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Gamma ray burst may have been two supernovae in one

Matt von Hippel — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 16:00:00 +0000

A group of astronomers proposes that a series of events in a distant galaxy formed both a black hole and a pulsar, but other experts say the conclusion is premature

Fastest star ever spotted at the centre of our galaxy

Leah Crane — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 10:48:00 +0000

Star clouds in the constellation of Sagittarius in the direction of the centre of our Milky Way

ESO and Digitized Sky Survey 2

A star near the centre of the Milky Way is hurtling through its orbit with a peak speed of more than 8 per cent the speed of light, making it both the fastest star and the closest to a supermassive black hole that has ever been spotted. Named S301, this astonishing star could help us unravel the secrets of gravity.

at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany and his colleagues found S301 using the Very Large Telescope in Chile. They have been watching it since 2023 to get enough data to pin down its orbit, and the results are unprecedented.

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Everything from cells to stars to particles exists on the edge of chaos

At its closest approach, S301 is only about 1.8 billion kilometres from Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. That’s just 12 times the distance between Earth and the sun, 10 times closer to Sagittarius A* than the previous record-holder. “If you were living on a planet around this star, the size of the black hole at the closest approach would appear similar to the full moon from Earth – it would be absolutely stunning,” says Gillessen.

Such a close pass by the black hole means that S301 spends part of its orbit in one of the most extreme gravitational environments in the universe. Next to a black hole, space-time stretches and warps. If a black hole is spinning, it should warp space-time even more, twisting it up in what is known as the frame-dragging effect.

“Earth does this as well, and we can measure with satellites around Earth that there is a very, very slight frame dragging from Earth’s rotation,” says at the University of California, Los Angeles, who wasn’t involved in the research. “This is doing the same thing, just with much different objects.”

Measuring Earth’s spin is relatively easy, but a black hole’s spin is much harder to determine because of its lack of a visible surface. The most precise way to measure it would be by measuring frame dragging, and S301 is the first star close enough to feel that effect.

“We drop a leaf in the wind and see how the air is moving by measuring that leaf,” says Gillessen. “A star is just the perfect leaf to drop to see the movement of space-time.”

Actually measuring the spin of Sagittarius A* using this method will probably take around a decade, he says, but that may speed up if we find more stars like it.

“With one star, it would take a while, but it would still be the best constraint on spin that we’ve ever had by far,” says at University College London. “If you can find another star that’s even closer, that’s better still. If you can find a population of these stars, then you’re in business.”

Several stars orbiting Sagittarius A*. One of these stars, S301, was recently found to pass much closer to the black hole than any other known star

ESO/GRAVITY collaboration

Gillessen and his team have several candidates for stars slightly further from the black hole than S301, but none yet that are closer, he says.

But when we finally do measure the spin of a black hole, it will be a crucial piece of the cosmic jigsaw. It will not only help us understand how black holes have contributed to the evolution of the universe, but will also provide a probe into the behaviour of gravity in extreme environments, which has proved extremely difficult to study.

“A black hole only has three measurable properties: a mass, a spin and possibly an electric charge. The mass was worth a Nobel prize in 2020, so, if you find the spin, you might expect a call from Stockholm in 20 years,” says Gillessen.

Journal reference:

Nature

Hidden black hole could explain mystery at the heart of our galaxy

Leah Crane — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 10:00:33 +0000

The area surrounding our galaxy’s central supermassive black hole contains three strangely different populations of stars – but one hidden black hole could explain all of them

We may have seen a ‘dirty fireball’ star explosion for the first time

Alex Wilkins — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 13:00:47 +0000

An incredibly powerful flash of X-rays spotted by the Einstein Probe telescope appears to be a kind of explosion first theorised more than 30 years ago

We may have just glimpsed the universe’s first stars

Alex Wilkins — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 12:25:22 +0000

A galaxy spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope, known as Hebe, that existed just 400 million years after the big bang appears to contain extremely pure and young stars

Mystery ‘whippet’ space explosion is the brightest of its kind

Alex Wilkins — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 14:00:27 +0000

A rapidly brightening burst of light called AT 2024wpp, or "the Whippet", is baffling astronomers. One explanation is that it is the result of an exotic star falling into a black hole

What is a galaxy? That’s a surprisingly difficult question to answer

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 12:00:50 +0000

Figuring out what really counts as a galaxy could give us insights into dark matter and potentially shake up astrophysics, cosmology and particle physics, says columnist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Our solar system is extremely weird: Best ideas of the century

Alex Wilkins — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 16:00:08 +0000

Realising that our solar system isn’t like most others out there has helped astronomers rewrite the story of how it formed

Two asteroids crashed around a nearby star, solving a cosmic mystery

Leah Crane — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 19:00:49 +0000

A composite image of the dust belt around Fomalhaut (obscured in the middle). In the inset, dust cloud cs1, imaged in 2012, is pictured with dust cloud cs2, imaged in 2023

NASA, ESA, Paul Kalas/UC Berkeley

Around the nearby star Fomalhaut, asteroids are smashing into each other in a series of cosmic cataclysms, creating huge clouds of dust. For the first time, astronomers are watching one of these collisions as it occurs, which could provide a window into the early days of our own solar system.

Fomalhaut has a history of strange observations: in 2008, at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues reported what seemed to be a giant planet in orbit around the young star, based on observations with the Hubble Space Telescope made in 2004 and 2005. Over the years, though, as more observations have rolled in, researchers have hotly debated over what this strange object, called Fomalhaut b, might be. It was either a planet a bit larger than Jupiter, or a cloud of debris.

Now, Kalas and his team have used Hubble to look at Fomalhaut once again. “In 2023, we used the same instrument we’d used [before], and we did not detect Fomalhaut b – it wasn’t visible anymore,” says Kalas. “But what really shocked us was [that] there was a new Fomalhaut b.”

This new bright spot, called Fomalhaut cs2 (short for “circumstellar source”), couldn’t be a planet, or it would have been seen sooner. The best explanation is that it is a cloud of dust created by the collision of two large asteroids, or planetesimals, each around 60 kilometres in diameter. The disappearance of Fomalhaut b hints that it was probably a similar dust cloud all along.

“These sources are noisy and erratic, so we’re still some ways off a firm conclusion,” says at Columbia University. “But, all of the evidence to date seems to fit neatly under the umbrella explanation of collisions between proto-planets in a nascent system.”

Spotting two such smash-ups is unexpected, though. “Theory dictates that you shouldn’t see these collisions except once every 100,000 years or rarer. And yet, for some reason, we’ve seen 2 events in 20 years,” says Kalas. “Fomalhaut is sparkling like a holiday tree, and that is a surprise.”

It may mean that collisions between planetesimals are more common than we had thought, at least around relatively young stars like Fomalhaut. Kalas and his colleagues have more observations scheduled over the next three years with both Hubble and the more powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to watch how Fomalhaut cs2 behaves moving forward and to try to find the now-dimmer Fomalhaut b.

This is a unique opportunity to study these collisions in real time. “We no longer have to depend solely on theory to understand these violent impacts; we can actually see them,” says Kalas. More observations could teach us not just about young planetary systems in general, but also about our own early solar system and where it fits in the cosmic menagerie.

“We’ve long wondered if the moon-forming impact was typical or not beyond our cosmic shore, and here we see compelling evidence that collisions are par for the course,” says Kipping. “Perhaps we’re not as unusual as some have speculated.”

Journal reference

Science

Strange lemon-shaped exoplanet defies the rules of planet formation

Leah Crane — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 16:30:23 +0000

An artist’s impression of PSR J2322-2650b

NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)

Astronomers have found what appears to be one of the strangest known worlds in the universe. It orbits a type of rapidly spinning neutron star called a pulsar – this in itself is unusual, but it is far from the weirdest thing about the exoplanet PSR J2322-2650b.

at the University of Chicago and his colleagues spotted the odd planet, which is more than 2000 light years away from Earth, via the James Webb Space Telescope, and immediately noticed that something about it was unusual. The spectrum of light they measured coming from it didn’t show the usual water and carbon dioxide we would expect to find on a Jupiter-mass world like this one, but instead molecules of carbon.

We have never seen molecular carbon in the atmosphere of any exoplanet before, because any carbon in a planet’s atmosphere is far more likely to bind to other atoms than to itself. “In order to have molecular carbon in the atmosphere, you have to get rid of pretty much everything else, all of the oxygen, all of the nitrogen, and we just don’t know how to do that,” says Zhang. “We don’t know of any other planetary atmosphere that looks anything like this.”

The planet is so close to its host star, and the host star is so massive, that it is thought to have been pulled by the pulsar’s gravity into an oblong, lemon-like shape. A full year there lasts only 7.8 hours, and even the coldest points on the planet are about 650°C (1202°F). Unlike most other giant planets, the winds there blow in the opposite direction to the planet’s rotation. “You can imagine that this planet would look deep red, with clouds of graphite in the atmosphere”, like a sort of evil lemon, Zhang says. “I would say it’s definitely the weirdest exoplanet.”

All of these oddities make it difficult to explain how PSR J2322-2650b could have possibly formed – it seems to defy the established models of planet formation. For now, this utterly strange, distant world is a total mystery.

Do black holes exist and, if not, what have we really been looking at?

Black holes are so strange that physicists have long wondered if they are quite what they seem. Now we are set to find out if they are instead gravastars, fuzzballs or something else entirely