Articles

Large language models can describe and classify changing objects in astronomical images with high accuracy. This enables searches for visual features using text and introduces a new way to interact with sky survey data.

High-resolution ALMA observations reveal a gravitationally bound septuple protostar system in NGC 6334IN, formed through disk fragmentation. This discovery sheds light on the formation of extreme high-order multiplicity in massive stellar clusters.

JWST has found an unexpectedly high density of AGNs at early times, raising the possibility that AGNs may have provided sufficient numbers of ionizing photons for cosmic reionization. New results definitively rule out AGNs as the dominant source of reionization.

Fresh ice grains from Enceladus’s plume were analysed during the highest-speed fly-by of the Cassini spacecraft. Organic compounds with a range of chemical structures were discovered, suggesting comprehensive subsurface chemistry on Enceladus.

A complementary analysis of DESI DR2 distance measurements along with supernova and CMB data shows consistent, moderate evidence that dark energy changes over time rather than behaving as a simple cosmological constant.

ALMA telescope observations over a 7-year period have ‘filmed’ spiral arms winding in a protoplanetary disk. This motion is a hallmark of gravitational instability, a theory that suggests how giant planets might form far from their host stars.

This study demonstrates that the fastest astrophysical jets are locked to a fixed axis, whereas slower jets can precess or wobble. The findings imply that the most relativistic jets are tied to the spin axis of the black hole that launched them.

JWST/NIRSpec observations of the 49 Ceti debris disk reveal spatially resolved, fluorescently excited CO emission, indicating a secondary origin of the gas in debris disks (that is, from the collision of volatile-rich bodies).

The Chang’e-6 landing site contains ~30 ppm more water on its surface than its subsurface, with observed temporal variations. It holds twice the water content of the Chang’e-5 landing site. These findings demonstrate that solar wind and impacts are key to the formation of lunar water.

An analysis of the 3.45-Gyr-old volcanic sediments from the Kitty’s Gap Chert in Australia shows the presence of microfossils and highlights the difficulty of determining the biotic nature of structures in future extraterrestrial samples.

A coherent 909-Hz quasi-periodic oscillation was potentially detected in GRB 230307A, the second brightest gamma-ray burst to date, indicating that a millisecond magnetar formed after the merger powered the burst.

2023 CX1 is the only L-chondrite-like asteroid analysed from space to ground. It catastrophically fragmented in the atmosphere, depositing 98% of its energy in one burst—an unusual, high-risk fragmentation mode with implications for planetary defence.

Observed 730 Myr after the Big Bang, a little red dot is found to anchor an overdensity of eight galaxies and seems to be embedded in a massive host dark matter halo.

Dense gas clumps from the time of the formation of the first stars in the Universe should affect the average intensity of radio waves on the sky. Numerical simulations show that this offers a new way to probe the nature of dark matter.

Studying gravitational waves from a black-hole merger can constrain both the magnitude and direction of the remnant’s recoil, offering new ways to test black-hole formation scenarios and support multi-messenger observations.

Simulations show that the Solar System’s gas disk shaped how and where primitive bodies were implanted in the asteroid belt, revealing different arrival times for CM and CI parent bodies and identifying CM bodies as likely sources of Earth’s water.

The complex collisional history of shocked L chondrites is reconstructed by combining high-pressure mineralogy, geochemistry, geochronology and orbital data. The results show that those meteorites arrive on Earth from over three distinct asteroid families.

The Perseverance rover detected polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons preserved within sulfates in the fan and floor of Jezero crater on Mars, offering new insights into past habitability and the preservation of organic matter on Mars.

The analysis of radial velocity variations of O-type stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud reveals a large fraction of close binaries, suggesting that binary physics also plays a prominent role in the low-metallicity environment of the distant Universe.

Astronomers identify imprints of chemical evolution in rare carbon and oxygen isotopes of 32 nearby red dwarf stars. Metal-rich stars exhibit lower isotope ratios than the Sun, suggesting substantial chemical enrichment in the past few billion years.