Universe Today

Space and Astronomy News from Universe Today
  1. Advancing Astronomy at MIT with X-ray Reverberation Mapping

    Artist's concept of a supermassive black hole with an accretion disk and a relativistic jet. Credit: NASA

    Professor Erin Kara of MIT's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research is helping advance our understanding of the most extreme objects in the Universe by analyzing X-ray reverberations and other astrophysical data.

  2. Even the Rubin's Test Camera Produces Stunning Images

    IC 2177, or the Seagull Nebula, as captured by the Vera Rubin Observatory's Commissioning Camera in 2024. This image features the Seagull's head, a cloud of gas named Sharpless 2-292. Image Credit: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA. Image Processing: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF NOIRLab), D. de Martin & M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab)

    The Vera Rubin Observatory's Commissioning Camera operated for about 7 weeks in 2024, before the observatory released its well-known first look images. It's an engineering camera, and its job was to test the VRO's equipment and procedures. Now, the VRO has released the ComCam's image of the Seagull nebula. It's a pretty stunning image for an engineering camera.

  3. Two Disks in One: How Accretion Disks Drive Black Hole Jets

    This artist's illustration shows a rapidly-feeding supermassive black hole launching jets from its poles. For this to happen, the accretion disk has to have large-scale magnetic fields. But not all do, generating a contradiction. New research has an answer. Image Credit: Tohoku University.

    SMBH jets are driven by thick, hot accretion disks with powerful magnetic fields. But there's a bit of a paradox. Some SMBH produce jets, even though they appear to have thin, cold accretion disks. New research has solved this paradox, showing that disks can be truncated into an outer cold disk and an inner hot disk.

  4. New Evidence for an Old Prediction: Recoiling Supermassive Black Holes

    This artist's impression shows a distant quasar, an extremely luminuos active galactic nuclei hosted by a supermassive black hole. We know that SMBH can merge, but theory says that in some mergers, the merger remnant recieves a powerful kick that drives it into a pendulum-like motion across the center of the galaxy. New research has uncovered statistical proof of these merger remnant SMBH. Image Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser.

    Theory says that during some SMBH mergers, the merger remnant receives a recoil kick from gravitational waves. Instead of sitting placidly in the galactic center, these recoiled SMBH are sent on a pendulum-like motion, back and forth through the galactic center. New research has found statistical evidence supporting their existence.

  5. From Dusk, Towards Dawn: Venus Slides Past the Sun This Weekend

    Venus three days prior to inferior conjunction in 2018. Credit: Paul Stewart.

    Where have all the planets gone? Late October 2026 sees a decided dearth of planets in the dusk sky, with only bashful Mercury receding from view, and Saturn fresh off of opposition. Venus, the former lucida of the evening sky is now lost from view, taking the plunge sunward. But this vanishing act allows for a dramatic transformation this weekend, as our nearest planetary neighbor brushes past the Sun and transitions into the dawn sky.

  6. Autonomous Triangular Modules Could Build Tomorrow’s Mega-Observatories

    Image of the self-assembling modules. Credit - Space:Science & Technology / Q. Duan, J. Sun, & H. Hu

    Private companies are getting better and better at launching more and more mass into space with larger and larger rockets. But, there is still a major constraint on the size of objects we can get into orbit - fairing size. This places physical constraints on the overall shape of what we can launch, and severely limits the sizes of, say, a communications array or a power satellite. But a new paper from researchers at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Beijing Institute of Technology offers a solution - a self-shaping, deployable module that can fine-tune both its positioning and its own dimensions.

  7. Supernova Explosions First Aided, Then Later Impeded, the Epoch of Reionization

    Reionization brought the Universe's Dark Ages to an end. Powerful light from early galaxies ended that time period with their ionizing radiation. New research shows that supernovae weren't as responsible for reionization as thought. Image Credit: Carnegie Institution for Science / MPIA

    The Epoch of Reionization is when radiation from early galaxies and their stars reionized neutral hydrogen and let light travel freely through the cosmos. Some research shows that supernovae helped the process. But new research shows that, though they may have helped initially, supernovae eventually slowed reionization.

  8. How Flare Ribbons Reveal Hidden Solar Explosions on the Sun

    NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of a solar flare – as seen in the bright flash on the right side – on Sept. 10, 2017. The image shows a combination of wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light that highlights the extremely hot material in flares, which has been colorized. There's a lot to learn about flaring, and the ever-changing Sun itself, and new research made progress in understanding its flaring behaviour. Image Credit: NASA/SDO

    Solar flaring is complex behaviour triggered by reconnection, when magnetic field lines break and then snap back to the Sun's surface. The flaring is complex behaviour, and its details are difficult to observe. Researchers found a new way to study flaring behaviour.

  9. Webb Captures Stars in the Early Stages of Life in a Nearby Stellar Nursery

    The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has revealed many protostars and stars within the glowing gases of NGC 7129. Credits: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Alyssa Pagan

    This Webb infrared image, released on October 6th, 2026, shows the star-forming region NGC 7129, about 3,300 light-years from Earth. The central star, LkHα 234, is a young star of 5–8 solar masses whose outflows have cleared a cavity about 3.5 light-years across. On the right side of the region, younger protostars shoot jets of very hot material that create shocks in the surrounding gas.

  10. There Should Be Black Holes in our Neighbourhood. Can We Find Them?

    This artist's illustration shows a stellar-mass black hole (left) accreting material from a much larger Wolf-Rayet star. In this case, the black hole is emitting bright energy and is hard to miss. But other stellar-mass black holes are more isolated, with little to feed on and emitting little radiation, and finding them is difficult. Image Credit: By ESO, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9551709

    Stellar-mass black holes should be in our neighbourhood within about 50 light years of the Solar System. But they're likely isolated, without much to feed on, making them difficult to find. Gaia found some candidates, but confirming them is tough.