Lyman-α · 121.6 nm
The long view: galaxy formation and mergers, redshift records, the cosmic microwave background, and the measurements that keep refusing to agree with each other.
Galaxies & Cosmology
The building blocks of rocky planets may have begun forming just 100 million years after the Big Bang—long before the first galaxies even existed—according to new research from the University of Portsmouth.
How bad timing, a studio in financial turmoil, and a movie that looked nothing like the cartoon conspired to defeat the most powerful man in the universe.
In the image above, a faint trail of stars can be seen stretching across the galaxy. These structures, known as globular cluster stellar streams, are coherent stellar structures that retain a record of their dynamical history and can provide unique insights into the evolution of…
A distant black hole star is providing strong evidence that these objects lie at the hearts of the mysterious little red dots found shortly after the Big Bang by the James Webb Space Telescope.
Chrysi Malouchou Kanellopoulou reviews The Random Universe: How Models and Probability Help us Make Sense of the Cosmos by Andrew H Jaffe
Hunting for dark matter usually means building something enormous and burying it — a tank of liquid xenon in a mine, a magnet the size of a lorry, decades of engineering and a great deal of money. A team in Japan have just done it differently. They realised that the Earth's own…
This article is for students grades 5-8. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is NASA’s newest astrophysics observatory. The telescope will scan large sections of space. Roman will help astronomers answer questions about dark energy, dark matter, exoplanets, and more…
A supernova discovered in 2010 appears to have created tens of thousands of Earth masses of dust.
"It's part of the fabric of astronomy research now."
Astronomers have nearly doubled the number of known cosmic X-ray sources.
Some black holes roaming the Universe today may actually be older than the Big Bang. A new cosmic “bounce” model suggests the Universe expanded from an earlier contracting phase, allowing ancient black holes to survive the transition as cosmic fossils. These relics could…
Andromeda has slowed its star-forming rate over the last 40 million years. Scientists think they finally know why.
Hold on to your telescopes: The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys team has released the largest-ever 2D color map of the universe. The 5.6-trillion-pixel map contains nearly 4 billion celestial objects, primarily stars and galaxies. The data is available for all to use and publicly…
The newest DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys map, 13 years in the making, covers three-quarters of the sky and catalogs nearly four billion objects. This treasure trove is available to all and contains stars, galaxies, supernovae, gravitational lenses, and much more. Two NSF NOIRLab…
Mian Zhu and Yi-Fu Cai 2026 ApJL 1004 L34 In a cosmology framework that proposes the universe began with a period of contraction before the Big Bang, researchers find that high-frequency gravitational waves oscillate in a way that is potentially detectable.
Astrobites reports on whether the correlation between galactic radio, infrared, and gamma-ray emission is truly a sign that cosmic-ray electrons deposit all their energy before they can escape to intergalactic space.
Since it became operational in 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has released some truly breathtaking views of the cosmos. These images highlight how advancements since the days of the venerable Hubble Space Telescope are now providing the deepest and clearest views of…
NASA engineers have found a clever way to squeeze more life out of Voyager 2, nearly half a century after it left Earth. In an operation nicknamed the “Big Bang,” the team simultaneously shut down certain power-hungry hardware and switched to lower-power alternatives while…
Composing some 85% of the universe's total mass, dark matter betrays its presence only through gravity, unlike ordinary matter. Yet through new research published in Physical Review D, a team led by David Dunsky of New York University has proposed a new way to hunt for the…
Using fast radio bursts, researchers have measured just how empty cosmic voids truly are.
A rare cosmic explosion has given astronomers an unprecedented view of a massive star in its final moments, revealing a previously missing link between ordinary supernovae and the most energetic explosions in the Universe. Several NSF NOIRLab facilities and instruments helped to…
Astrobites reports on a whodunit of cosmic significance: who killed star formation in massive elliptical galaxies?
Brief but powerful flashes of radio waves are aiding astronomers' quest to find and map cosmic gas.
Dark matter particles may exert a hidden force on one another, but its effects are stranger than expected. An extra attraction helps the particles cluster, yet it also makes dark matter effectively lighter as the Universe expands. That weakens its gravitational impact and…
Scientists have identified LHAASO J1912+1014u as a cosmic accelerator that can push protons beyond one quadrillion electron volts. The finding may help reveal where the Milky Way’s most energetic cosmic rays come from and how they influence the galaxy.
A new image from NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory offers a spectacularly deep view into a famous region of sky known as the COSMOS field. Located in the constellation Sextans, COSMOS is one of the most observed patches of the Universe — and Rubin’s new image adds a powerful new…
Jiazheng Zhu et al 2026 ApJL 1004 L10 Discovered just 6 billion years after the Big Bang, AT2025wet is the highest-redshift non-jetted tidal disruption event known, allowing researchers to probe the missing-energy puzzle.
What powers the prominent helium emission from Hebe, a gas clump seen just 450 million years after the Big Bang?
One of the biggest mysteries in modern astronomy is how the Universe managed to grow enormous black holes so quickly.
Cosmic expansion allows distant galaxies to move away faster than light, while still letting us see ancient light they emitted when they were much closer. Eventually, accelerating expansion will push nearly every galaxy beyond our Local Group out of sight, making the Universe…
A new theoretical study offers a possible explanation for how the Universe can grow more complex without violating the second law of thermodynamics. Using a quantum gravity framework called Gravity from Entropy, mathematician Ginestra Bianconi found that the Universe’s total…
The galaxies FCC 224 and FCC 240 appear to be a rare example of a dark-matter-poor, globular-cluster-rich pair formed via colliding dwarf galaxies.
A recent study used the kinematics, chemical composition, and ages of thousands of stars to determine when the Milky Way settled into the spiral disk we know it as today.
The 570-megapixel Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera (DECam) captures a vibrant scene, filled with swirls and stars reminiscent of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. This new cosmic masterpiece features glowing nebula NGC 6729 on the left and globular star cluster NGC…
Diala M. Taneenah et al 2026 ApJL 1003 L11 Researchers have discovered two chemically distinct populations in a sample of 97 metal-poor stars in the Milky Way halo, potentially providing a way to identify accreted halo stars.
Dark matter may be far more complicated than scientists once believed. A new study suggests it could consist of at least two different kinds of particles that slowly separate over time, with heavier particles sinking toward the centers of galaxies and lighter ones drifting…
Slater J. Oden et al 2026 ApJ 1003 9 By constructing a detailed distance map to the Magellanic Clouds, researchers have revealed substructures within this interacting galaxy pair, including an azimuthal warp in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Astronomers discover a huge plume of gas streaming out of a galaxy during rapid star formation
Bojun Tao et al 2026 ApJS 284 31 Analysis of 93 stellar halos detected in a sample of 169 high-inclination galaxies showed that high-mass galaxies have more extended halos and more active merger histories, among other findings.
Callum T. Donnan et al 2026 ApJ 1002 134 PAN-z14-1 is the fourth most distant galaxy known to date, and its properties are consistent with the emerging picture of two separate galaxy populations at redshifts greater than 10.
New analysis of JWST observations suggests that the Bullet Cluster of galaxies might only have half as much dark matter as previously believed
Astrobites reports on whether some of the most massive galaxies in the early universe are truly quenched, or if they're just hiding their star formation behind dust.
Using data from JWST and the Dark Energy Camera, researchers have revisited a long-standing issue with measurements of the famous Bullet Cluster.
In new images from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to celebrate its fourth science anniversary, a familiar galaxy transforms into something far richer, and far more complex, than ever seen before. Webb’s unprecedented sensitivity across near- and mid-infrared…
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has kicked off an epic mission to map the Universe, including potentially dangerous asteroids.
Yuanze Ding et al 2026 ApJ 1002 130 Researchers present the first high-resolution multi-wavelength observations of a triple-nucleus merger, showing one black hole with mass of order 100 million solar masses and two with evidence of tidal disruption.
Ian McConachie et al 2026 ApJ 1002 74 Analysis of JWST and Hubble Space Telescope observations of the galaxy “Eridu” suggests that the galaxy formed within 300 million years of the Big Bang and was quenched by a redshift of z ~ 10.
The 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time will take a picture of the southern night sky every 3–4 nights
The wait is over: NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, is now capturing the cosmos in unprecedented detail, transforming the way we study the dynamic Universe.
NASA ·
NOIRLab/NSF/AURA ·
APOD · Marcin Rosadziński ·
The vocabulary below is the actual list this subject is matched on — nothing is hidden and nothing is inferred. Terms on the top line settle it on their own; the second line counts, but needs company.
dark energydark mattercosmic microwave backgroundhubble tensionredshiftearly universegalaxy clustergalaxy mergerreionizationreionisationcosmic webgravitational lensbig bangexpansion of the universedeep fieldspiral galaxyelliptical galaxydwarf galaxybaryon acoustic
galaxygalaxiesmilky wayandromedacosmologycosmologicalintergalacticlarge-scale structuredesi surveyeuclid missionrubin observatorylambda-cdm
