Universe Update

Latest News

This artist’s concept shows a brown dwarf with clouds, much like you might expect to find on a giant planet. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle (IPAC)

Star or Planet? Both or Neither?

I can’t help imagining brown dwarfs as having an identity crisis. And two announcements today did not help them.

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Artist’s illustration of the Local Bubble with star formation occurring on the bubble’s surface. Scientists have now shown how a chain of events beginning 14 million years ago with a set of powerful supernovae led to the creation of the vast bubble, responsible for the formation of all young stars within 500 light years of the Sun. (Image courtesy STScI and Leah Hustak.)

Living in a Bubble

It turns out that the Sun lives in a bubble—1,000 light years across!

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An image of the Whirlpool galaxy (M51); an iconic nearby galaxy, made using a Mosaic of images of one thousand galaxies, ten percent of the entire in the MaNGA sample. (Image courtesy Karen Masters and the SDSS collaboration.)

Mapping the Cosmos

How are astronomers planning to map our universe with the help of robots?

Latest News

Our Last Observation

We end our series with news from the Vera Rubin Observatory, ALMA, and the VLT.

Opportunistic Observations

Telescopes in Chile are finding hidden treasures such as nearby asteroids and potentially habitable exoplanets.

Chilean Observations: Exoplanets

What are telescopes on our planet revealing about planets in other parts of our galaxy?

The Dark Energy Survey, Molecules, and Fossil Atmospheres

New discoveries from Chilean telescopes offer information about dark matter and molecules in strange places.

Observations: A Pristine Comet and Huge Flare

An update on two new Chilean telescopes plus ALMA observes a rogue comet and a life-threatening flare.

Can't Miss

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Observations: New Telescopes in Chile

The next generation of telescopes in Chile will vastly increase our understanding of the cosmos.

Shami Chatterjee on Building a Galaxy-Size Detector

What's the size of San Francisco, but has 1.5 times the mass of our sun? Dr. Shami Chatterjee has the answer!

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Solving NASA-Sized Problems

Dr. Kimberly Ennico Smith has a unique job at NASA. She either destroys things or works to reveal the unseen.

Priya Natarajan on Mapping the Unseen

Dr. Priya Natarajan shares how she maps the things we cannot see: dark matter, black holes, and more.

Nick Cowan on Exoplanets

Astronomer Nick Cowan takes us through the galaxy discovering extra solar planets or exoplanets.

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NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and S. Wiessinger.

An artist’s rendering of a rupture in the crust of a highly magnetized neutron star known as a magnetar. (Courtesy of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and S. Wiessinger.)

Magnetars and Pulsars and Neutron Stars, Oh My!

How did a temperamental neutron star punch above its weight class and surprise astronomers?