work on its largest scales? And are there other worlds like ours, maybe even life? For decades, NASA’s great space telescopes have chipped at those questions by zooming in on distant galaxies, newborn stars, and the faint atmospheres of faraway planets....

entire field of astrobiology. It is, in essence, an ultimate “cheat sheet” for where to point the world’s most powerful telescopes. Prioritizing the James Webb Space Telescope Observing time on instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is...

led by Sarah Greenstreet, analyzed more than 1,100 images taken over a span of nine nights. Unlike traditional telescopes that peer deeply at a single galaxy, the Rubin Observatory takes wide-angle “snapshots” of the entire sky. This allowed the team to...

over time. The Prediction Problem Tracking spacecraft works well while they are still in orbit. Radar systems and telescopes can follow them closely. However, once an object starts to hit the thicker parts of the atmosphere, things change quickly. Heat...

of about magnitude 10, it is considered bright by exoplanet standards. This makes it easier to study using ground-based telescopes. Data from the Gaia spacecraft show that the star’s distance and motion through the galaxy are well measured. Its movement...

volume can be hundreds of times larger than the star’s original size. An Abrupt Change in Appearance In 2013 and 2014, telescopes recorded a distinct change in the light coming from WOH G64. The star appeared to be moving away from its status as a red...

swept across detectors on Earth, marking the merger of two black holes billions of light years away. Within seconds, telescopes recorded a burst of high-energy radiation from the same region of the sky. It was brief, intense, and unexpected. The...

including MOST (launched in 2003) and NEOSSat (launched in 2013). Both missions demonstrated that compact, cost-effective telescopes can deliver meaningful scientific results. MOST notably contributed to exoplanet science by revealing the unusually low...

remnants of massive stars that have exploded in a cataclysmic event. These enigmatic objects, typically invisible to most telescopes, could be unveiled using the power of gravitational microlensing, a phenomenon that Roman is uniquely equipped to study....

whole system. Tracking the TOI‑1710 system. Astronomers combined observations from the NEID instrument, TESS, and other telescopes to study the planet’s orbit. The data revealed the planet’s tilted path, confirmed its transit signal, and showed a...

magnetic cycles, starspots, and rotation—can reshape the planet’s environment and confound the signals that telescopes collect. As the Habitable Worlds Observatory draws nearer, astronomers are prioritizing stars whose activity is well characterized. To...

of its surface gravity. Because the event horizon marks the point of no return for any form of radiation, conventional telescopes cannot capture its image. Instead, the team examined the gravitational‑wave imprint produced as the two black holes merged,...

campaign was coordinated by Ko Arimatsu of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and involved both professional telescopes and amateur observers at four sites across Japan. By combining the data, the team refined the size estimate for 2002 XV93...

longer route to Earth. The resulting delay produces expanding rings of X‑ray light that can be captured by space‑based telescopes. Because the ring expansion rate depends solely on the geometry of the dust‑source‑observer triangle, astronomers can infer...

began when the planet was first detected by TESS from just a single transit on Christmas Day 2020. Our team then pointed telescopes from the Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) in Chile at the star for more than 200 nights before we caught the final...

Changes and the Planet’s Evening Exit As September progresses, Venus will descend rapidly toward the horizon. Through telescopes—or steady binoculars in good conditions—the planet will appear larger while its illuminated portion shrinks into a thin...

released a peer‑reviewed analysis warning that the company’s long‑range plans could brighten night skies over major telescopes by up to four times. Reflect Orbital Secures License for First Light‑Redirecting Satellite On 9 July 2026, the Federal...

mini‑Neptune exoplanets. Credit: The Astrophysical Journal The authors stress that forthcoming observations from powerful telescopes will need to account for this hidden water component, as atmospheric spectra alone may underestimate a planet’s true...

while offering protection against stellar radiation. Whether such an atmosphere persists is an open question. Future Telescopes May Reveal Atmospheric Secrets The most promising avenue for atmospheric characterization is NASA’s upcoming Habitable Worlds...

the observatory for the harsh conditions of orbit. The agency’s outreach reflects growing enthusiasm for next‑generation telescopes. As new platforms prepare for deployment beyond Earth, the scientific community anticipates large‑scale surveys that will...