Posts

Chariklo’s Rings Are Evolving

By -
By Kimberly M. S. Cartier , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Tiny asteroid Chariklo, floating through the void between Saturn and Uranus, boasts two rings. It’s the first asteroid found to have them, and their existence took astronomers by surprise when they were spotted in 2013. ...“The opacity of the outer ring is now lower than in the previous observations, but also the opacity of the inner ring was stronger,” said Pablo Santos-Sanz , an astrophysicist at Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía in Granada, Spain, and lead researcher on the discovery. ... Chariklo is a Centaur asteroid, meaning it orbits the Sun in the space between the giant planets. It’s 302 kilometers (108 miles) across, is not very spherical, and orbits about 2.3 billion kilometers (1.5 billion miles) from the Sun. In 2013, Chariklo passed between earthbound observers and a distant star, an alignment called stellar occultation. Astronomers saw that the star’s light dimmed twice before Chariklo obscured the star and twice a...
Read more

New space telescope will reopen astronomers’ view of the far-infrared

By -
By Daniel Clery , Science.  Excerpt: NASA has selected a far-infrared space telescope to explore the faint, cool glow of gas and dust that fuel star formation and coalesce into planets. The $1.2 billion PRIMA is NASA’s first Probe class mission, intended to fill a gap between relatively inexpensive, researcher-led Explorer missions and multibillion-dollar flagship missions such as the JWST observatory. Due to launch in 2033, PRIMA would also end an observing gap for astronomers, who have lacked a space-based far-infrared instrument since Europe’s Herschel telescope ceased operation in 2013....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/new-space-telescope-will-reopen-astronomers-view-far-infrared . 
Read more

Astronomers Detect Radio Signals Coming Directly From an Exoplanet For The First Time

By -
By David Nield , ScienceAlert.  Excerpt: Now, a team from the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian and the University of Oregon has announced an important first: A radio signal coming directly from an exoplanet (a planet outside the Solar System). Previously, radio detections in planet-hosting systems couldn't be unambiguously localized to the planets rather than the stars they're circling. However, this isn't aliens trying to get in touch. It's the signal coming from the exoplanet's auroras, created by charged particles interacting with atmospheric and magnetic field conditions to release energy....  Full article at https://www.sciencealert.com/astronomers-detect-radio-signals-coming-directly-from-an-exoplanet-for-the-first-time .
Read more

A new 222-m diameter lunar crater

By -
By Mark S. Robinson et al, Science Advances.  Abstract: Observing the aftermath of recent impact events on the Moon tests models of impact frequency, surface change rates, and cratering physics. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) Wide Angle Camera (WAC; 100-meter scale) images the whole Moon each month and has done so since 2010. ...In fall 2025, a routine temporal comparison of WAC image sets revealed a new 222-meter-diameter crater that formed in spring 2024. This is the largest contemporary impact crater found in the Solar System and, according to current models, a once-in-132-year event. ...images show that the crater exposed complex geology, inform current models of cratering mechanics, and document widespread surface changes extending more than 1000 crater radii....  Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aeh7812 .
Read more

NASA’s Roman telescope readies a sweeping view of the universe

By -
By Daniel Clery , Science.  Excerpt: In recent years, astronomy has become a big data science, with survey telescopes capturing thousands of objects in a single look. As soon as 30 August, NASA will take that approach into space with the launch of the $4.3 billion Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. With the Hubble Space Telescope’s sharp vision but a field of view 100 times larger, Roman will rapidly survey the sky to tackle some of astronomy’s biggest questions—from the nature of dark energy to the demographics of planets around other stars....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/nasa-s-roman-telescope-readies-sweeping-view-universe .
Read more

China mission aims for the Moon’s hidden water with ‘hopping’ probe

By -
By Dennis Normile , Science.  Excerpt: Over decades, lunar orbiters have amassed evidence that the Moon’s polar craters hold stores of water, locked up as ice. But no mission has directly sampled these frozen deposits to determine how much ice is there, how it is distributed, or how it got there in the first place. As early as next week, China will launch Chang’e-7, a robotic mission designed to address those questions by sending a thruster-powered “hopping” probe into a crater near the lunar south pole, among the coldest, darkest places in the Solar System. ...with the Chang’e missions, named after a Chinese Moon goddess, China “grew its capabilities step by step,” he says, progressing from orbiters to landers, rovers, and, most recently, the first sample return from the Moon’s far side . ...Rocks returned by the Apollo missions of the 1960s and ’70s have long suggested sunlit regions of the Moon are nearly bone dry. But in the 1990s, NASA’s Clementine and Lunar Prospector orbiter...
Read more

Astronomers discover a brand-new type of astrophysical object: A black hole star

By -
By Jennifer Chu | MIT News .  Excerpt: Astronomers at MIT and elsewhere have spotted an extremely bright red spot [that] resembles an enormous star, spanning the size of our solar system. But it also is putting out 100 billion times more energy than any known star can physically produce. ...astronomers are calling it a “black hole star.” In a paper appearing today in the journal Nature , the team presents their analysis of the new object, which they discovered using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The telescope spotted the bright red dot in the very early universe, just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. ...The object is likely a hugely dense cloud of gas, powered not by standard nuclear fusion, but by a central black hole ...100,000 times as massive as the sun....  Full article at https://news.mit.edu/2026/astronomers-discover-brand-new-type-astrophysical-object-black-hole-star-0812 .
Read more