Space News & Blog Articles

The Milky Way has a long and fascinating history that extends back to the early Universe - ca. 13.61 billion years ago. In that time, it has evolved considerably and merged with other galaxies to become the galaxy we see today. In a recent study, a team of Canadian astronomers has created the most detailed reconstruction of how the Milky Way evolved from its earliest phases to its current phase. Using data provided by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the team examined 877 galaxies whose masses and properties closely match what astronomers expect the Milky Way looked like over time ("Milky Way twins").

The Sun is not only our closest stellar neighbor, it's also the star we understand the most. As we've observed it over the centuries, we've learned that the Sun is not an immortal constant. It goes through active and quiet cycles, it has become warmer over geologic time scales, and it occasionally batters the Earth with solar flares. We've generally thought that other main sequence stars behave in much the same way, but when it comes to solar flares, that isn't always true.

An elusive meteor shower kicks off the skywatching year for 2026.

Size matters when it comes to telescopes. The bigger they are, the farther they can see. Prioritizing constructing large ones is therefore high on the priority list for many observational organizations. But doing so comes at a cost, and not just in terms of money. Finding a suitable site can be a challenge, and that has been particularly true for the effort to build a 30-meter telescope in the Northern hemisphere. A new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv by Francesco Coti Zelati of the Spanish Institute of Space Sciences in Barcelona and his co-authors, makes the argument for building it at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in La Palma in the Canary Islands.

For decades, scientists have observed the cosmos with radio antennas to visualize the dark, distant regions of the Universe. This includes the gas and dust of the interstellar medium (ISM), planet-forming disks, and objects that cannot be observed in visible light. In this field, the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile stands out as one of the world's most powerful radio telescopes. Using its 66 parabolic antennas, ALMA observes the millimeter and submillimeter radiation emitted by cold molecular clouds from which new stars are born.