An artist’s representation of twisting magnetic waves (inset) revealed for the first time by the NSF Inouye Solar Telescope. These upward-traveling torsional waves coexist with other wave types and may be an essential ingredient in solving the mystery of why the Sun’s atmosphere is so hot. For more information see Morton et al. (2025). Credit: NSF/NSO/AURA/J. Williams

Scientists Spot Long-Hypothesized Twisting Magnetic Waves in the Sun’s Corona with NSF Inouye Solar Telescope, Hinting at a Hidden Engine Driving Key Solar Phenomena

For more than half a century, scientists have been puzzled by one of the Sun’s unsolved mysteries: why is its outer atmosphere, the corona, millions of degrees hotter than the solar surface below? This superheated ...
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Slightly curved thin luminous lines from purple to turquoise to green to red and then yellow, run vertically over on a black background.

New Instrument at SOAR Achieves First Light with Observations of Remarkable Binary Star System

The SOAR Telescope, located on Cerro Pachón in Chile, has received a major upgrade with the installation of the SOAR Telescope Echelle Spectrograph (STELES). The long-awaited instrument achieved first light in August with observations of ...
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A wide view of a region of space filled with stars and clumps of orange clouds.

NASA’s Webb Explores Largest Star-Forming Cloud in Milky Way

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has revealed a colorful array of massive stars and glowing cosmic dust in the Sagittarius B2 molecular cloud, the most massive and active star-forming region in our Milky Way galaxy.  ...
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Gaseous yellow-orange filaments look like a rose seen from the side and tilted slightly from upper left to lower right, slightly higher than the center of the frame. Extending from the rose to upper left and lower right are gaseous outflows that appear as red lobes that have an overall shape of tall, narrow triangles with rounded tips. Each red triangle is made up of wavy, irregular lines. Dozens of stars are scattered across the field. One particularly bright white star with eight diffraction spikes is located at the top of the yellow rose. Another bright blue star with even more prominent diffraction spikes is to its lower left. The background of space is black.

NASA’s Webb Observes Immense Stellar Jet on Outskirts of Our Milky Way

A blowtorch of seething gasses erupting from a volcanically growing monster star has been captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Stretching across 8 light-years, the length of the stellar eruption is approximately twice the ...
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A glowing ball with a gold halo and tail streaks to the right in the center of this image. The black background is cover with rainbow colored streaks throughout the image.

Gemini South Captures Growing Tail of Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS During Educational Observing Program

Astronomers and students working together through a unique educational initiative have obtained a striking new image of the growing tail of interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS. The observations reveal a prominent tail and glowing coma from this ...
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A close up image of the Sun with an orange wave-like structure in th middle and bright yellow sections above and below ir. It is covered in dark lines indicating the direction of the wave.

The NSF Inouye Solar Telescope Delivers Record-Breaking Images of Solar Flare, Coronal Loops

On August 8, 2024, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope captured the sharpest-ever images of a solar flare at the H-alpha wavelength (656.28 nm), revealing dark coronal loop strands in ...
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An image titled “James Webb Space Telescope, Uranus, Discovery of Moon S 2025 U1”. At center is the planet Uranus, a blue globe with a large white spot occupying most of the planet. It’s surrounded by a series of rings that get brighter as you move outward. Beyond the rings are 14 labeled moons appearing as points of light. Just beyond the outermost ring at 10 o’clock, a faint moon is circled and labeled S 2025 U1. At far left, the brightest moon is labeled Miranda. Additional moons clockwise from Miranda are Puck, Cressida, Mab, Perdita, Desdemona, Belinda, Bianca, Ophelia, Rosalind, Portia, Cupid, and Juliet. At lower right are compass arrows with east pointing to 11 o’clock and north pointing to 2 o’clock. At bottom, a label reads NIRCam F150W2.

New Moon Discovered Orbiting Uranus Using NASA’s Webb Telescope

Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, a team led by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has identified a previously unknown moon orbiting Uranus, expanding the planet’s known satellite family to 29. The detection was made ...
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At the center of the image is a comet that appears as a teardrop-shaped bluish cocoon of dust coming off the comet’s solid, icy nucleus and seen against a black background. The comet appears to be heading to the bottom left corner of the image. About a dozen short, light blue diagonal streaks are seen scattered across the image, which are from background stars that appeared to move during the exposure because the telescope was tracking the moving comet.

As NASA Missions Study Interstellar Comet, Hubble Makes Size Estimate

A team of astronomers has taken the sharpest-ever picture of the unexpected interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS using the crisp vision of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble is one of many missions across NASA’s fleet of space telescopes slated to ...
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A glittering diagonal group of glowing yellow galaxies shine out of the image filled with glowing points of light.

DECam’s Deep View of Abell 3667 Illuminates the Past of a Galaxy Cluster and the Future of Astronomical Imaging

An actively merging galaxy cluster is featured in this image assembled from a total of 28 hours of observations with the 570-megapixel Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera, mounted on the U.S. National Science Foundation ...
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Two elliptical galaxies at upper right and lower left appear as fuzzy white ovals. At bottom center is a fuzzy purple blob outlined by a white box. White lines angle outward from the corners of the box to a blow-up of the purple blob. At the center is a white dot labeled HLX-1. The main image also has two bright stars with prominent diffraction spikes. The background of space is black, and is speckled with tiny white dots.

NASA’s Hubble, Chandra Spot Rare Type of Black Hole Eating a Star

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have teamed up to identify a new possible example of a rare class of black holes. Called NGC 6099 HLX-1, this bright X-ray source seems to reside in a compact ...
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Betelgeuse and Its Stellar Companion in Orion

Gemini North Discovers Long-Predicted Stellar Companion of Betelgeuse

Astronomers have discovered a companion star in an incredibly tight orbit around Betelgeuse using the NASA and U.S. National Science Foundation-funded ‘Alopeke instrument on Gemini North, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, partly funded ...
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Comet 3I/ATLAS Seen With Gemini North

Gemini North Observes Comet 3I/ATLAS

Interstellar objects are visitors from solar systems beyond our own, and the third ever such object, known as 3I/ATLAS, has just been discovered. Using the Gemini North telescope, astronomers have captured 3I/ATLAS as it makes ...
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