Letting off steam: Astronomers spot a new kind of asteroid with a comet-like tail orbiting the sun at the same distance as Jupiter The asteroid was first spotted in 2019 and the tail was confirmed in April 2020 2019 LD2 is letting off gas which is trailing behind the space rock like a comet tail … Read more
A huge rotating disc galaxy has been discovered by astronomers and 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang it was already ‘well-ordered, cold’ and intact. The Wolfe Disk galaxy was found by astronomers from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). The universe is 13.8 billion years old and most galaxies, … Read more
A planet is born! Astronomers find the first direct evidence of a new world being formed around a distant star A dense disc of dust and gas was spotted surrounding young star AB Aurigae The star is 520 light years away from Earth and has a spiral structure around it Twists in the centre of … Read more
Astronomers detect an ‘incredibly rare’ Earth-like planet orbiting a star one-tenth the size of our sun 25,000 light-years away The star was spotted in the Galactic Bulge at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy The rocky world’s mass is somewhere between the mass of Earth and Neptune It is so far away that scientists … Read more
Captivating images of planet-forming discs around young stars have been captured by astronomers – and they could hold clues to the origins of Earth-like worlds. An international team of astronomers used the Europe Southern Observatory Very Large Telescope in Chile to take 15 images of the inner rims of planetary discs. In the images astronomers … Read more
An extreme exoplanet where it rains iron and experiences staggering 4,400F temperatures has been discovered by astronomers 640 light years from Earth. It was discovered by researchers from Geneva University in Switzerland using the European Southern Observatory (ESO) Very Large Telescope in Chile. The planet, named WASP-76b, is a gas giant about twice the size … Read more
Traces of the ancient Mars-sized wandering planet Theia that nearly destroyed Earth and formed the Moon 4.5 billion years ago is found in lunar rocks. This goes some way to proving a long-held theory that the moon was formed out of material expelled after Theia collided with the Earth billions of years ago. Researchers from … Read more
Constellations of thousands of satellites from companies like SpaceX and OneWeb could hamper the ability of astronomers to spot ‘dangerous asteroids’, study warns. The European Southern Observatory (ESO) study examined the impact satellites from the likes of Amazon, SpaceX and OneWeb would have on astronomy. Companies plan to launch thousands of communications satellites into orbit … Read more