Phys.org Astronomy and Space

• Parker Solar Probe spies solar wind 'U-turn'

  Images captured by NASA's Parker Solar Probe as the spacecraft made its record-breaking closest approach to the sun in December 2024 have now revealed new details about how solar magnetic fields responsible for space weather escape from the sun—and how sometimes they don't.

• Unlocking the sun's magnetic secrets: AI-powered mapping unlock intricate 3D details

  Researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy (IfA) are helping reshape how scientists study the sun. The UH-led team has developed a new artificial intelligence (AI) tool that can map the sun's magnetic field in three dimensions with unprecedented accuracy, supporting research tied to the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope built and managed by the NSF National Solar Observatory (NSO) on Haleakalā.

• Reading the 'light fingerprints' of dead satellites

  There are already tens of thousands of pieces of large debris in orbit, some of which pose a threat to functional satellites. Various agencies and organizations have been developing novel solutions to this problem, before it turns into full-blown Kessler Syndrome. But many of them are reliant on understanding what is going on with the debris before attempting to deal with it.

• Earth's atmosphere may help support human life on the moon

  The moon's surface may be more than just a dusty, barren landscape. Over billions of years, tiny particles from Earth's atmosphere have landed in the lunar soil, creating a possible source of life-sustaining substances for future astronauts. But scientists have only recently begun to understand how these particles make the long journey from Earth to the moon and how long the process has been taking place.

• Astronomers create first map of the sun's outer boundary

  Astronomers have produced the first continuous, two-dimensional maps of the outer edge of the sun's atmosphere, a shifting, frothy boundary that marks where solar winds escape the sun's magnetic grasp. By combining the maps and close-up measurements, scientists from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) showed that the boundary grows larger, rougher and spikier as the sun becomes more active. The findings could help scientists improve models showing how the sun affects Earth, and better predict atmospheric complexity for other stars.

• Small galaxies may buck the black hole trend, Chandra finds

  Most smaller galaxies may not have supermassive black holes in their centers, according to a recent study using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. This contrasts with the common idea that nearly every galaxy has one of these giant black holes within their cores, as NASA leads the world in exploring the secrets of how the universe works.

• Rare image of Tatooine-like planet is closest to its twin stars yet

  In a discovery that's fit for a movie, Northwestern University astronomers have directly imaged a Tatooine-like exoplanet, orbiting two suns. While obtaining an image of a planet beyond our solar system is already rare, finding one that circles two suns is even rarer. But this new world is extra exceptional. It hugs its twin stars more tightly than any other directly imaged planet in a binary system. In fact, it is six times closer to its suns than other previously discovered exoplanets.

• Swarm detects rare proton spike during solar storm

  The European Space Agency's Swarm mission detected a large but temporary spike of high-energy protons at Earth's poles during a geomagnetic storm in November. It did this not with the scientific instruments for measuring Earth's magnetic field, but with its 'star tracker' positioning instruments—a first for the Swarm mission.

• The solution to finding an atmosphere on TRAPPIST-1 e

  The hunt is on for terrestrial exoplanets in habitable zones, and some of the most promising candidates were discovered almost a decade ago about 40 light-years from Earth. The TRAPPIST-1 system contains seven terrestrial planets similar to Earth, and four of them may be in the habitable zone. The star is a dim red dwarf, so the habitable zone is close to the star, and so are the planets. For that reason, astronomers expect them to be tidally-locked to the star.

• Astronomers challenge 50-year-old quasar law

  Compelling evidence that the structure of matter surrounding supermassive black holes has changed over cosmic time has been uncovered by an international team of astronomers.

• Astronomers examine nuclear star cluster of nearby galaxy Messier 74

  By analyzing the data from the PHANGS-MUSE survey, an international team of astronomers has inspected a nuclear star cluster of the nearby large spiral galaxy Messier 74. The new study presented Dec. 3 on the arXiv pre-print server, provides essential information regarding the properties and nature of this cluster.

• Ultra-hot super-Earth shows signs of thick atmosphere despite extreme conditions

  Researchers using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have detected the strongest evidence yet for an atmosphere on a rocky planet outside our solar system.

• The monster hiding in plain sight: JWST reveals cosmic shapeshifter in the early universe

  In a glimpse of the early universe, astronomers have observed a galaxy as it appeared just 800 million years after the Big Bang—a cosmic Jekyll and Hyde that looks like any other galaxy when viewed in visible and even ultraviolet light but transforms into a cosmic beast when observed at infrared wavelengths.

• NASA loses contact with its Maven spacecraft orbiting Mars for the past decade

  NASA has lost contact with a spacecraft that has orbited Mars for more than a decade.

• The JWST just identified a supernova from only 730 million years after the Big Bang

  Supernovae aren't one of the JWST's main science themes, but the perceptive telescope is full of surprises. Recently, it pinpointed a single star in a galaxy when the universe was only about 730 million years old. It wasn't just any random star; this one was a supernova responsible for a gamma-ray burst (GRB) detected back in March, 2025.

• Lunar soil analyses reveal how space weathering shapes the moon's ultraviolet reflectance

  Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) scientists are collaborating with researchers at UT San Antonio to study how space weathering can alter the lunar surface materials to help interpret regional and global far-ultraviolet (FUV) maps of the moon.

• Slow changes in radio scintillation can nudge pulsar timing by billionths of a second

  For 10 months, a SETI Institute-led team watched pulsar PSR J0332+5434 (also called B0329+54) to study how its radio signal "twinkles" as it passes through gas between the star and Earth. The team used the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) to take measurements between 900 and 1,956 MHz and observed slow, significant changes in the twinkling pattern (scintillation) over time.

• Einstein's theory comes wrapped up with a bow: Astronomers spot star 'wobbling' around black hole

  The cosmos has served up a gift for a group of scientists who have been searching for one of the most elusive phenomena in the night sky. Their study, presented in Science Advances, reports on the very first observations of a swirling vortex in spacetime caused by a rapidly rotating black hole.

• The race to mine the Moon is on, and it urgently needs some clear international rules

  The vision of mining space for resources is no longer science fiction. The moon's proximity to Earth and the presence of precious resources make it an increasingly attractive prospect for exploitation.

• The Nancy Grace Roman Telescope is complete

  If you feel a thrill every time we discover something new about the cosmos, then November 25th may have been a noteworthy day to you. That's the day that NASA completed assembly of the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope. The two main segments of the powerful space telescope were joined together in the large clean room at Goddard Space Flight Center that day. This means that the telescope is on track for launch as early as Fall 2026.

• Cosmic trip could help bacteria keep future space missions safe from radiation

  A new research collaboration that fuses fashion and science is set to send bacteria into space—and the outcomes could create radiation-sensitive fabrics capable of preventing skin cancer on Earth and protecting space explorers on the moon.

• A pioneering study on the feasibility of asteroid mining

  Much remains to be known about the chemical composition of small asteroids. Their potential to harbor valuable metals, materials from the early solar system, and the possibility of obtaining a geochemical record of their parent bodies makes them promising candidates for future use of space resources.

• Warped galaxies linked to satellite patterns and cosmic web alignment

  A research team led by Professor Woong-bae Zee at Sejong University has uncovered compelling evidence that the distinctive warped shapes of many disk galaxies are closely tied to both their surrounding satellite systems and the vast cosmic web in which they reside.

• Meet Damhán Alla—the newly christened, spider-like feature on Jupiter's moon Europa

  Irish planetary scientists have christened a spider-like feature on Jupiter's icy moon Europa as "Damhán Alla," which translates to "spider" or "wall demon."

• Black hole eats star: Student helps chart gamma-ray burst that lasted for days

  A team of astronomers including George Washington University physics Ph.D. student Eliza Neights recorded an extraordinary cosmic outburst this July which likely heralds a new kind of stellar explosion. With a flood of data from sources including NASA satellites, the team observed a gamma-ray burst (GRB), the most powerful class of cosmic explosions. But while most GRBs are over in a minute, this one continued for days.

• How Mars impacts Earth's climate

  Earth's climate has swung between ice ages and warmer periods for millions of years, driven by subtle changes in our planet's orbit and axial tilt. These variations, known as Milankovitch cycles, occur because Earth doesn't orbit the sun in isolation. The gravitational pull of other planets constantly tugs at Earth, slowly altering its orbital path, the tilt of its axis, and the direction its poles point.

• The longest GRB ever detected is an intriguing puzzle

  Gamma-ray bursts (GRB) are some of the most perplexing phenomena in nature. Even though astronomers have detected about 15,000 of them, with a new one each day, they're still mysterious. They're the most luminous, energetic explosions in the universe, and typically last only a few milliseconds, or a few minutes, with a handful of them lasting for a few hours.

• Westerlund 1: First evidence of particle outflow from a young massive star cluster

  Star clusters are of great importance in any galaxy: they are the birthplace of new stars, often containing massive stars of 10 solar masses or more. Such massive stars often drive powerful winds; the combined action of all stars in the cluster then leads to the formation of a "superbubble"—a cavity in the interstellar medium.

• NASA begins moon mission plume-surface interaction tests

  In March, NASA researchers employed a new camera system to capture data imagery of the interaction between Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost Mission-1 lander's engine plumes and the lunar surface.

• Estimating stellar-mass compact object accretion in AGN disks with a new method

  A research team from the Yunnan Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in collaboration with other researchers, has developed a new method to estimate how stellar-mass compact objects (COs)—including black holes, neutron stars, and white dwarfs—accrete matter within active galactic nucleus (AGN) disks. This work provides new insights into the evolution of these objects in extreme cosmic environments.