Astronomy
A newly found world blurs the boundary between planet and moon
The object orbits a brown dwarf that orbits a star, and astronomers aren’t sure if it’s a planet, a moon — or something else entirely.
Astronomy
More Stories in Astronomy
- Planetary Science
Meet the Milky Way’s puffiest planets
Two “superpuff” planets orbiting a sunlike star over 1,000 light-years from Earth are as big as Jupiter and as dense as cotton candy.
- Space
Pluto has landslides
New Horizons data reveal Pluto’s first six confirmed landslides along steep crater rims.
- Astronomy
Even quiet black holes create winds, new Milky Way observations reveal
New observations suggest the supermassive black hole at the Milky Way’s core is blowing gas away from the central behemoth.
- Astronomy
Astronomers may have found a record-breaking pair of black holes
At some 60 billion times the mass of the sun, this dark void could be home to a pair of black holes that are due for a cosmic collision.
- Astronomy
The earliest evidence of the first stars may lie in a distant gas clump
James Webb data reveal pristine gas irradiated by energetic light some 450 million years after the Big Bang — a sign it may house primordial stars.
- Astronomy
Clouds of water ice thread stellar nurseries in the Milky Way
NASA’s SPHEREx mapped water ice across vast regions of the galaxy, confirming that an essential molecule for life on Earth abounds in space.
- Astronomy
A rare star in a tiny galaxy preserves a record of the early universe
Found in an ultrafaint dwarf galaxy, the ancient star’s unusual chemistry indicates it formed from gas enriched by a single early supernova.
- Astronomy
A strange ‘chirp’ in a brilliant stellar blast points to a magnetar
Superluminous supernovas are the brightest stellar explosions in the universe. Astronomers may have found a mechanism that can trigger these events.
- Planetary Science
Venus has a massive lava tube
A collapsed lava tube detected in 30-year-old radar data from Venus may be part of a much wider network of underground caves.
