If Your North Star Is Lost, New Techniques Can Point You South

The writer Tristan Gooley describes how a pair of familiar constellations can help a person navigate in darkness when other methods fail.

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What a Phosphine Signal in a Brown Dwarf’s Clouds Means for the Search for Life

The detection of the molecule phosphine in a brown dwarf’s atmosphere may help astronomers in their search for life elsewhere in the Milky Way.

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Happy 10th Birthday to the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. Now Drop Dead.

Ten years ago, astronomers made an epic discovery with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. Cosmology hasn’t been the same since, and it might not stay that way much longer.

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Webb Telescope Studies Hopeful Hint of Earthlike Atmosphere on Trappist-1e Planet

Scientists are steadily ruling out habitable conditions on the seven planets of the star Trappist-1. On one of the worlds, a nitrogen gas-rich veil remains a possibility.

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Scientists Find a Quadruple Star System in Our Cosmic Backyard

Two of the objects in the arrangement are cold brown dwarfs, which will serve as a benchmark for others throughout the Milky Way.

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Study Finds Planet Around Trappist-1 Star Shows No Signs of Life

Astronomers had hoped to observe an atmosphere on one of the seven planets known to orbit Trappist-1, a red dwarf star. A new study found nothing to write home about.

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Possible Planet Spotted Around Alpha Centauri A by NASA’s James Webb Telescope

Astronomers found strong evidence that a gassy Jupiter-size world is orbiting Alpha Centauri A, one of three stars in the solar system closest to our own.

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Stars Passing Near the Sun Could Cause Planets to Collide or Be Ejected, Paper Says

Stars passing close to the sun could cause planets to collide, including with Earth, or even be ejected as rogue planets, new simulations show.

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How Vera Rubin Telescope Scientists Will Deal With 60 Million Billion Bytes of Imagery

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory will make the study of stars and galaxies more like the big data-sorting exercises of contemporary genetics and particle physics.

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Vera Rubin Observatory Brings Universe’s Darkest Mysteries Into Focus

As the Vera C. Rubin Observatory surveys the night sky, astrophysicists expect to unlock the secrets of dark matter, dark energy and cosmic phenomena that go “bang!”

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