Earth's atmosphere has always been the enemy of ground based astronomy and don’t I know it. What would otherwise be crisp, clean datasets gets turned into blurry smudges. Space telescopes avoid the problem entirely but can only photograph tiny fragments of sky. Now, a team of mathematicians has cracked the code with an elegant algorithm that strips away atmospheric interference in seconds, potentially giving ground based observatories space quality vision whilst keeping their ability to survey great regions of sky.

When I spotted a headline about Earth's ancient oceans and urea, my brain immediately went to the obvious place. Urea, the same compound found in urine. Yes, scientists are telling us that a component of wee played a crucial role in one of the most important events in our planet's history. Sometimes science really does have a sense of humour.

Avoiding, or at least limiting the damage from, geomagnetic storms is one of the most compelling arguments for why we should pay attention to space. Strong solar storms can have an impact on everything from air traffic to farming, and we ignore them at our own peril and cost. Despite that threat, the tools that we have applied to tracking and analyzing them have been relatively primitive. Both simulations and the physical hardware devoted to it require an upgrade if we are to accurately assess the threat a solar storm poses. As a first step, a new paper from a group led by researchers at the University of Michigan created a much more detailed simulation that shows how important it is that we also have the appropriate sensing hardware in place to detect these storms as they happen.

In a newly published novel titled “Hole in the Sky,” Cherokee science-fiction author Daniel H. Wilson blends Native American tales about alien civilizations with up-to-date speculation about UFOs, now also known as unidentified anomalous phenomena or UAPs.

For decades, the dramatic difference between the Moon's two faces has been the subject of much debate. Now, a fresh look at the Moon's largest and oldest impact crater has revealed something quite unexpected. The asteroid that formed it seems to have hit from the opposite direction than everyone thought, and it created a radioactive splash zone that may finally explain the mystery. Even better, NASA's Artemis astronauts are about to land right in the middle of it.

When two galaxies merge, the supermassive black holes at their centres should eventually find each other and begin a gravitational dance that lasts millions of years. Despite decades of predictions, astronomers are still hunting for definitive proof these binary systems exist. A new review examines the clues scattered across the universe, from wobbling jets spanning hundreds of thousands of light years to specific spectral signatures, and explores why finding these black hole pairs matters for understanding both the past and future of our own Galaxy.

The JWST has pushed the boundaries of exoplanet characterization. But one thing it hasn't done yet is to determine if rocky exoplanets close to our Solar System can retain their atmospheres. The authors of a new study propose a new "five-scale height challenge" that will help astronomers obtain more precise atmospheric information on rocky exoplanets using Webb.

Betelgeuse, the stunning red star in Orion's shoulder, has been hiding a secret companion for years but proving it has been somewhat challenging. When the elusive "Betelbuddy" (I love that name) reached its maximum separation from the supergiant star last December, astronomers had just one chance before it disappeared behind Betelgeuse for another two years. Using NASA's most powerful space telescopes, researchers finally captured the tiny companion lurking in the overwhelming glare of a star 700 times larger than our Sun. But the real surprise wasn't just finding it, it was discovering what type of object it actually is, and what that reveals about one of the night sky's most famous stars and its puzzling six year brightening cycle.

Between 1 and 7 October, ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and Mars Express spacecraft turned their eyes towards interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, as it passed close to Mars.

Science fiction is edging closer to reality. A team of scientists has created a detailed roadmap for transforming Mars from a frozen, lifeless desert into a world where plants could grow and humans might one day breathe without spacesuits. The plan isn't about launching missions tomorrow, it’s about whether we should even try, and what recent breakthroughs in biology, climate engineering, and space launch technology tell us about what's now possible. But there's a catch, terraforming a planet like Mars might erase its geological history forever, destroying any traces of ancient Martian life and eliminating our chance to understand how worlds evolve. The question has shifted from "could we turn Mars green?" to something far more profound "should we?”

What if you could photograph something completely invisible? To our rather limited eyes that’s what astronomers seem to do all the time with infra red and radio astronomy to name a few. But, astronomers can do this in a rather intriguing way with something that does seem to be truly invisible! A team of astronomers have captured the latest "image" of a dark matter object a million times more massive than our Sun, not by seeing it, but by watching how it warps the light from galaxies billions of light years beyond it. Using an Earth sized telescope network they have revealed one of the smallest dark matter clumps ever found, offering a glimpse into the hidden structure of our universe.

Phosphine has caused quite a stir in the astronomical world lately. That was largely due to its (still hotly debated) detection in the atmosphere of Venus. While the only known way for phosphine to be created on terrestrial worlds, like Venus, is through some sort of biological origin, it is relatively common among larger gas giants and even “brown dwarfs” - failed stars larger than Jupiter but not quite large enough to start their own hydrogen fusion process. Previously, we hadn’t yet seen phosphine in the atmosphere of brown dwarf in other solar systems, but a new paper from a diverse group of researchers, available in pre-print form on arXiv, used data collected by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to find it for the first time. They also realized the mechanism that made it so hard to spot in the first place - the object’s metallicity.

The interior of the mysterious far side of the moon may be colder than the side constantly facing Earth, suggests a new analysis of rock samples co-led by a UCL and Peking University researcher.

An asteroid recently made the second closest pass to Earth ever observed on October 1st. And astronomers only found it after it had already completed its closest approach. That offers another lesson in how difficult it is to find small objects coming close to our planet in the vast dark ocean of space.

Billions of years ago, water flowed across Mars. Most scientists agree the red planet had rivers. But did those rivers flow into an ocean? New research from the University of Arkansas found strong evidence in Mars' geology of an ocean in the planet's northern hemisphere.

What if our understanding of Uranus and Neptune’s compositions have been wrong, specifically regarding their classifications as “ice giants”? This is what a recent study accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics hopes to address as a team of researchers from the University of Zurich investigated the interior structures of Uranus and Neptune. This study has the potential to help scientists not only better understand the formation and evolution of Uranus and Neptune but could also provide key insights into Jupiter and Saturn, and gaseous exoplanets, too.

Astronomers find a nearly metal-free star in our own back yard, which tells us a few interesting things about early star formation.

Duplicating expensive resources is expensive and wasteful, and most people would agree it's unnecessary. However, the planned increase in major satellite constellations is currently causing a massive duplication of resources as individual companies and even countries try to set up their own infrastructure in space. What’s more, there is a relatively limited amount of space in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), where many of these satellites are supposed to go - any more than that and a single collision could cause Kessler Syndrome, where many of the ones already in orbit would be destroyed and we wouldn’t be able to launch any more for a long time. A new paper from researchers at the National University of Defense Technology in China suggests an alternative to these multiple megaconstellations - a single, modular system similar to how cloud computing works on the current internet.

The China National Space Administration on Wednesday released a breathtaking image captured by the Tianwen-2 probe, showing the spacecraft and Earth framed together in a "celestial selfie."

October 2025 may provide a memorable sky scene, as Comet C/2025 A6 Lemmon puts on an encore appearance at dusk. The comet joins Comet R2 SWAN, which slides 0.26 Astronomical Units (AU) past Earth on October 20th. Both are currently fine objects for binoculars or a small telescope, vying for top spot at magnitude +6.