Evan Gough

Two New Exoplanets And The Need For New Habitable Zone Definitions

January 14, 2026

How solid is our understanding of exoplanet habitability? Are the ideas of an Optimistic Habitable Zone and a Conservative Habitable Zone sufficient to advance our understanding? New research introduces an expanded exoplanet 'temperate zone,' highlighting planets that are amenable to atmospheric study by the JWST.

Young Stellar Objects Are Prominent In A New Hubble Image

January 13, 2026

A disparate collection of young stellar objects bejewels a cosmic panorama in the star-forming region NGC 1333 in this new image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. To the left, an actively forming star called a protostar casts its glow on the surrounding gas and dust, creating a reflection nebula. Two dark stripes on opposite sides […]

New Evidence That An Ancient Martian Ocean Covered Half The Planet

January 13, 2026

Mars Was Half Covered by an Ocean susannakohler33808 Mon, 01/12/2026 - 12:00 Mars Was Half Covered by an Ocean https://mediarelations.unibe.ch/media_releases/2026/media_releases_2026/mars_was_half_covered_by_an_ocean/index_eng.html

The Global Ocean Temperature Keeps Rising But Don't Worry It's Probably Nothing

January 12, 2026

The oceans' check engine light is on and is starting to flash violently. For the eighth year in a row, the world’s oceans absorbed a record-breaking amount of heat in 2025. That means more powerful storms for us, and changing ocean chemistry that could spell the end for some living things.

A Zombie Star Blows A Magnetic Wind

January 12, 2026

Gas and dust flowing from stars can, under the right conditions, clash with a star's surroundings and create a shock wave. Now, astronomers using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT) have imaged a beautiful shock wave around a dead star—a discovery that has left them puzzled. According to all known mechanisms, the small, dead star RXJ0528+2838 should not have such a structure around it. This discovery, as enigmatic as it's stunning, challenges our understanding of how dead stars interact with their surroundings.

Few Cosmic Events Can Rival The Brightness Of This Black Hole Shredding A Star Apart

January 12, 2026

A distant black hole shredded a companion star that got too close. The star was torn to pieces and the explosion was an extremely powerful event, more energetic than a supernova. At its peak, the energy released was 400 billion times brighter than the Sun.

The Milky Way’s Black Hole Is Quiet Now, But Its Recent Past Was Far More Active

January 09, 2026

The supermassive black hole in the Milky Way's galactic center, Sagittarius A-star, is known for being quiet and dim. But that wasn't always the case. The powerful XRISM x-ray telescope shows that it flared brightly at least once in the very recent past.

NASA's Mars Sample Return Is Dead, Paving The Way For China

January 08, 2026

This year's funding for the Mars Sample Return mission has been cut. It seems unlikely that the mission will be revived in the coming years, barring some unforeseen development. This isn't a surprising development, so maybe NASA has some contingency plans.

Europa May Be Lifeless and Unihabitable After All

January 08, 2026

New research shows that Jupiter's moon Europa, one of the prime targets in the search for life, may not have the conditions required after all. The research shows that the moon lacks the type of active seafloor faulting needed to create habitability. Deep sea vents created by the faulting introduce nutrients into the water that organisms use to harness energy, and without those nutrients, the moon's subsurface ocean is likely dead.

Stellar Habitability In Our Neighbourhood

January 07, 2026

A new survey of K-type stars in the Sun's neighbourhood reveals important information about their ability to sustain their habitable zones. These stars are less massive, cooler, and dimmer than the Sun, but stay on the main sequence for many tens of billions of years. Their long lives can create the stable conditions necessary for life to develop on exoplanets.

As Puzzling As A Platypus: The JWST Finds Some Hard To Categorize Objects

January 06, 2026

Astronomers found a handful of unusual objects in JWST survey data. These 9 point sources are being called 'Astronomy's Platypus' because, like the animal, they seem to defy categorization. They're not like active galactic nuclei, and they're not like star-forming galaxies. What are they?

The Galaxy That Never Was

January 06, 2026

A team using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered a new type of astronomical object —a starless, gas-rich, dark-matter cloud that is considered a “relic” or remnant of early galaxy formation. Nicknamed “Cloud-9,” this is the first confirmed detection of such an object in the Universe. The finding furthers the understanding of galaxy formation, the early Universe, and the nature of dark matter itself.

Stars And Planets Are Linked Together, And Dust Is The Key To Understanding How

January 06, 2026

Stars and planets are linked together in their formation, evolution, and even in their demises. But many of the details behind this are yet to be revealed. New research outlines an observing strategy that could uncover more critical details.

To Understand Exoplanet Habitability, We Need A Better Understanding Of Stellar Flaring

January 05, 2026

Without a better grasp of stellar flaring, our understanding of exoplanet habitability is at an impasse. Red dwarfs are the most numerous type of star in the galaxy, and they host many rocky exoplanets in their habitable zones. The problem is, they're known to flare so violently that it may negate their habitable zones. A group of researchers propose a new telescope designed solely to study stellar flaring.

The Hubble Witnesses Catastrophic Collisions In The Fomalhaut System

December 19, 2025

For the first time, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have spotted a pair of catastrophic collisions in another solar system. They were observing Fomalhaut, a bright star about 25 light-years away, and detected a pair of planetesimal collisions and their light-reflecting dust clouds. The system is young, and the collisions reflect what our Solar System was like when it was young.

Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transients Are Likely Large Black Holes Shredding Their Massive Companions

December 18, 2025

In 2024, astronomers discovered the brightest Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transient (LFBOT) ever observed. LFBOTs are extremely bright flashes of blue light that shine for brief periods before fading away. New analysis of this record-breaking burst, which includes observations from the International Gemini Observatory, funded in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation, challenges all prior understanding of these rare explosive events.

The JWST Found A Jekyll-and-Hyde Galaxy In The Early Universe

December 18, 2025

In a glimpse of the early universe, astronomers have observed a galaxy as it appeared just 800 million years after the Big Bang – a cosmic Jekyll and Hyde that looks like any other galaxy when viewed in visible and even ultraviolet light but transforms into a cosmic beast when observed at infrared wavelengths. This object, dubbed Virgil, is forcing astronomers to reconsider their understanding of how supermassive black holes grew in the infant universe.

Comet 3I/ATLAS Has A Green Glow In New Color Images From Gemini North

December 17, 2025

Gemini North captured new images of Comet 3I/ATLAS after it reemerged from behind the Sun on its path out of the Solar System. The data were collected during a Shadow the Scientists session — a unique outreach initiative that invites students around the world to join researchers as they observe the Universe on the world’s most advanced telescopes.

The First Alien Civilization We Encounter Will Be Extremely Loud

December 16, 2025

When we gaze up at the night sky, we assume that what we're seeing is a representative population of similar stars at similar distances. But it's not. The stars we see are a mixture of massive and small, distant and near. In fact, we can't even see our closest neighbour, Proxima Centauri. We see these stars because they have large observational signals, and that illustrates one of the problems in astronomy.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Will Teach Us A Lot More About Cosmic Voids

December 16, 2025

The Large-Scale Structure of the Universe features massive filaments where galaxy clusters and superclusters reside. In between these filaments are cosmic voids, vast regions that are nearly empty. The Nancy Grace Roman will map and study 80,000 of these voids to place constraints on Dark Energy drives the expansion of the Universe.

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