🪐 Astronomers Found Two Giant Planets Less Dense Than Cotton Candy
Astronomers have confirmed the existence of two of the puffiest planets ever discovered — gas giants roughly the size of Jupiter, but with densities so low they are less dense than cotton candy.
The pair, named TOI-791 b and TOI-791 c, orbit an F7-type star about 1,110 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation Volans. Their numbers are almost hard to believe: TOI-791 b has an average density of just 0.038 g/cm³, while TOI-791 c comes in at 0.047 g/cm³.
For comparison, Jupiter’s average density is about 1.33 g/cm³. Cotton candy is roughly 0.05 g/cm³. Earth is around 5.5 g/cm³.
That makes these planets not just “fluffy” by astronomical standards — they are among the lowest-density giant planets ever detected.
The discovery, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, is especially valuable because the two planets appear to be locked in a rare 5:3 orbital resonance: for every five orbits of the inner planet, the outer one completes almost exactly three. This gravitational interaction slightly shifts the timing of their transits across the star, allowing astronomers to estimate their masses.
🔹 The planets were first spotted by volunteers in the Planet Hunters TESS citizen-science project
🔹 Confirmation required eight years of observations
🔹 Data from the ASTEP telescope at Antarctica’s Concordia Station were crucial
🔹 Each transit lasts more than 11 hours — unusually long for ground-based observations
🔹 Only a handful of systems are known to contain multiple super-puff planets
The leading idea is that these worlds may have relatively small cores surrounded by enormous hydrogen- and helium-rich atmospheres. But exactly how such diffuse planets form — and how they keep their atmospheres for so long — remains an open question.
Important caveat: these measurements come from transits and orbital timing effects, not from direct imaging. The densities are robust within the current model, but the planets’ true atmospheric composition will require follow-up observations — potentially with the James Webb Space Telescope.
Super-puff planets are strange because they sit at the edge of what our planet-formation models can comfortably explain.
If a giant planet can be less dense than cotton candy and still hold itself together, what else is out there that our theories have not yet learned to expect?
📄 Source: https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/mnras/stag864
#exoplanets #astronomy #space #TESS #superpuffs
Astronomers have confirmed the existence of two of the puffiest planets ever discovered — gas giants roughly the size of Jupiter, but with densities so low they are less dense than cotton candy.
The pair, named TOI-791 b and TOI-791 c, orbit an F7-type star about 1,110 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation Volans. Their numbers are almost hard to believe: TOI-791 b has an average density of just 0.038 g/cm³, while TOI-791 c comes in at 0.047 g/cm³.
For comparison, Jupiter’s average density is about 1.33 g/cm³. Cotton candy is roughly 0.05 g/cm³. Earth is around 5.5 g/cm³.
That makes these planets not just “fluffy” by astronomical standards — they are among the lowest-density giant planets ever detected.
The discovery, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, is especially valuable because the two planets appear to be locked in a rare 5:3 orbital resonance: for every five orbits of the inner planet, the outer one completes almost exactly three. This gravitational interaction slightly shifts the timing of their transits across the star, allowing astronomers to estimate their masses.
🔹 The planets were first spotted by volunteers in the Planet Hunters TESS citizen-science project
🔹 Confirmation required eight years of observations
🔹 Data from the ASTEP telescope at Antarctica’s Concordia Station were crucial
🔹 Each transit lasts more than 11 hours — unusually long for ground-based observations
🔹 Only a handful of systems are known to contain multiple super-puff planets
The leading idea is that these worlds may have relatively small cores surrounded by enormous hydrogen- and helium-rich atmospheres. But exactly how such diffuse planets form — and how they keep their atmospheres for so long — remains an open question.
Important caveat: these measurements come from transits and orbital timing effects, not from direct imaging. The densities are robust within the current model, but the planets’ true atmospheric composition will require follow-up observations — potentially with the James Webb Space Telescope.
Super-puff planets are strange because they sit at the edge of what our planet-formation models can comfortably explain.
If a giant planet can be less dense than cotton candy and still hold itself together, what else is out there that our theories have not yet learned to expect?
📄 Source: https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/mnras/stag864
#exoplanets #astronomy #space #TESS #superpuffs
OUP Academic
ASTEP confirmation of a pair of long-period Jupiter-sized planets with extremely low densities transiting TOI-791
ABSTRACT. Gas giant planets with periods $20~\lt ~P~\lt ~300~\rm d$ orbiting Sun-like stars are a relatively uncommon outcome of planetary formation, and k
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🌞 The Sun Is Waking Up Fast — A Major X-Class Solar Flare Could Happen at Any Moment
Solar activity has accelerated dramatically over the past 48 hours, and space weather scientists are watching closely.
The number of solar flares has surged from 5 per day two days ago, to 8 yesterday, and 17 within the last 24 hours. This morning, the Sun produced its first M-class flares of the current activity spike — leaving only the most powerful category, X-class, yet to appear.
What’s making scientists especially cautious is the location of the Sun’s largest active region of 2026. It is currently facing almost directly toward Earth. Surprisingly, despite its enormous size, it has not yet produced a single X-class flare. Earlier this year, another large sunspot group generated five X-class flares, including the year’s strongest event, X8.1. That makes the current quietness look more like the calm before the storm than a sign of stability.
Space-based observations reveal an even more intriguing picture. Two giant sunspot groups that appear separate on the solar surface are actually connected high above it in the corona, forming a single, highly complex magnetic system. These intertwined magnetic fields continuously exchange energy. On one hand, this can relieve local magnetic stress. On the other, it effectively creates one enormous energy reservoir capable of producing an exceptionally powerful eruption.
Predicting exactly when that energy will be released remains one of the biggest challenges in solar physics. Most of the Sun’s magnetic field lies hidden beneath the visible surface, beyond direct observation, making even the most sophisticated computer models unreliable for systems this complex.
For now, an X-class solar flare could occur at virtually any time. If accompanied by a coronal mass ejection directed toward Earth, it could trigger strong geomagnetic storms, spectacular auroras at unusually low latitudes, and temporary disruptions to satellites, radio communications, and navigation systems.
🔭 The Sun is reminding us that even after centuries of observation, our nearest star can still surprise us.
#Science #Astronomy #Sun #SolarFlare #SpaceWeather #SolarStorm #Heliophysics
Solar activity has accelerated dramatically over the past 48 hours, and space weather scientists are watching closely.
The number of solar flares has surged from 5 per day two days ago, to 8 yesterday, and 17 within the last 24 hours. This morning, the Sun produced its first M-class flares of the current activity spike — leaving only the most powerful category, X-class, yet to appear.
What’s making scientists especially cautious is the location of the Sun’s largest active region of 2026. It is currently facing almost directly toward Earth. Surprisingly, despite its enormous size, it has not yet produced a single X-class flare. Earlier this year, another large sunspot group generated five X-class flares, including the year’s strongest event, X8.1. That makes the current quietness look more like the calm before the storm than a sign of stability.
Space-based observations reveal an even more intriguing picture. Two giant sunspot groups that appear separate on the solar surface are actually connected high above it in the corona, forming a single, highly complex magnetic system. These intertwined magnetic fields continuously exchange energy. On one hand, this can relieve local magnetic stress. On the other, it effectively creates one enormous energy reservoir capable of producing an exceptionally powerful eruption.
Predicting exactly when that energy will be released remains one of the biggest challenges in solar physics. Most of the Sun’s magnetic field lies hidden beneath the visible surface, beyond direct observation, making even the most sophisticated computer models unreliable for systems this complex.
For now, an X-class solar flare could occur at virtually any time. If accompanied by a coronal mass ejection directed toward Earth, it could trigger strong geomagnetic storms, spectacular auroras at unusually low latitudes, and temporary disruptions to satellites, radio communications, and navigation systems.
🔭 The Sun is reminding us that even after centuries of observation, our nearest star can still surprise us.
#Science #Astronomy #Sun #SolarFlare #SpaceWeather #SolarStorm #Heliophysics
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🔭 The Largest Eye on Earth Is Rising Above the Atacama
At an altitude of 3,046 metres on Cerro Armazones in Chile’s Atacama Desert, engineers are building the most powerful optical telescope ever attempted: ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope, or ELT.
Its primary mirror will span an astonishing 39 metres — far too large to manufacture as a single piece. Instead, it will function as one perfectly synchronised surface made from 798 hexagonal segments, each about 1.45 metres across. The ELT will collect roughly 100 million times more light than the human eye and more than all existing 8–10-metre-class telescopes combined, observing the Universe in visible and infrared light.
But size is only part of the story.
Earth’s turbulent atmosphere makes stars twinkle — beautiful to us, disastrous for precision astronomy. The ELT’s 2.4-metre adaptive mirror, M4, will be controlled by more than 5,000 actuators, reshaping its surface as often as 1,000 times per second to cancel atmospheric distortion and vibrations almost in real time.
The result could transform the search for life beyond Earth. The ELT will directly image some exoplanets, including potentially rocky worlds in nearby habitable zones, and examine their atmospheres for molecules such as water, methane, carbon dioxide and even oxygen.
First test observations are currently planned for March 2029, followed by the first scientific observations in December 2030.
What will it see first: an Earth-like world, the earliest galaxies — or something astronomers have not yet imagined?
#Astronomy #Space #ELT #Exoplanets #Science #Atacama
At an altitude of 3,046 metres on Cerro Armazones in Chile’s Atacama Desert, engineers are building the most powerful optical telescope ever attempted: ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope, or ELT.
Its primary mirror will span an astonishing 39 metres — far too large to manufacture as a single piece. Instead, it will function as one perfectly synchronised surface made from 798 hexagonal segments, each about 1.45 metres across. The ELT will collect roughly 100 million times more light than the human eye and more than all existing 8–10-metre-class telescopes combined, observing the Universe in visible and infrared light.
But size is only part of the story.
Earth’s turbulent atmosphere makes stars twinkle — beautiful to us, disastrous for precision astronomy. The ELT’s 2.4-metre adaptive mirror, M4, will be controlled by more than 5,000 actuators, reshaping its surface as often as 1,000 times per second to cancel atmospheric distortion and vibrations almost in real time.
The result could transform the search for life beyond Earth. The ELT will directly image some exoplanets, including potentially rocky worlds in nearby habitable zones, and examine their atmospheres for molecules such as water, methane, carbon dioxide and even oxygen.
First test observations are currently planned for March 2029, followed by the first scientific observations in December 2030.
What will it see first: an Earth-like world, the earliest galaxies — or something astronomers have not yet imagined?
#Astronomy #Space #ELT #Exoplanets #Science #Atacama
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🔭 NASA Discovers a “Wandering” Supermassive Black Hole Devouring a Star Far from Any Galactic Center
Astronomers have observed something never before seen in optical light: a supermassive black hole tearing apart a star more than 30,000 light-years from the center of its host galaxy — far from where such giants are normally found.
The event, designated TDE 2025abcr, was first detected in November 2025 by the Zwicky Transient Facility. An AI algorithm scanning roughly 500,000 transient events every night flagged an unusual flare despite its highly unexpected location in the outskirts of a galaxy.
At its peak, the flare shone with the luminosity of roughly 10 billion Suns, briefly outshining its host galaxy in ultraviolet light. Follow-up observations with NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory showed that the culprit is a black hole with a mass of about one million Suns, feeding on a star that wandered too close.
So how did such a massive black hole end up so far from the galactic center?
Astronomers propose two leading explanations:
• it was gravitationally ejected during a past merger involving multiple supermassive black holes;
• or it originally belonged to a dwarf galaxy that is still merging with the larger host galaxy.
The discovery demonstrates a new way to find these otherwise invisible wandering supermassive black holes. With the Vera C. Rubin Observatory beginning operations and NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on the horizon, astronomers expect to uncover many more—revealing how common these cosmic wanderers really are and providing new clues about the violent merger history of galaxies.
Sources:
NASA: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/swift/nasas-swift-sees-wandering-mega-black-hole-shredding-star/
The Astrophysical Journal Letters: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ae77f3
#Astronomy #BlackHoles #NASA #Astrophysics #SpaceScience
Astronomers have observed something never before seen in optical light: a supermassive black hole tearing apart a star more than 30,000 light-years from the center of its host galaxy — far from where such giants are normally found.
The event, designated TDE 2025abcr, was first detected in November 2025 by the Zwicky Transient Facility. An AI algorithm scanning roughly 500,000 transient events every night flagged an unusual flare despite its highly unexpected location in the outskirts of a galaxy.
At its peak, the flare shone with the luminosity of roughly 10 billion Suns, briefly outshining its host galaxy in ultraviolet light. Follow-up observations with NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory showed that the culprit is a black hole with a mass of about one million Suns, feeding on a star that wandered too close.
So how did such a massive black hole end up so far from the galactic center?
Astronomers propose two leading explanations:
• it was gravitationally ejected during a past merger involving multiple supermassive black holes;
• or it originally belonged to a dwarf galaxy that is still merging with the larger host galaxy.
The discovery demonstrates a new way to find these otherwise invisible wandering supermassive black holes. With the Vera C. Rubin Observatory beginning operations and NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on the horizon, astronomers expect to uncover many more—revealing how common these cosmic wanderers really are and providing new clues about the violent merger history of galaxies.
Sources:
NASA: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/swift/nasas-swift-sees-wandering-mega-black-hole-shredding-star/
The Astrophysical Journal Letters: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ae77f3
#Astronomy #BlackHoles #NASA #Astrophysics #SpaceScience
NASA Science
NASA’s Swift Sees ‘Wandering’ Mega Black Hole Shredding Star - NASA Science
NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory captured an “orphan” black hole lighting up as it devoured a star on the outskirts of a faraway galaxy. These phenomena
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🛰 We May Be Building Satellite Constellations Too Large for Earth’s Orbit
A new analysis suggests that some satellite megaconstellations could cross a dangerous threshold where collisions create debris faster than Earth’s atmosphere can remove it — potentially triggering a runaway increase in space junk.
The study introduces the idea of a “critical size” for a satellite constellation. Above that point, even if individual satellites follow good disposal practices and actively avoid collisions, the constellation as a whole may still generate an unstable debris environment. The model found that several planned, partially deployed and existing constellations exceed that threshold under some assumptions.
The scale of what is being proposed is enormous. The paper notes that the number of active satellites in low-Earth orbit increased by nearly 12,000 in just five years, while applications submitted to the U.S. FCC in 2026 included proposed constellations totaling more than 1.2 million satellites. That would be over 78 times the current operational satellite population cited by the study.
The feared endpoint is related to the Kessler syndrome: one collision produces fragments, those fragments cause more collisions, and eventually parts of low-Earth orbit become increasingly difficult to use safely.
The important caveat: this is a modelling study and currently a preprint, not peer-reviewed research. It does not predict that a catastrophic debris cascade is about to happen tomorrow. But it raises a bigger question: should regulators evaluate satellites one by one — or the cumulative risk of entire constellations?
Space may be enormous. Useful orbit around Earth is not.
#Space #Satellites #SpaceDebris #Astronomy #SpaceTech #Science
https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.29644
A new analysis suggests that some satellite megaconstellations could cross a dangerous threshold where collisions create debris faster than Earth’s atmosphere can remove it — potentially triggering a runaway increase in space junk.
The study introduces the idea of a “critical size” for a satellite constellation. Above that point, even if individual satellites follow good disposal practices and actively avoid collisions, the constellation as a whole may still generate an unstable debris environment. The model found that several planned, partially deployed and existing constellations exceed that threshold under some assumptions.
The scale of what is being proposed is enormous. The paper notes that the number of active satellites in low-Earth orbit increased by nearly 12,000 in just five years, while applications submitted to the U.S. FCC in 2026 included proposed constellations totaling more than 1.2 million satellites. That would be over 78 times the current operational satellite population cited by the study.
The feared endpoint is related to the Kessler syndrome: one collision produces fragments, those fragments cause more collisions, and eventually parts of low-Earth orbit become increasingly difficult to use safely.
The important caveat: this is a modelling study and currently a preprint, not peer-reviewed research. It does not predict that a catastrophic debris cascade is about to happen tomorrow. But it raises a bigger question: should regulators evaluate satellites one by one — or the cumulative risk of entire constellations?
Space may be enormous. Useful orbit around Earth is not.
#Space #Satellites #SpaceDebris #Astronomy #SpaceTech #Science
https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.29644
arXiv.org
Critical Sizes of Satellite Constellations
The precipitous growth of commercial space activity, largely from the development of satellite constellations, threatens to produce a runaway orbital debris population. National regulators are...
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🌌 Astronomers Found the Remains of a Galaxy the Milky Way Ate 12 Billion Years Ago
The Milky Way did not grow up quietly.
Astronomers have found strong evidence that our Galaxy swallowed a substantial dwarf galaxy about 12.3 billion years ago — when the Universe was still very young. The merger happened roughly 1.8 billion years before the better-known Gaia–Sausage–Enceladus collision, previously one of the earliest major events firmly traced in the Milky Way’s history.
The clue came from globular clusters — ancient, densely packed groups of stars that preserve a kind of archaeological record of the Galaxy. Using extremely precise Hubble Space Telescope measurements, researchers identified a third distinct age-and-metallicity sequence among clusters in the inner Milky Way. That sequence points to a separate progenitor galaxy with a stellar mass of about 500 million Suns.
The team named the lost galaxy Low-energy-Kraken-Heracles, or LKH. Most of its stars appear to have been deposited within the inner 6,000 parsecs of the Milky Way, where their original identity has long since been erased by billions of years of mixing.
In other words, parts of the night sky above us may be made from the remains of another galaxy that disappeared before Earth existed.
Galaxies do not simply form. They assemble themselves by consuming one another.
#MilkyWay #Astronomy #Hubble #Galaxies #Cosmology #Science
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-026-02931-5
The Milky Way did not grow up quietly.
Astronomers have found strong evidence that our Galaxy swallowed a substantial dwarf galaxy about 12.3 billion years ago — when the Universe was still very young. The merger happened roughly 1.8 billion years before the better-known Gaia–Sausage–Enceladus collision, previously one of the earliest major events firmly traced in the Milky Way’s history.
The clue came from globular clusters — ancient, densely packed groups of stars that preserve a kind of archaeological record of the Galaxy. Using extremely precise Hubble Space Telescope measurements, researchers identified a third distinct age-and-metallicity sequence among clusters in the inner Milky Way. That sequence points to a separate progenitor galaxy with a stellar mass of about 500 million Suns.
The team named the lost galaxy Low-energy-Kraken-Heracles, or LKH. Most of its stars appear to have been deposited within the inner 6,000 parsecs of the Milky Way, where their original identity has long since been erased by billions of years of mixing.
In other words, parts of the night sky above us may be made from the remains of another galaxy that disappeared before Earth existed.
Galaxies do not simply form. They assemble themselves by consuming one another.
#MilkyWay #Astronomy #Hubble #Galaxies #Cosmology #Science
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-026-02931-5
Nature
Evidence of a massive accretion event 1.8 billion years before the Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus merger
Nature Astronomy - By studying the dynamical properties, age and metallicity of globular clusters in the inner Galaxy, the authors found evidence of a massive dwarf galaxy that was accreted by the...
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🌌 Scientists May Have Seen “Empty” Space Bend Light
Almost 90 years ago, quantum theory made a bizarre prediction: a perfect vacuum is not truly empty. Under an unimaginably strong magnetic field, empty space itself should behave a little like a transparent material — changing the way light passes through it.
Now astronomers may finally have seen the effect in nature.
Researchers studied 1E 1547.0−5408, a magnetar — an ultra-dense neutron star with a surface magnetic field above 100 trillion gauss. Using NASA’s IXPE X-ray telescope together with NICER and Australia’s Parkes/Murriyang radio telescope, the team measured extraordinarily polarized X-rays: about 65% at 2 keV, rising to nearly 80% during parts of the star’s rotation.
Ordinary models struggled to reproduce what they saw. But when the researchers included vacuum birefringence — a prediction of quantum electrodynamics in which extreme magnetic fields make the quantum vacuum refract different polarizations of light differently — the observations fell naturally into place.
The idea goes back to work by Werner Heisenberg and Hans Euler in the 1930s. In modern quantum field theory, even a vacuum contains fluctuating quantum fields, and extreme magnetic fields can alter how photons propagate through them.
This is not yet considered a definitive detection. The researchers say more observations and improved simulations are needed to rule out competing explanations.
But if confirmed, the result would turn one of the strangest properties of quantum theory into something astronomers can actually observe across the Galaxy.
Empty space, apparently, may not be very empty at all.
#Physics #QuantumPhysics #Magnetar #Astronomy #QED #Science
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10859-z
Almost 90 years ago, quantum theory made a bizarre prediction: a perfect vacuum is not truly empty. Under an unimaginably strong magnetic field, empty space itself should behave a little like a transparent material — changing the way light passes through it.
Now astronomers may finally have seen the effect in nature.
Researchers studied 1E 1547.0−5408, a magnetar — an ultra-dense neutron star with a surface magnetic field above 100 trillion gauss. Using NASA’s IXPE X-ray telescope together with NICER and Australia’s Parkes/Murriyang radio telescope, the team measured extraordinarily polarized X-rays: about 65% at 2 keV, rising to nearly 80% during parts of the star’s rotation.
Ordinary models struggled to reproduce what they saw. But when the researchers included vacuum birefringence — a prediction of quantum electrodynamics in which extreme magnetic fields make the quantum vacuum refract different polarizations of light differently — the observations fell naturally into place.
The idea goes back to work by Werner Heisenberg and Hans Euler in the 1930s. In modern quantum field theory, even a vacuum contains fluctuating quantum fields, and extreme magnetic fields can alter how photons propagate through them.
This is not yet considered a definitive detection. The researchers say more observations and improved simulations are needed to rule out competing explanations.
But if confirmed, the result would turn one of the strangest properties of quantum theory into something astronomers can actually observe across the Galaxy.
Empty space, apparently, may not be very empty at all.
#Physics #QuantumPhysics #Magnetar #Astronomy #QED #Science
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10859-z
Nature
Vacuum birefringence and the polarized X-ray emission from a radio magnetar
Nature - Polarization measurements of the magnetar 1E 1547.0−5408 provide strong evidence that vacuum birefringence shapes X-ray propagation, offering an important observational test of...
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🪐 Saturn Has Grown a Giant 10-Sided Storm Pattern
Saturn has been famous for decades for the enormous hexagon circling its north pole.
Now Hubble has discovered something even stranger at the opposite end of the planet: a vast decagon — a 10-sided atmospheric wave — surrounding Saturn’s south pole.
The structure sits roughly between 58° and 63° south latitude inside a jet stream moving at about 400 km/h. The decagon itself drifts much more slowly around the planet, at about 10 km/h, while its corners oscillate back and forth over periods of roughly a month. Multiwavelength Hubble observations show that the pattern extends through several atmospheric levels rather than existing as a superficial cloud shape.
What makes the discovery particularly intriguing is that it seems to be new. Cassini saw no comparable structure before its mission ended in 2017. Hubble data reveal faint hints beginning in 2023, with the ten-sided shape becoming increasingly distinct in 2024 and 2025. Astronomers may therefore be watching a giant planetary wave form almost in real time.
Scientists do not yet know why Saturn produces geometric atmospheric structures at all. Models suggest the decagon may be a huge wave trapped inside the jet stream, possibly triggered by an instability or a nearby vortex. But why the north settled on six sides and the south apparently chose ten remains unexplained.
Earth gets hurricanes.
Saturn apparently prefers geometry.
#Saturn #Hubble #Astronomy #PlanetaryScience #Space #Science
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aee4251
Saturn has been famous for decades for the enormous hexagon circling its north pole.
Now Hubble has discovered something even stranger at the opposite end of the planet: a vast decagon — a 10-sided atmospheric wave — surrounding Saturn’s south pole.
The structure sits roughly between 58° and 63° south latitude inside a jet stream moving at about 400 km/h. The decagon itself drifts much more slowly around the planet, at about 10 km/h, while its corners oscillate back and forth over periods of roughly a month. Multiwavelength Hubble observations show that the pattern extends through several atmospheric levels rather than existing as a superficial cloud shape.
What makes the discovery particularly intriguing is that it seems to be new. Cassini saw no comparable structure before its mission ended in 2017. Hubble data reveal faint hints beginning in 2023, with the ten-sided shape becoming increasingly distinct in 2024 and 2025. Astronomers may therefore be watching a giant planetary wave form almost in real time.
Scientists do not yet know why Saturn produces geometric atmospheric structures at all. Models suggest the decagon may be a huge wave trapped inside the jet stream, possibly triggered by an instability or a nearby vortex. But why the north settled on six sides and the south apparently chose ten remains unexplained.
Earth gets hurricanes.
Saturn apparently prefers geometry.
#Saturn #Hubble #Astronomy #PlanetaryScience #Space #Science
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aee4251
Science Advances
A decagon wave around Saturn’s south pole
Saturn has a unique long-lived, nearly stationary hexagon wave close to its north pole that is coupled to an intense eastward jet. Despite decades of observation, no similar wave has been reported so far in the southern hemisphere or elsewhere on Saturn.…
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🌌 Astronomers Found 84 Cosmic Objects We Somehow Missed for Decades
They were already sitting in NASA’s data.
We simply weren’t looking at the right kind of light.
Astronomers mining observations from the Chandra X-ray Observatory have uncovered 84 mysterious objects across six nearby galaxies, including Andromeda and the Pinwheel Galaxy. They appear to belong to a previously unrecognized population researchers are calling hypersoft X-ray sources.
The strange part is their spectrum.
Most bright X-ray binaries radiate strongly above 0.3 keV. These objects do almost the opposite: they appear primarily below 0.3 keV, right near the boundary between X-rays and extreme ultraviolet light. That makes them exceptionally difficult to see, because this radiation is easily absorbed by gas between the stars — and because standard astronomical surveys were not optimized to search this faint corner of the spectrum.
Some of the objects may contain white dwarfs, neutron stars or black holes feeding on companion stars. Their true energy output could be enormous, with much of it emerging as invisible extreme-ultraviolet radiation.
That matters for two big reasons.
Such systems could provide a previously hidden source of radiation capable of ionizing gas throughout galaxies. And some may be accreting white dwarfs — systems astronomers suspect can eventually become Type Ia supernovae, the stellar explosions we use as cosmic distance markers.
Researchers do not yet know exactly what these objects are. “Hypersoft source” currently describes what astronomers observe, rather than one confirmed type of star system.
But the discovery carries a wonderful scientific lesson:
Sometimes the Universe does not need a new telescope to reveal something new.
Sometimes you just need to ask an old telescope a question nobody asked before.
#Astronomy #Space #Chandra #Xrays #BlackHoles #Supernovae #NASA #Science
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-026-02959-7
They were already sitting in NASA’s data.
We simply weren’t looking at the right kind of light.
Astronomers mining observations from the Chandra X-ray Observatory have uncovered 84 mysterious objects across six nearby galaxies, including Andromeda and the Pinwheel Galaxy. They appear to belong to a previously unrecognized population researchers are calling hypersoft X-ray sources.
The strange part is their spectrum.
Most bright X-ray binaries radiate strongly above 0.3 keV. These objects do almost the opposite: they appear primarily below 0.3 keV, right near the boundary between X-rays and extreme ultraviolet light. That makes them exceptionally difficult to see, because this radiation is easily absorbed by gas between the stars — and because standard astronomical surveys were not optimized to search this faint corner of the spectrum.
Some of the objects may contain white dwarfs, neutron stars or black holes feeding on companion stars. Their true energy output could be enormous, with much of it emerging as invisible extreme-ultraviolet radiation.
That matters for two big reasons.
Such systems could provide a previously hidden source of radiation capable of ionizing gas throughout galaxies. And some may be accreting white dwarfs — systems astronomers suspect can eventually become Type Ia supernovae, the stellar explosions we use as cosmic distance markers.
Researchers do not yet know exactly what these objects are. “Hypersoft source” currently describes what astronomers observe, rather than one confirmed type of star system.
But the discovery carries a wonderful scientific lesson:
Sometimes the Universe does not need a new telescope to reveal something new.
Sometimes you just need to ask an old telescope a question nobody asked before.
#Astronomy #Space #Chandra #Xrays #BlackHoles #Supernovae #NASA #Science
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-026-02959-7
Nature
Hypersoft X-ray sources as a low-energy class of luminous cosmic emitter
Nature Astronomy - Hypersoft X-ray sources are found in an observational blind spot; they can be extremely luminous in the X-ray band and extreme ultraviolet, and are likely to be X-ray binary...
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Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
Astronomers produce the first complete picture of (gas) planet formation in action
We present new deep, very high angular resolution observations of the sub-mm continuum (19x13 mas) and 12CO (67x52 mas) emission from the disk surrounding the planet host WISPIT2. Our analysis reveals a clear gas gap carved by WISPIT 2b and an empty cavity…
🪐 Astronomers Just Watched a Planet Being Built
We know surprisingly well how planets should form.
The problem is that the crucial parts of the process happen hundreds of light-years away, on scales so tiny that astronomers have mostly had to reconstruct them from simulations and indirect clues.
Now they have caught the process in action.
Using Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, astronomers imaged gas moving around WISPIT 2b, a newborn planet about 430 light-years from Earth.
It is a monster in the making: roughly five times the mass of Jupiter, orbiting inside the disk of gas and dust from which its planetary system is still emerging.
And around the planet, the gas is doing something remarkable.
On one side of WISPIT 2b it is moving toward us; on the other, away from us.
Together, those motions reveal a swirl of gas around the growing planet — exactly the kind of interaction predicted by simulations of planet formation, but never directly observed around a known protoplanet before.
The system is unusually valuable because astronomers can now see essentially every major piece of the process at once:
the enormous protoplanetary disk, the planet itself, hydrogen emission showing that WISPIT 2b is still accreting material, the gap it has carved through the disk — and now the surrounding gas responding directly to the planet.
A second young planet, WISPIT 2c, is also reshaping the system by carving out a larger cavity. And at the center, astronomers recently discovered that there isn’t even one star.
There are two.
The scale of the observation is extraordinary.
At WISPIT 2’s distance, resolving a structure the size of Earth’s orbit around the Sun is roughly equivalent to reading a normal book from five kilometers away.
For decades, simulations have shown us beautiful animations of planets growing inside swirling disks.
Now nature has finally provided the footage.
We are beginning to watch solar systems assemble in real time.
#Space #Astronomy #Exoplanets #PlanetFormation #ALMA #WISPIT2 #Science
https://www.mpg.de/26990768/astronomers-produce-the-first-complete-picture-of-gas-planet-formation-in-action
We know surprisingly well how planets should form.
The problem is that the crucial parts of the process happen hundreds of light-years away, on scales so tiny that astronomers have mostly had to reconstruct them from simulations and indirect clues.
Now they have caught the process in action.
Using Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, astronomers imaged gas moving around WISPIT 2b, a newborn planet about 430 light-years from Earth.
It is a monster in the making: roughly five times the mass of Jupiter, orbiting inside the disk of gas and dust from which its planetary system is still emerging.
And around the planet, the gas is doing something remarkable.
On one side of WISPIT 2b it is moving toward us; on the other, away from us.
Together, those motions reveal a swirl of gas around the growing planet — exactly the kind of interaction predicted by simulations of planet formation, but never directly observed around a known protoplanet before.
The system is unusually valuable because astronomers can now see essentially every major piece of the process at once:
the enormous protoplanetary disk, the planet itself, hydrogen emission showing that WISPIT 2b is still accreting material, the gap it has carved through the disk — and now the surrounding gas responding directly to the planet.
A second young planet, WISPIT 2c, is also reshaping the system by carving out a larger cavity. And at the center, astronomers recently discovered that there isn’t even one star.
There are two.
The scale of the observation is extraordinary.
At WISPIT 2’s distance, resolving a structure the size of Earth’s orbit around the Sun is roughly equivalent to reading a normal book from five kilometers away.
For decades, simulations have shown us beautiful animations of planets growing inside swirling disks.
Now nature has finally provided the footage.
We are beginning to watch solar systems assemble in real time.
#Space #Astronomy #Exoplanets #PlanetFormation #ALMA #WISPIT2 #Science
https://www.mpg.de/26990768/astronomers-produce-the-first-complete-picture-of-gas-planet-formation-in-action
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🌌 The Ingredients for Planets Were Spreading Through Space Just 500 Million Years After the Big Bang
The newborn universe started simple.
After the Big Bang, almost everything was hydrogen and helium. Carbon, oxygen, silicon and nearly every other element needed to build planets — and eventually us — had to be manufactured later inside stars.
Astronomers expected that process to take time.
JWST has now shown that it happened remarkably fast.
Researchers analyzed nearly 30 hours of Webb observations of three galaxies seen as they existed roughly 500–700 million years after the Big Bang.
They found unmistakable chemical fingerprints of carbon, oxygen and silicon in gas associated with the galaxies.
But the really interesting part was where that gas was going.
The absorption signatures were blueshifted by roughly 50–250 km/s, indicating that metal-enriched material was moving outward from the galaxies — consistent with powerful galactic winds carrying newly forged elements into surrounding space.
That means an entire cosmic recycling system was already operating while the universe was only about 3% of its present age.
Stars formed.
They forged heavier elements.
Stellar winds and explosions returned those elements to their galaxies.
And galaxies began spraying them outward, chemically transforming the surrounding universe.
Remarkably, the chemical fingerprints look similar to those seen around galaxies billions of years later.
The result may also help solve another mystery.
Astronomers have spent decades searching for Population III stars — the hypothetical first generation of stars, made almost entirely from pristine hydrogen and helium.
None has ever been conclusively found.
If early galaxies contaminated their surroundings with heavier elements this quickly, the window in which truly pristine stars could form may simply have been much shorter than expected.
Important caveat: the result comes from only three unusually bright early galaxies. We don’t yet know whether such rapid enrichment was universal across the young cosmos.
Still, the implication is striking.
Only half a billion years after the Big Bang, the universe had already started distributing the carbon in our bodies, the oxygen in our water and the silicon beneath our feet.
Cosmic chemistry apparently wasted very little time.
#JWST #Space #Astronomy #Cosmology #BigBang #EarlyUniverse #Science
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-026-02988-2
The newborn universe started simple.
After the Big Bang, almost everything was hydrogen and helium. Carbon, oxygen, silicon and nearly every other element needed to build planets — and eventually us — had to be manufactured later inside stars.
Astronomers expected that process to take time.
JWST has now shown that it happened remarkably fast.
Researchers analyzed nearly 30 hours of Webb observations of three galaxies seen as they existed roughly 500–700 million years after the Big Bang.
They found unmistakable chemical fingerprints of carbon, oxygen and silicon in gas associated with the galaxies.
But the really interesting part was where that gas was going.
The absorption signatures were blueshifted by roughly 50–250 km/s, indicating that metal-enriched material was moving outward from the galaxies — consistent with powerful galactic winds carrying newly forged elements into surrounding space.
That means an entire cosmic recycling system was already operating while the universe was only about 3% of its present age.
Stars formed.
They forged heavier elements.
Stellar winds and explosions returned those elements to their galaxies.
And galaxies began spraying them outward, chemically transforming the surrounding universe.
Remarkably, the chemical fingerprints look similar to those seen around galaxies billions of years later.
The result may also help solve another mystery.
Astronomers have spent decades searching for Population III stars — the hypothetical first generation of stars, made almost entirely from pristine hydrogen and helium.
None has ever been conclusively found.
If early galaxies contaminated their surroundings with heavier elements this quickly, the window in which truly pristine stars could form may simply have been much shorter than expected.
Important caveat: the result comes from only three unusually bright early galaxies. We don’t yet know whether such rapid enrichment was universal across the young cosmos.
Still, the implication is striking.
Only half a billion years after the Big Bang, the universe had already started distributing the carbon in our bodies, the oxygen in our water and the silicon beneath our feet.
Cosmic chemistry apparently wasted very little time.
#JWST #Space #Astronomy #Cosmology #BigBang #EarlyUniverse #Science
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-026-02988-2
Nature
Early metal-enriched baryon cycling before the midpoint of cosmic reionization
Nature Astronomy - Deep JWST spectra of three galaxies seen within the Universe’s first 700 million years allow the detection of blueshifted, chemically enriched gas, providing evidence that...
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