The first planet ever found orbiting another star was detected in 1995, and it belonged to a class now known as a “hot Jupiter.” These exoplanets are comparable in mass to Jupiter but circle their stars in just a few days. Scientists now believe that hot Jupiters originally formed far from their stars, similar to Jupiter in our Solar System, and later moved inward.

Two main processes have been proposed to explain this journey: high-eccentricity migration, where gravitational interactions with other objects distort a planet’s orbit before tidal forces near the star gradually make it circular; and disk migration, in which a planet slowly spirals inward while embedded in the protoplanetary disk of gas and dust.

A distant neutron star unexpectedly reawakened, unleashing a powerful X-ray surge that may reveal how the universe’s most extreme stars feed.

In a finding that echoes science fiction, astronomers at Northwestern University have captured a direct image of an exoplanet that orbits two stars, similar to the fictional world of Tatooine.

Directly imaging a planet beyond our solar system is uncommon on its own, but spotting one that revolves around a pair of suns is far more unusual. This newly identified planet stands out even among those rare cases. It travels closer to its two host stars than any other directly imaged planet found in a binary star system and sits six times nearer to its suns than comparable exoplanets discovered so far.

This observation gives scientists a valuable new way to study how planets form and move in systems with more than one star. By watching how the planet and its stars interact, researchers can better test and refine models of planetary formation under complex gravitational conditions.

If you feel a thrill every time we discover something new about the cosmos, then November 25th may have been a noteworthy day to you. That’s the day that NASA completed assembly of the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope.

The two main segments of the powerful space telescope were joined together in the large clean room at Goddard Space Flight Center that day. This means that the telescope is on track for launch as early as Fall 2026.

The Roman is an infrared telescope that’s set to become a flagship in the telescope fleet. It has only two instruments, the Wide-Field Instrument (WFI) and the Coronagraph Instrument (CGI).

Although they are technically gas giants, Uranus and Neptune are referred to as “ice giants” due to their composition.

This refers to the fact that Uranus and Neptune have more methane, water, and other volatiles than their larger counterparts (Jupiter and Saturn).

Given the pressure conditions in the planets’ interiors, these elements become solid, essentially becoming ‘ices.’

With an infrared eye, NEO Surveyor will target dangerous space rocks glowing in the dark

Astronomers from the University of Hawai’i (UH) at Manoa and elsewhere have observed the Taurus star-forming region, which resulted in the discovery of planetary-mass and stellar companions of two ultracool dwarf stars. The new finding was presented in a paper published December 4 on the pre-print server arXiv.

Taurus molecular cloud (TMC-1) is an interstellar molecular cloud hosting a stellar nursery, which contains hundreds of newly formed stars. Given that TMC-1 is located only 430 light years away from Earth, it is possibly the nearest large region of star formation.

The relatively young age of this region, estimated to be some 1–5 million years old, makes it an excellent window for astronomers into the earliest stages of wide-orbit planet and brown dwarf formation.

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.

On 26 November 2025, scientists used the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on Gemini North at Maunakea in Hawai’i to obtain images of the third-ever detected interstellar object, Comet 3I/ATLAS. The new observations reveal how the comet has changed after making its closest approach to the sun. Gemini North is one half of the International Gemini Observatory and operated by NOIRLab.

After emerging from behind the sun, 3I/ATLAS reappeared in the sky close to Zaniah, a triple-star system located in the constellation Virgo. These observations were taken as part of a public outreach initiative organized by NOIRLab in collaboration with Shadow the Scientists, an initiative created to connect the public with scientists to engage in authentic scientific experiments, such as astronomy observing experiences on world-class telescopes. The scientific program was led by Bryce Bolin, a research scientist from Eureka Scientific.