Planet hunters: David Charbonneau and Sara Seager share the $1m prize for their work characterizing the atmospheres of exoplanets (courtesy: Nils Lund/Kavliprize) Exoplanet researchers David Charbonneau from Harvard University and Sara Seager from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have won the 2024 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics. The laureates, who will share the $1m prize, have…

Just outside Hiroya Yamaguchi’s office is a blackboard crowded with exploded stars, spaceship schematics and spectral lines. The A4 printouts obscure almost all the free space, except for a tiny corner where he sometimes scribbles in white chalk. Right now, Yamaguchi, an associate professor at Japan’s Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, is standing in…

Newsletters Astronomy: Made in Latin America Discover dark constellations, massive radio telescopes, and more in our newsletter on astronomy and space science from Latin America. Illustration by Carmen Deñó for Science Friday Did you know that some of the best locations for studying the cosmos are in Latin America? From centuries-old solar observatories in Mexico…

Scientists believe Earth may have briefly lost protection from the sun around two million years ago, left to endure the extreme environment of interstellar space as the solar system passed through a dense cloud of gas and dust between stars. At that time, early human ancestors shared our planet with prehistoric animals like mastodons and…

When astronomers point their radio telescopes towards space, they sometimes detect sporadic bursts of radio waves from the Universe. These phenomena, known as “radio transients,” can sometimes appear only once, and sometimes in regular cycles. Possible location of the radio source. The majority of radio transients come from pulsars, which are neutron stars spinning at…

The Crab Nebula, the remnant of a supernova observed in 1054 AD by Chinese astronomers, has long been one of the most famous space structures. Now, with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have imaged the nebula in unprecedented detail. The new data provides insights into the pulsar wind, dusty filaments, and the elemental…

Jonathan Gagné Credit: Courtesy A major scientific breakthrough will be taking place soon thanks to NASA’s Landolt space mission. The mission, at a cost of $19.5 million, will make it possible to measure stellar luminosities more accurately. Jonathan Gagné, scientific advisor at the Montreal Planétarium, adjunct professor at Université de Montréal and member of the…

What it is: The Crab Nebula (also called M1), a supernova remnant  Where it is: 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus When it was shared: June 3, 2024 Why it’s so special: This new composite image combines data from both the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Chandra X-ray Observatory to reveal more…

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has detected a key building block of life at the dawn of the universe, upending what we know about the first galaxies. The discovery — a cloud of carbon in a distant and compact galaxy as it appeared just 350 million years after the Big Bang — marks the…

Published on  June 6, 2024  This Northeastern physicist is revolutionizing astronomy with unprecedented dark matter mapping through space observatory in Chile  An expert in observational and theoretical cosmology, Northeastern assistant physics professor Jonathan Blazek is working with an international team of scientists to understand the forces driving the acceleration of the expanding universe. The new…