Using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT), astronomers have revealed the closest pair of supermassive black holes to Earth ever observed. The two objects also have a much smaller separation than any other previously spotted pair of supermassive black holes and will eventually merge into one giant black hole.

With the upcoming launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, the Hubble era is gradually drawing to a close. Here are some highlights from the countless wonders Hubble has shown us during its 31 years in space.

Scientists recently added a whopping 301 newly validated exoplanets to the total exoplanet tally. The throng of planets is the latest to join the 4,569 already validated planets orbiting a multitude of distant stars. How did scientists discover such a huge number of planets, seemingly all at once? The answer lies with a new deep neural network called ExoMiner.

In collaboration with the Breakthrough Initiative, Saber Astronautics and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Professor Peter Tuthill at the University of Sydney is leading TOLIMAN, a project to discover if the nearest stars have planets that could support life.

How are chemical elements produced in our Universe? Where do heavy elements like gold and uranium come from? Using computer simulations, a research team from the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, together with colleagues from Belgium and Japan, shows that the synthesis of heavy elements is typical for certain black holes with orbiting matter accumulations, so-called accretion disks.

Within a diamond hauled from deep beneath Earth's surface, scientists have discovered the first example of a never-before-seen mineral. Named davemaoite after prominent geophysicist Ho-kwang (Dave) Mao, the mineral is the first example of a high-pressure calcium silicate perovskite (CaSiO3) found on Earth.

Astronomy seems to be in trouble, as it is increasingly populated by researchers who seem more concerned with terrestrial politics than celestial objects, and who at times view the search for truths about nature as threatening. This became obvious in recent years, once the proposed Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) project in Hawaii was being blocked by Indigenous protestors, who view the mountain it is to be built on as sacred.

We truly are made of star stuff, as astronomer Carl Sagan once said. For the first time, astronomers have detected an element found in our bodies in a galaxy that is more than 12 billion light-years away.

As the search for extraterrestrial life heats up, scientists may need to step up their reporting game a bit. Researchers should report evidence for alien life on a scale similar to the technological readiness level scale commonly used to assess the readiness of spaceflight components, a new paper argues. The goal is to make the search for life less "binary" — life or no life — and to express it more accurately in terms of agreed-upon scientific uncertainty.

Radioactive evidence of a planet orbiting mid-transit outside our galaxy may have been spotted for the first time, NASA reports on Monday. Reflected optics courtesy of the Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO) found an exoplanet candidate in a binary system located in the Messier 51 (or “Whirlpool”) galaxy 28 million light-years away. The celestial body in question is twice the size of Saturn, circling its designated star system at about twice the distance of Saturn from our Sun.

Some have called NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope the "telescope that ate astronomy." It is the most powerful space telescope ever built and a complex piece of mechanical origami that has pushed the limits of human engineering. On Dec. 18, 2021, after years of delays and billions of dollars in cost overruns, the telescope is scheduled to launch into orbit and usher in the next era of astronomy.

Astronomers have found hints of what could be the first planet ever to be discovered outside our galaxy. Nearly 5,000 "exoplanets" - worlds orbiting stars beyond our Sun - have been found so far, but all of these have been located within the Milky Way galaxy. The possible Saturn-sized planet discovered by Nasa's Chandra X-Ray Telescope is in the Messier 51 galaxy.

The Hubble Space Telescope caught a pair of "squabbling" galaxies in action, according to the European Space Agency. The pair of objects is known as Arp 86 and includes two galaxies roughly 220 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. They are known individually as NGC 7753 and the much smaller companion NGC 7752.

Scientists spotted the star's behavior using a planet-hunting satellite. A spacecraft that usually seeks new worlds saw a white dwarf suddenly switch "off" with a swift drop in brightness. Then it switched back on again.

One of the most challenging questions to answer when confronting the Fermi Paradox is why exponentially scaling technologies haven’t taken over the universe by now.  Commonly known as von Neumann probes, the idea of a self-replicating swarm of extraterrestrial robots has been a staple of science fiction for decades.  But so far, there has never been any evidence of their existence outside the realm of fiction.

Astronomers have used a planet-hunting satellite to see a white dwarf abruptly switching on and off for the first time. The researchers led by Durham University, UK, used NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) to observe the unique phenomenon.

That is not a joyous Pac-Man munching its way across the cosmos. Even so, this remnant of a stellar explosion looks an awful lot like the iconic video game gobbler in a newly released NASA image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Venus may be a sweltering wasteland today, but scientists have questioned whether the planet was always so inhospitable. While previous studies suggested Venus might have once been covered in oceans, new research has found the opposite: Venus has likely never been able to support oceans.

Astronomers have discovered unusual signals coming from the direction of the Milky Way's center. The radio waves fit no currently understood pattern of variable radio source and could suggest a new class of stellar object.

The seventh planet from our sun gets a lot of flack for its name, but the ice giant Uranus wasn’t always called that. For nearly 70 years after it was discovered, it went by a much less unfortunate name: George.