1+ day, 5+ hour ago  (902+ words) Seven years into its mission, NASA's TESS satellite has already confirmed roughly 700 exoplanets. That sounds like a lot. But the telescope watches over 2 million stars, and most signals flagged as promising have never been properly sorted. Buried in that backlog…...

2+ day, 4+ hour ago  (863+ words) Dead satellites and spent rocket stages can orbit for decades. Relics from 1960s launches are still circling the planet right now. Scientists have known the Sun speeds up their descent " but where exactly that faster drop begins had been unclear. Sixty…...

2+ day, 7+ hour ago  (872+ words) When a planet circles its star every four days, the heat should strip its atmosphere down to basics. Heavier molecules burn off. What's left is mostly hydrogen and helium " the lightest elements, not much else. A small planet 190 light years…...

2+ day, 10+ hour ago  (786+ words) Astronomers have detected a thin atmosphere around a small icy world beyond Pluto, where gravity should not hold gas for long. The discovery raises a big question for planetary scientists. A world that small should have lost any atmosphere long…...

3+ day, 6+ hour ago  (448+ words) The Webb telescope has detected a dark, atmosphere-less rocky exoplanet that could shed light on how Earth-like worlds die....

3+ day, 15+ hour ago  (839+ words) A new study has redefined gas giant Jupiter's dimensions. The study found that the planet is about 5 miles (8 kilometers) narrower at its equator and 15 miles (24 kilometers) flatter from pole to pole than previously thought. The revised size sharpens maps of…...

5+ day, 2+ hour ago  (786+ words) A new study has found that giant planets can form more easily around two young stars than around one. Beyond the violent inner region, paired stars help fresh gas collapse into more giant-planet seeds in areas where slower planet formation…...

5+ day, 10+ hour ago  (822+ words) Most galaxies rotate. Our Milky Way rotates. The Andromeda Galaxy rotates. Nearly every galaxy in the cosmic neighborhood spins on a central axis, with stars and gas circling in roughly orderly patterns. So when astronomers find a galaxy that does…...

1+ week, 6+ hour ago  (687+ words) A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope pulls back the curtain on one of the most important stages in cosmic history: the birth of stars and the early steps toward building planets." Instead of showing distant galaxies or…...

6+ day, 4+ hour ago  (895+ words) The Hubble Space Telescope, the most celebrated observatory in history, turned 36 years last month. Last year, to mark its 35th birthday, NASA released a fresh gallery of images spanning our solar system and well beyond " from Mars's ruddy surface to star-forming…...