astornomy Archives

A seemingly serene landscape of gas and dust is hopping with star formation behind the scenes. NASA, ESA, and K. Stapelfeldt (Jet Propulsion Laboratory); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America) larger imagery

Astrochemistry, Astronomy & Telescopes, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Interstellar, Press Release

Astrochemistry: Hubble Observes Lupus 3 Star-forming Cloud

by Keith CowingJanuary 21, 2026January 21, 2026

While this eerie NASA Hubble Space Telescope image may look ghostly, it’s actually full of new life. Lupus 3 is a star-forming cloud about 500 light-years away in the constellation […]

Exozodiacal dust, depicted in this artist's illustration as a glowing white haze above the horizon of a hypothetical habitable planet orbiting another star, was found to exist in such large quantities in the Kappa Tucanae star system that it has astronomers puzzled over its origin. -- ESO/L. Calçada

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Astronomy & Telescopes, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biophysics, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Interstellar, Press Release, Stellar Cartography

Newly Discovered Star Opens A Laboratory For Solving A Cosmic Dust Mystery

by Keith CowingDecember 2, 2025December 2, 2025

Seventy light-years from Earth, a star called Kappa Tucanae A harbors one of astronomy’s most perplexing mysteries: dust so hot it glows at more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, existing impossibly […]

The distribution of accretion parameters relative to steady state derived from the posteriors of the MCMC tests, separated based on the dominant atmospheric species.

Astronomy & Telescopes, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Press Release, Stellar Cartography

Do White Dwarfs Sample Water-Rich Planetary Material?

by Keith CowingSeptember 2, 2025September 2, 2025

Polluted white dwarfs offer a unique way to directly probe the compositions of exoplanetary bodies.

Mass-radius diagram of the well-characterized small planet population (Mp < 40M⊕,Rp < 4R⊕, mass error better than 25%, radius error better than 8%) from the PlanetS catalogue (Otegi et al. 2020; Parc et al. 2024) (semi-transparent circles), coloured by insolation. TOI-2322 b and c are shown as a pentagon and a hexagon respectively. The composition models of Zeng et al. (2019) are shown by the coloured curves. -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report, Stellar Cartography

TOI-2322: Two Transiting Rocky Planets Close To The Stellar Rotation Period And Its First Harmonic

by Keith CowingAugust 28, 2025August 28, 2025

Context. Active regions on the stellar surface can induce quasi-periodic radial velocity (RV) variations that can mimic planets and mask true planetary signals. These spurious signals can be problematic for […]

Cartoon showing different components of a protostellar system. The ices are thought to form in layers with different molecules at different temperatures and densities (see review by Herbst and van Dishoeck 2009). Although JWST has detected COMs in ices, it is still under debate in which layer and at what stage of star formation they form. The icy dust grains and the gas in the envelope gets accreted onto the disk and eventually onto the planetesimals or comets that may be forming there. -- astro-ph.GA

Astrochemistry, Astronomy & Telescopes, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Interstellar, Status Report

Overview Of Complex Organic Molecule Observations In Protostellar Systems

by Keith CowingAugust 22, 2025August 22, 2025

Complex organic molecules (COMs) have been detected abundantly at various stages of star formation, particularly in the warm protostellar phase.

Map of the IRAS 16293-2422 region from publicly available APEX data presented in Kahle et al. 2023, where the colormap is N2H + (3-2) at 279.511 GHz and the cyan contours show the CH3OHA + 11 − 00 b-type transition at 350.905 GHz (beam size for N2H + is 23.7" and shown in bottom left). Crosses designate where the IRAS 16293E prestellar core, labeled 'E', and the IRAS 16293A and B protostars labeled as 'A/B', sit. Other emission regions studied in Kahle et al. 2023 are labeled by white squares. For the single-pointing observations presented here, we also show the largest beam size (ARO 12 m beam at 73") and the smallest beam size (Yebes 40 m beam at 37" ). astro-ph.GA

Astrochemistry, Astronomy & Telescopes, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biophysics, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Comets and Asteroids, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Interstellar, Press Release

Nascent Chemical Complexity In Prestellar Core IRAS 16293E: Complex Organics And Deuterated Methanol

by Keith CowingAugust 8, 2025August 8, 2025

Prestellar cores represent early sites of low-mass (M ≤ few M⊙) star and planet formation and provide insight into initial chemical conditions of complex organic molecules (COMs).

Observed spectra of all the eight objects with JWST NIRSpec (green) and MIRI (orange) normalised to the flux at 2.5µm. Published photometry at near-infrared (red) and mid-infrared wavelengths (blue) is overplotted. -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

Spectroscopy Of Free-Floating Planetary-Mass Objects And Their Disks With JWST

by Keith CowingJuly 9, 2025July 9, 2025

Free-floating planetary-mass objects (FFPMOs) are known to harbor disks at young ages. Here, we present 1-13 μm spectra for eight young FFPMOs with masses of 5-10 MJup (at ages of […]

Example exoatlas visualization placing the first discovered transiting exoplanet HD209458b in context with other transiting exoplanets and the eight major Solar System planets. Errorbars use a color intensity that scales inversely with quantity uncertainties, to avoid giving undue visual weight to the least precise data. -- astro-ph.IM

AI - Data - Apps - Cybernetics, Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

exoatlas: Friendly Python Code For Exoplanet Populations

by Keith CowingJuly 6, 2025July 6, 2025

Planets are complicated. Understanding how they work requires connecting individual objects to the context of broader populations.

CARMENES detection sensitivity map, averaged over the individual maps of the 15 stellar targets of this study. The light blue markers indicate the 11 planets included for this occurrence rate analysis, and the color map illustrates the detection probabilities of the respective periodmass grid points. The solid lines represent the masses associated to the RV semi-amplitude values equal to the RVs’ root mean square averaged over the time series (blue), the mean RV uncertainties (magenta), and the median of the RV uncertainties. -- Astronomy & Astrophysics

Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

CARMENES Data: Earth-like Planets Especially Common Around Low-mass Stars

by Keith CowingJuly 1, 2025July 1, 2025

According to the latest studies led by Heidelberg University astronomers, low-mass stars quite often host Earth-like planets. Data collected as part of the CARMENES project were the basis of this […]