The recent episodes of jet fighters shooting down spy balloons has everyone talking about how they can be used for surveillance. But if anyone had bothered to ask an astronomer, they would know we’ve been attaching telescopes to balloons for decades — and the technique even represents the latest cutting edge in NASA research.

Astronomers have detected what appear to be six massive and very ancient galaxies, a discovery they say could upend our understanding of how galaxies formed at the very beginning of the universe. While the new James Webb Space Telescope has already spotted even older galaxies, it’s the size and maturity of these six apparent mega-galaxies that have stunned scientists.

Jupiter is well known for its spectacular aurorae, thanks in no small part to the Juno orbiter and recent images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Like Earth, these dazzling displays result from charged solar particles interacting with Jupiter’s magnetic field and atmosphere. Over the years, astronomers have also detected faint aurorae in the atmospheres of Jupiter’s largest moons (aka. the “Galilean Moons“). These are also the result of interaction, in this case, between Jupiter’s magnetic field and particles emanating from the moons’ atmospheres.

When astronomers discovered that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, they theorized that some force must be pushing things farther apart and overcoming gravity, which should be slowing things down. That force was suggested to be dark energy, but no one has ever figured out from where it comes.

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) lurk in the center of large galaxies like ours. From their commanding position in the galaxy's heart, they feed on gas, dust, stars, and anything else that strays too close, growing more massive as time passes. But in rare circumstances, an SMBH can be forced out of its position and hurtle through space as a rogue SMBH.

A newly released image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope shows a crowded field of galaxies and stars, with a distant spiral galaxy standing out in stunning detail. The large galaxy that sits at the bottom of the image, LEDA 2046648, is so clear in the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST or Webb) image that its individual spiral arms are visible.

Black holes have captured our imaginations for years: the idea of a near-invisible giant vacuum cleaner drifting through space, ready to devour the Earth in one gulp, is enough to keep anyone awake at night. But now, despite their mystical past, we understand more about black holes and how they work than we ever have.

Although massive stars usually die with spectacular explosions, a handful fizzle out like dud firecrackers. Astronomers have identified the remnants of one such dud firecracker in SGR 0755-2933, a neutron star about 11,400 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Puppis. In new research, scientists say that earlier in its lifetime, this star transferred abnormally high amounts of mass to its binary companion — so much so that it was not left with enough material for an explosive death.

In a recent paper accepted to Contemporary Physics, a physicist from Imperial College London uses past missions and recent findings to encourage the importance of searching for life in the atmosphere of the solar system’s most inhospitable planet, Venus.

Since July 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope has delivered stunning news: it's seeing galaxies orders of magnitude brighter in the early universe then what science anticipated.

A team of astrophysicists has discovered a binary pair of ultra-cool dwarfs so close together that they look like a single star. They’re remarkable because they only take 20.5 hours to orbit each other, meaning their year is less than one Earth Day. They’re also much older than similar systems.

Stars are typically very "social" things. Thanks to gravity, they're often found bound together in full-blown galaxies like our own Milky Way or much smaller star clusters.

So far it’s been eye candy from heaven: The black vastness of space teeming with enigmatic, unfathomably distant blobs of light. Ghostly portraits of Neptune, Jupiter and other neighbours we thought we knew. Nebulas and galaxies made visible by the penetrating infrared eyes of the James Webb Space Telescope.

Just one year after launch, the James Webb Space Telescope is exceeding all expectations, and astronomers are thrilled. Launched on Dec. 25, 2021, the $10 billion infrared observatory was designed to learn how galaxies form and grow, to peer far back into the universe to the era of the first galaxies, to watch stars be born inside their nebulous embryos in unprecedented detail, and to probe the atmospheres of exoplanets and characterize some of the closest rocky worlds.

One of James Webb’s first sublime images showed the Carina Nebula. Astronomers have dived into the depths of its cosmic cliffs and made a great discovery. Something amazing was hidden in one of James Webb’s first spectacular images. A “treasure” was “buried” in the Carina Nebula, located 8,500 light years from us, immortalized by the JWST space observatory. NASA announced on December 15, 2022. _ _ form.

You thought Venus was hot? While the planet does have an average surface temperature of nearly 900 degrees Fahrenheit (500 degrees Celsius), there's an exoplanet just 40 light-years away from Earth that has a surface temperature a scorching three times hotter: 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit (2,000 degrees Celsius). Now, new data has led scientists to develop a theory of how this "hell planet" came to be.

A black hole engulfing a star has been identified as 8.5 billion light-years from Earth. This is the most distant detection of this type of cataclysmic event. Stars that roam too close to black holes are very reckless. They usually end up torn apart by the extreme gravity of black holes, which readily gobble up this material. We have just detected the most distant of these events, announces the European Southern Observatory (ESO) on November 30, 2022. The detection is detailed in the journal Nature.

Few things encapsulate the wonders of space like the epic Pillars of Creation, a set of gorgeous finger-like tendrils of gas and dust where stars are formed. On Wednesday, NASA and the European Space Agency revealed another fresh look at the pillars from the sharp eyes of the James Webb Space Telescope.

There’s a growing body of evidence that galaxies grow large by merging with other galaxies. Telescopes like the Hubble have captured dozens of interacting galaxies, including well-known ones like Arp 248. The Andromeda galaxy is the nearest large galaxy to the Milky Way, and a new study shows that our neighbour has consumed other galaxies in two distinct epochs.

An “overweight” neutron star has been observed by astronomers, who say the mysterious object confounds astronomical theories. The hypermassive star was produced by the merger of two smaller neutron stars. Normally such collisions result in neutron stars so massive that they collapse into a black hole almost instantaneously under their own gravity. But the latest observations revealed the monster star hovering in view for more than a day before it faded out of sight.