compiled by Arlene & David Kaplan

Astronomers Have Detected an Exomoon for the First Time A discovery in a solar system 73 light-years from Earth is challenging definitions and “blurring the lines between stars, planets, and moons.” It marks the first time such an object has been detected outside our solar system—though just how close it comes to being a moon is a question researchers are still grappling with….more

How NASA Plans to Build the Habitable Worlds Observatory We’ve been covering the journey of the Habitable Worlds Observatory for some time now. Over the past few years, it’s gone from a proposal to a relatively fleshed-out plan for how and what the next Great Observatory should do—in this case, look at and characterize potentially habitable exoplanets…more

A New Look – and Sound – for Messier 94 NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory unveiled this new look at the galaxy NGC 4736, also known as Messier 94, on June 30, 2026. Messier 94 is a spiral galaxy with a bright inner ring around it, called a starburst ring, where new stars are forming, perhaps fueled by gas driven in the unique oval-shaped structure seen here…more

He’s the Last Great Land Artist You’ve Never Heard Of This spring, Charles Ross sat in his studio in SoHo, but his mind was elsewhere: a mesa in eastern New Mexico, where his life’s work, a monumental naked-eye earthwork called “Star Axis,” — part observatory and part pyramid — juts at the cosmos….more

The Dark Energy Camera’s New Image is Reminiscent of van Gogh The Dark Energy Camera’s newest image features the Corona Australis molecular cloud and its many stellar and gaseous features. The swirls of gas in the new image are reminiscent of Vincent van Gogh’s “The Starry Night.” Corona Australis (CrA) is a dark nebula about 425 light years away. It’s one of the closest star-forming regions to Earth, and contains a handful of embedded nebulae…more

NASA Rushes to Rescue a Falling Space Telescope and Push It Back Up A one-of-a-kind NASA space telescope is about to fall out of the sky. For more than two decades, the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory telescope has gazed at the fading afterglows of some of the universe’s most violent explosions. After launching in 2004, Swift initially circled about 370 miles above the Earth’s surface…more

Astronomers Find an Atmosphere on a Nearby Earthlike Planet There are a few key features that make a planet amenable to life, at least life as earthlings know it. It should be rocky, be at the right temperature for liquid water to exist and have an atmosphere. On Thursday, a team of astronomers announced that it had identified a world with all three traits….more

Titan has rivers, rainfall, lakes and a slow hydrological cycle exactly like Earth’s, except that every drop of it is liquid methane and the rock the rivers run over is water ice Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is the only place besides Earth known to have standing liquid on its surface, and with it rivers, rain, clouds, lakes and seas fed by a weather cycle that runs much like our own. The catch is in what the ingredients are. …more

Ten Spectacular Images From This Year’s Astronomy Photographer of the Year Contest Each year, the Royal Observatory Greenwich in London invites photographers from around the globe to submit their finest shots of stars, auroras, galaxies, the moon and more. The 18th edition of its ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition drew nearly 4,000 entries from 66 countries…more

For a decade the Pink Planet was too faint for any ground telescope to study — and when James Webb finally caught its spectrum, the best fit to the light was an atmosphere hazed with salt clouds. For more than a decade, one of the coldest worlds ever photographed around another star kept slipping out of reach. Astronomers could see the faint pink dot of GJ 504 b, nicknamed the Pink Planet, but they could not read its light…more

A rogue planet five to ten times the mass of Jupiter, drifting alone through space without a parent star, was observed by European astronomers in 2025 devouring six billion tons of gas and dust every second A rogue planet five to ten times the mass of Jupiter, drifting alone through space without a parent star, was observed by European astronomers in 2025 devouring six billion tons of gas and dust every second…more

Breakthrough at comet 3I/ATLAS. Scientists say they can pin down what the interstellar comet’s birthplace was like A team of scientists say comet 3I/ATLAS probably formed in the outskirts of an old star system, around a star much, much older than our Sun. The team have published a study that used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope to study the composition of 3I/ATLAS….more