Astro Blog

By Daniel Clery , Science.  Excerpt: It’s as if the baby universe had caught a case of measles. Since NASA’s JWST observatory began peering into the distant universe in 2022, it has discovered a rash of “little red dots”—hundreds of them, shining within the first billion years of the 13.8-billion-year-old universe, so small and red that they defied conventional explanation. Only in the past few months has a picture begun to emerge. The little red dots, astronomers say, may be an entirely new type of object: a colossal ball of bright, hot gas, larger than the Solar System, powered not by nuclear fusion, but by a black hole. ...JWST couldn’t resolve the dots into a recognizable shape, which meant they must have been tiny—less than 2% of the diameter of the Milky Way....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/early-universe-s-little-red-dots-may-be-black-hole-stars . 

By Heather Cox Richardson.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xh9-t8xqviM .

By McKenzie Prillaman , Science.  Excerpt: About 1,400 light-years from Earth sits a  young sunlike star surrounded by cooling gas and teensy silicate minerals . These mineral solids — some of the building blocks of rocky planets — are among the first to condense from the gas, suggesting that they’re kick-starting the creation of planets in a system much like the one earthlings call home, researchers report in the July 17  Nature . “It really is the first time we’ve seen this stage of planet formation in the process,” says planetary scientist Laura Schaefer of Stanford University, who was not involved in the new study. Observing the timeline of these early hot minerals will help researchers better understand how events unfolded billions of years ago in the solar system....  Full article at https://www.sciencenews.org/article/star-earliest-birth-planet-solar-system . 

By Katherine Kornei , The New York Times.  Excerpt: If our species manages to hang on for a few billion additional years, we might be in for a wild ride — stars passing in the vicinity of the sun could cause planets in our solar system to collide or even be ejected, according  to a paper published last month  in the journal Icarus. The findings even suggest a scenario in which our world ends not consumed by the sun, but in a carom prompted by the powers of gravity. ...The researchers found that the triple threat is a massive star that makes a close approach to the sun at a relatively low velocity, magnifying its gravitational effect. But the alignment of all these attributes is rare. “A huge fraction of stellar passages are inconsequential to our solar system,” Dr. Kaib said. The researchers found that 0.5 percent of their simulations resulted in planets colliding or a planet being ejected from the solar system....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/28/...

By Kenneth Chang  and  Katrina Miller , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Vera C. Rubin Observatory...telescope, more than two decades in the making, will provide a comprehensive view of the night sky unlike anything astronomers have seen before. The project’s scientists revealed some of the first imagery it released on Monday. ...The observatory’s treasure trove of data will allow astronomers  to investigate dark energy , a force pushing the universe to expand ever faster,  as well as dark matter , a mysterious substance that behaves somewhat like galactic glue. Closer to Earth, it will identify asteroids that might be on a collision course with Earth. ...The level of detail in the Rubin images is impossible to convey on a computer screen or a newspaper page. As a result, the Rubin team has developed  Skyviewer , which lets people zoom in and out of the giant images....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/23/science/vera-rubin-telescopes-firs...

By Daniel Clery , Science.  Excerpt: Cerro Pachón in Chile ...the giant telescope is built for speed. ...The camera at its heart is fast, too, capable of spitting out a 3200-megapixel image from each exposure in less than 3 seconds. ...10 May, ...commissioning scientist Kevin Fanning prepares to take his 350-ton baby out for a spin. At the press of a button on his laptop, the towering structure begins to move and is soon rotating effortlessly on a thin film of oil. ...Rubin needs to be fast because it must cover a lot of sky—all of it. ...Rubin will march relentlessly across the firmament, capturing swaths in a field of view that covers the equivalent of 45 full Moons. At each stop its 3-ton, car-size camera will record the view with an array of 189 light sensors cooled to –100°C, producing an image so rich it would take a wall of 400 ultrahigh-definition TV screens to display it in full. Each snapshot takes 30 seconds; then the telescope slews in less than 5 seconds to a new vist...