Evan Gough

A Beautiful Death: How a Dying Star Created the Crystal Ball Nebula

May 22, 2026

Planetary nebula are created when a dying star sheds it outer layers. The gas is lit up by the star and all the gorgeous, changing detail is exposed. NGC 1514, the Crystal Ball Nebula, is about 1500 light years away and contains a binary pair in its center. The orbits and winds from the stars create the Crystal Ball's beautiful form.

Supermassive Black Holes Can Render Exoplanets Uninhabitable at Great Distances

May 22, 2026

Life on Earth relies on energy from astrophysical sources. But what if the astrophysical source isn't a star, but a supermassive black hole and its active galactic nuclei? Life needs shelter from their powerful energy, and the only shelter is distance. New research shows that SMBH and their AGN could strip away exoplanet atmospheres and destroy their ozone at vast distances.

The Magnetar at the Heart of a Superluminous Supernova

May 21, 2026

Superluminous supernovae are the royalty in the supernova world. They're up to 100 times brighter than a standard supernova, and astrophysicists want to know why. New research shows that magnetars are responsible.

Future Mars Rovers Could Mimic a Swimming Motion to Traverse the Planet's Surface

May 20, 2026

Some animals can move efficiently beneath granular surfaces. These include the sandfish (Scincus scincus), a lizard native to the Sahara. It can burrow into the sand and then literally "swim" through the desert sand to hunt or escape predators. German researchers are working on a rover wheel design that mimics that swimming motion. In testing, the wheel system outperformed regular wheels.

NASA's Psyche Mission Says Goodbye to Mars and Heads for its Metal-Rich Target

May 20, 2026

Spacecraft often use planets for gravity-assist or "slingshot" maneuvers. NASA's Psyche mission used Mars for that purpose during a May 15th flyby. The flyby accelerated the spacecraft and aimed it at its eventual destination, the asteroid 16 Psyche. The flyby was also an opportunity to take some pictures of Mars, and to test and calibrate the spacecraft's science instruments.

It Looks Like Europa Doesn't Have Plumes of Water Vapour After All

May 20, 2026

In 2014, researchers presented the discovery of water vapour plumes being emitted from Jupiter's moon Europa. This caused quite a stir; it meant that the moon's buried ocean was accessible without contending with the thick ice shell that concealed it. But new research by the same researchers questions those detections.

Mergers, Mayhem, and the Milky Way

May 20, 2026

Galaxies grow through mergers and collisions, and astronomers want to know more about the mergers in the Milky Way's past. But mergers can stir up the stars in the resulting galaxy, making it difficult to determine exactly when an ancient merger occurred. A new study led by researchers at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) and the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC) may have overcome that challenge.

An Explanation for the Massive Black Holes the JWST Found in the Early Universe

May 19, 2026

Ever since the JWST found over-massive black holes in the early Universe, researchers have been trying to understand them. Theory showed that black holes and their galaxies grew in synchronization with each other. That can't explain the JWST's findings, but new research might.

Iron and Ice: Earth's Passage Through the Interstellar Cloud

May 18, 2026

Our Solar System is currently passing through the Local Interstellar Cloud, a region of highly diluted gas and dust between the stars. On its path, Earth continuously accumulates iron-60, a rare radioactive isotope of iron produced in stellar explosions. This has now been confirmed by an international research team led by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) through the analysis of Antarctic ice tens of thousands of years old. From the steady but time-varying influx, the researchers conclude that the radioactive isotope has been stored within the cloud since a long-past stellar explosion.

Gazing Into the Past With TIME

May 18, 2026

How can astronomers observe ancient galaxies when they're so challenging to resolve? By looking at a whole bunch of them at once in a single spectral line and seeing how it changes over time. That's what a new instrument called the Tomographic Ionized-carbon Mapping Experiment (TIME) does.

The Milky Way's Turbulence Distorts Light from Distant Quasars

May 18, 2026

We may be getting better images of the Milky Way's supermassive black hole in the future. Astronomers used 10 years of observations of a distant blazar to detect turbulence in the Milky Way's interstellar medium. This turbulence makes images of Sagittarius A-star blurry.

A Galaxy Cluster's Wild Youth

May 15, 2026

The galaxy cluster Abell 2029 is sometimes described as “the most relaxed cluster in the Universe.” This moniker does not arise from some sort of mellow vibe, but rather because of how calm and undisturbed the superheated gas that pervades the cluster appears to be. But new Chandra X-ray observations of the massive cluster highlight a major merger 4 billion years ago that still shape it today.

A Cataclysmic Upswelling of Groundwater Carved This Channel on Mars

May 14, 2026

Shalbatana Vallis is a 1300 km water channel on Mars. It was carved out in one cataclysmic flooding event, possibly triggered by a massive impact. It's more evidence that liquid water once flowed on Mars.

The Roman Space Telescope is Ahead of Schedule, and the Hubble is Giving it a Jump Start

May 14, 2026

One of the core community surveys of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, the Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey, is expected to locate over a thousand exoplanets that orbit far away from their stars, beyond the orbital distance of Earth from the Sun. Although Roman hasn’t launched yet, astronomers already are gathering useful supporting data by utilizing NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, which could assist astronomers in analyzing Roman data.

NASA's Perseverance Rover Is About To Finish A Marathon

May 14, 2026

Perseverance has travelled almost 26 miles, or 42 km. That's just shy of a marathon, which is 26.2 miles or 42.195 kilometers. Along the way, it's abraded and studied 62 rocks and collected 27 rock cores. And it's not done yet.

Forget Searching for Individual Biosignatures. Instead, Find Their Patterns

May 13, 2026

The search for life elsewhere focuses on biosignatures. These are chemicals in atmospheres that can only be attributed to life. But despite the prowess of the JWST, finding slam-dunk proof of life on other worlds is a confounding exercise. New research suggests that rather than focus on individual chemicals, we should look for statistical patterns.

How Super-Quasars Shaped Early Galaxies and Confounded the JWST

May 13, 2026

Extremely powerful quasars in the early Universe drove star-forming gas out of their galaxies. These Super-quasars are behind the JWST's puzzling early Universe observations.

Before and After the 2025 Tsunami in Alaska

May 12, 2026

In 2025, a retreating glacier in Alaska caused a landslide into a fjord named Tracy Arm. The landslide triggered a tsunami that swept down the fjord into the ocean. The tsunami reached a height of more than 480 meters, the second highest tsunami ever recorded.

How 'Snowball Earth' Was A Tug-Of-War

May 11, 2026

A new study by planetary scientists at Harvard offers an explanation for one of Earth’s great climate puzzles: how the Sturtian glaciation, an ancient ice age when the planet was nearly entirely frozen, could have lasted 56 million years. A large igneous province in Canada helped them figure it out.

Molybdenum Was Scarce, But Early Life Chose It Anyway

May 11, 2026

Life on Earth depends on a critical dance of elements throughout the biosphere. One of these elements is Molybdenum, a transition metal that speeds up important biochemical reactions in cells. New research shows that despite its ancient scarcity, and despite the greater availability of other, similar metals, life "chose" Molybdenum earlier than thought.

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