compiled by Arlene & David Kaplan

Back Then, Baby Galaxies. Next, a Super-Mega Galactic Cluster? Like basketball scouts discovering a nimble, super-tall teenager, astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope reported recently that they had identified a small, captivating group of baby galaxies near the dawn of time. These galaxies, the scientists say, could well grow into one of the biggest conglomerations of mass in the universe, a vast cluster…more

Second ‘Impossible’ Ring Found Around Distant Dwarf Planet Earlier this year, astronomers announced that a tiny world beyond Neptune with a diameter about one-third that of Earth’s moon possessed a Saturn-like ring that should not be there. It now turns out that there are two such “impossible” rings…more

Royal Society: Four incredible objects that made science history One of the first scientific findings signed by a woman is now online for the public to see for the first time. Martha Gerrish’s descriptions of the stars in 1734 joins discoveries by Isaac Newton, Victorian fossil hunters and pioneer photographers…more

The Smallest Moon of Mars May Not Be What It Seemed New high-resolution images of tiny Deimos taken by an Emirati orbiter suggest that it may not be the captured asteroid that scientists once said it was. “We’re getting the highest resolution ever,” said Hessa Al Matroushi, the science lead on the mission at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center in Dubai…more

A Giant Telescope Grows in Chile LAS CAMPANAS OBSERVATORY, Chile — To walk among the observatory domes of the Atacama Desert is to brush your hair with the stars. The Atacama, on a plateau high in the Chilean Andes, is one of the driest and darkest places in the world. During the day one can see to Bolivia, far to the east, where clouds billow into thunderstorms…more

A Fresh View of an Increasingly Familiar Black Hole A patch of pure nothing in a faraway galaxy has lately become the gravitational center of attention for radio astronomers. That would be a giant black hole, with the gravity of 6.5 billion suns, that spits high-energy particles from the center of the galaxy Messier 87, which lies some 50 million light-years from Earth…more

A Mysterious Spiral in the Alaska Sky Had an Earthly Explanation At first, Ronnie Cole thought the bright light in the sky over southern Alaska was an airplane.Mr. Cole, a tour guide with Alaska Photo Treks, was setting up a portrait with two of his clients in the early hours of Saturday when he noticed “there was something weird about the light”…more

Solar eclipse: Thousands flock to remote Australian town for rare celestial event A rare solar eclipse has thrilled thousands of people who flocked to a tiny Australian town for one of the best vantage points on Earth to see it. The sky in Exmouth in Western Australia turned dark for about 60 seconds on Thursday, when the Moon cast a 25 mile (40km)-wide shadow over the area…more

From Bullets to ‘Bird Residue,’ the Many Trials of Telescopes Few things in science appear to be as delicate or precarious as the giant mirrors at the hearts of modern telescopes. These mirrors — doughnuts of glass meters in diameter, weighing tons and costing millions of dollars — are polished within a fraction of a wavelength of visible light into the precise concavity required…more

Satellites Threaten Astronomy, but a Few Scientists See an Opportunity Each night, the stars of the sky compete with thousands of satellites. The number of intruders is only growing as constellations of satellites proliferate, with companies planning to launch orbiters by the tens of thousands to transmit internet and other communications signals back to Earth…more

New Mars Map Lets You ‘See the Whole Planet at Once’ A new global map of Mars offers a fresh perspective on the planet. The map, released earlier this month, was pieced together from 3,000 pictures taken by the United Arab Emirates’ Hope spacecraft, and it shows the red planet in its true light. “These are all natural colors on Mars,”…more