest images ever of 24 debris disks, the dusty belts left after planets finish forming.

• Improving astronaut fitness for deep space missions

  As we prepare for missions beyond Earth orbit, one crucial challenge remains: keeping astronauts healthy in microgravity. Without daily exercise, their muscles, bones and cardiovascular systems weaken, which could impact mission success and astronaut safety, especially in destinations such as the moon or Mars, where crew will have to operate autonomously immediately after landing.

• Polar weather on Jupiter and Saturn hints at the planets' interior details

  Over the years, passing spacecraft have observed mystifying weather patterns at the poles of Jupiter and Saturn. The two planets host very different types of polar vortices, which are huge atmospheric whirlpools that rotate over a planet's polar region. On Saturn, a single massive polar vortex appears to cap the north pole in a curiously hexagonal shape, while on Jupiter, a central polar vortex is surrounded by eight smaller vortices, like a pan of swirling cinnamon rolls.

• Mercury's BepiColombo Mio and Earth's GEOTAIL show shared wave frequency properties across planetary magnetospheres

  An international team from Kanazawa University (Japan), Tohoku University (Japan), LPP (France), and partners has demonstrated that chorus emissions, natural electromagnetic waves long studied in Earth's magnetosphere, also occur in Mercury's magnetosphere exhibiting similar chirping frequency changes.

• Proba-3 mission captures rare solar prominence eruptions in sun's inner corona

  The sun's inner corona, the hottest part of our star's atmosphere, appears faint yellow in a time-lapse made from images taken by the ASPIICS coronagraph aboard Proba-3.

• Searching for 'green oceans' and 'purple Earths'

  The early stage of giant telescope development involves a lot of horse-trading to try to appease all the different stakeholders that are hoping to get what they want out of the project, but also to try to appease the financial managers that want to minimize its cost. Typically, this horse-trading takes the form of a series of white papers that describe what would be needed to meet the stated objectives of the mission and suggest the type of instrumentation and systems that would be needed to achieve them.

• Hubble observes ghostly cloud alive with star formation

  While this eerie NASA Hubble Space Telescope image may look ghostly, it's actually full of new life. Lupus 3 is a star-forming cloud about 500 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius.

• These gravitationally lensed supernovae could resolve the Hubble tension

  One of the most stubborn issues in cosmology today concerns the universe's rate of expansion. Scientists know it's expanding, but defining the rate of that expansion is challenging. The rate of expansion is called the Hubble Constant, after American astronomer Edwin Hubble, who discovered in the 1920s that the universe is expanding.

• What the first medical evacuation from the International Space Station tells us about health care in space

  For the first time in 25 years of continuous crewed operations, an astronaut has been medically evacuated from the International Space Station (ISS). The Crew-11 mission ended when a SpaceX Dragon capsule brought the four astronauts of Crew 11 home following a medical incident in early January 2026.

• How astronauts will fix their gear using thin air

  Additive manufacturing, more commonly known as 3D printing, will be an absolutely critical technology for any long-term settlement on another world. Its ability to take a generic input, such as plastic strips or metal powder, and turn it into any shape of tool an astronaut will need is an absolute game changer. But the chemistry behind these technologies is complicated, and their applications are extremely varied, ranging from creating bricks for settlements to plastics for everything from cups to toothbrush holders.

• Protostars carve out homes in the Orion Molecular Cloud

  Young stars need time to grow into their final masses before they begin fusing lighter elements into heavier elements as main-sequence stars. They can spend hundreds of thousands of years as protostars, when they're still accreting mass from the molecular clouds they form in. But even though they haven't begun fusion, they still inject energy into their surroundings.

• X-ray observations reveal hidden disturbances in galaxy cluster Abell 3571

  Using the Einstein Probe (EP), astronomers from China and Germany have observed a nearby galaxy cluster known as Abell 3571. Results of the observational campaign, published January 8 on the arXiv pre-print server, provide more insights into the X-ray properties and structure of this cluster.

• Experiments bring Enceladus' subsurface ocean into the lab

  Through new experiments, researchers in Japan and Germany have recreated the chemical conditions found in the subsurface ocean of Saturn's moon, Enceladus. Published in Icarus, the results show that these conditions can readily produce many of the organic compounds observed by the Cassini mission, strengthening evidence that the distant world could harbor the molecular building blocks of life.

• How to prevent charge buildup in a lunar rover

  As they roll across shadowed regions of the moon's surface, future lunar rovers could develop hazardous buildups of electric charge on their wheels. Through new analysis published in Advances in Space Research, Bill Farrell at the Space Science Institute in Colorado, together with Mike Zimmerman at Johns Hopkins University, outline realistic precautions for mitigating this risk—offering valuable guidance for engineers designing future lunar missions.

• NASA moves moon rocket to launch pad ahead of Artemis 2 mission

  NASA on Saturday rolled out its towering SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft as it began preparations for its first crewed mission to the moon in more than 50 years.

• Mysterious iron 'bar' discovered in famous nebula

  A mysterious bar-shaped cloud of iron has been discovered inside the iconic Ring Nebula by a European team led by astronomers at University College London (UCL) and Cardiff University.