Restoring the Round Tower – How Europe’s oldest continuously functioning observatory is getting a facelift

When water began dripping through a leaking dome, the race was on to preserve an iconic astronomical landmark. Discover how an ambitious restoration project is securing the Round Tower in Copenhagen f...

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UFO Sighting in a Dead Galaxy!

There’s no need to storm Area 51 for evidence of UFOs, in today’s bite we explore the first detection of a UFO (ultra-fast outflow) in a quiescent galaxy!

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A Tournament of Tension – Cosmological Models and the Hubble Tension

Are you upset that the World Cup is over? Well, today’s bite has another contest for you to agonize over — the contest over which cosmological model best explains the Hubble tension!

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Crossing red lines to detect dark matter.

We dive into a new method attempting to use the red glow of the hydrogen alpha spectral line to try to detect dark matter annihilation and decay in dwarf galaxies!

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Dust Deal with It

Today's bite explores how we may need a cosmic duster to see life on other worlds.

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The Invisible Architecture Between the Stars

Magnetic fields thread the space between stars, but whether they look ordered or tangled seems to depend on which gas clouds you measure and how. New simulations show the answer hinges on measuring pe...

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Crossing red lines to detect dark matter.

We dive into a new method attempting to use the red glow of the hydrogen alpha spectral line to try to detect dark matter annihilation and decay in dwarf galaxies!

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Looking Inwards on an Evolving Milky Way

With today’s paper, we’re breaking out the Galaxy’s baby photos.

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A Meditation on the Chemistry of WASP-39b

If you’re feeling off balance due to something outside of your control, it’s not a bad idea to take some time to relax and find your equilibrium once again. You might even try meditation or yoga. But ...

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Thermal electrons can explain the mysterious radio behavior of a tidal disruption event

Everyone loves tidal disruption events, and everyone (myself included) sleeps on synchrotron emission from thermal electrons, but they might be exactly what we're missing.

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Beyond the galaxy: finding exoplanets with gravitational waves

Third-wheeling exoplanets outside our galaxy might be spotted with future gravitational-wave detectors.

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How Do Spiral Galaxies Form?

Read more for a brief historical and scientific review.

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Do Galaxies Really Glow in Sync — or Are We Just Tilting Our Heads?

When galaxies are viewed from far away, their radio, infrared, and gamma-ray emissions line up in tight correlations long taken as proof that cosmic rays dump all their energy before escaping. New mod...

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A Swift recovery: Why NASA’s Swift X-ray observatory is getting an orbital boost

A rescue mission is underway to save the Swift X-ray observatory! Today's bite takes a look at how this will work and why Swift deserves a second life.

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SPHEREx: the niftiest space telescope you may not have heard of

NASA’s SPHEREx mission is collecting an infrared spectrum for every point in the sky. That data set could revolutionize our understanding of cosmic inflation, galaxy formation, and how ices drive plan...

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The Protoplanetary Mid-life Crisis

What happens when protoplanetary disc systems stop following the rules? Today’s paper looks at how some stars with protoplanetary discs in the Upper Scorpius Region experience a mid-life crisis and be...

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Telling Aliens from Weird Chemistry on Ocean Planets

A spacecraft mission to Saturn's moon Enceladus found unexpectedly high methane in its ice plumes, fueling speculation about life in its hidden ocean. A new Nature Astronomy sutdy shows current models...

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Why messing up my crocheting makes me a better scientist

It’s easy to be self-critical and fall into the trap of perfectionism, but mistakes are how we learn and discover new things. Embrace imperfection!

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Backyard Black Holes

Little Red Dots have been thought to be mysterious early universe objects but today's bite tells us that they could exist much closer to home.

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What is life, really? A case for interdisciplinary science

We’re trying to find life beyond Earth... but we still can't fully agree on what life actually means. Astronomers, chemists, and biologists all approach it from different angles and they don't always ...

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Do Exoplanets Have Auroras?

Seven hot exoplanets were not as windy as they should've been. This puzzle led researchers to be the first ones to measure the magnetic field strength on exoplanets.

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Correlation-Dropping Into the Reionization Era

We still don’t know very much about the mysterious epoch of reionization. In today’s bite, learn about a new way to estimate when reionization started from a correlation drop!

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Saving science as we know it: Overview of new proposed rule from the Office of Management and Budget, and how we can make our voices heard.

The Office of Management and Budget has proposed to completely restructure federal funding for science as we know it. In this bite, we review the most relevant points in the proposal and describe how ...

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On the Hunt: Molecular Hydrogen in Leo P

Considering that molecular hydrogen is the most abundant molecule in the universe, you’d think it’d be easier to find.

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Shocking drama in wind-driven outflows

There's drama in the extragalactic astronomy community today. Some strange accretion-driven outflows in nearby active galaxies have been observed to accelerate in the galactic outskirts. In today's pa...

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Know Thy Star, Know Thy Life

Today's bite explores how life in Earth's past could exist around the dimmest stars in the galaxy.

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Guest: Trapped in the Web: The Effect of the Cosmic Web on Galaxies and Halos

In this bite, we explore how slurping on (or being slurped by?) cosmic spaghetti affects galaxies.

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The First Detection of Icy Semi-Heavy Water Where Planets Are Formed

Understanding the odyssey of water from interstellar space down to the oceans on Earth is hard. Today’s paper has given us another key link in this process: the first detection of deuterated water ice...

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Let’s go hunting for exocomets!

How do you find a comet orbiting a star dozens or hundreds of light-years away? Join us today, as we look into this very question and what we can learn from finding these tiny, distant objects.

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These “Ice Giants” Have a Hot Secret

You’re probably used to seeing tabloids in the checkout aisle of the grocery store claiming all sorts of wild things. The scandals of life on Earth are abundant, and it seems like the rest of the sol...

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