In the Search for Life beyond Earth, NASA Dreams Big for a Future Space Telescope
Astronomers are moving ahead in planning NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory, a telescope designed to answer the ultimate question: Are we alone in the universe?
Six-Planet System in Perfect Harmony Shocks Scientists
Six “sub-Neptune” worlds locked in a delicate dance around a nearby star offer fresh insights for the orbital evolution of planetary systems
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Astronomy Is Facing an End of the Era of Monster Telescopes
Money, engineering and sheer geometry may mark an end of the line for building ever larger astronomical telescopes
Astronomers May Have Witnessed Worlds in Collision
A planet-vaporizing impact is the leading explanation for a distant star’s curiously fluctuating light
JWST Detects Quartz Crystals in an Exoplanet’s Atmosphere
Astronomers have found high-altitude clouds formed from quartz crystals on the gas-giant world WASP-17b
Stunning Images Reveal Rogue Planets of the Orion Nebula
The James Webb Space Telescope’s infrared gaze sheds new light on the Orion nebula, an icon of the night sky
How Would We Know There’s Life on Earth? This Bold Experiment Found Out
Thirty years ago, astronomer Carl Sagan convinced NASA to turn a passing space probe’s instruments on Earth to look for life — with results that still reverberate today
The Sky Is Full of Stars—and Exoplanets, Too
Of the thousands of stars visible to the eye, only a few hundred are known to have planets. But that number may be far higher in reality
Can Lucky Planets Get a Second Chance at Life?
Worlds around red giant stars—and others that don’t orbit any star at all—hint at an unexpected diversity of possibilities for planets and life in the universe
Nearby Worlds May Tell Us How Life Might Look in Our Galaxy
TRAPPIST-1 could make or break the extended push to make red dwarfs an astrobiological priority
Earthshine Lights up the ‘Dark Side’ of the Moon
This week—and any time there’s a new crescent moon—the lunar night is a little less dark, thanks to the bright reflected light of Earth
We Need to Widen the ‘Habitable Zones’ Seen around Alien Stars
When looking for life in space, we should broaden our horizons