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Two stars born at the same time, from the same natal material, and with the same mass are 'identical twins', and as such might be expected to possess identical physical attributes. But this paper reports that a pair of twin stars have surface temperatures that differ by ∼300 K and luminosities that differ by ∼50 per cent. These surprising dissimilarities suggest that one of the twins may have been delayed by several hundred thousand years in its formation relative to its sibling.

The discovery of a brown-dwarf eclipsing binary system presents a puzzle, as despite both objects having large radii in accordance with current theory the less-massive brown dwarf is the hotter of the pair, contrary to theoretical predictions.

An analysis of archival data reveals an observational correlation between stellar brightness variations and surface gravity, allowing a determination of surface gravity with a precision of better than 25 per cent for inactive Sun-like stars at main-sequence to giant stages of evolution.

The SPECULOOS project detected an Earth-sized planet in a short orbit around a nearby Jupiter-sized star. This planet, SPECULOOS-3 b, is one of the most promising rocky exoplanets for detailed emission spectroscopy characterization with JWST.

A giant planet candidate roughly the size of Jupiter but more than 14 times as massive is observed by TESS and other instruments to be transiting the white dwarf star WD 1856+534.

The spectroscopic and photometric observations of a high-mass, transiting warm Jupiter, TIC 241249530 b, with an orbital eccentricity of 0.94, provide evidence that hot Jupiters may have formed by means of a high-eccentricity tidal-migration pathway.

Saturn-mass exoplanet HD 149026b has an atmospheric metallicity 59–276 times solar, which is greater than Saturn’s atmospheric metallicity of roughly 7.5 times solar and more correlated with bulk metallicity than planet mass.

The giant planet 8 Ursae Minoris b seems to have avoided engulfment by its giant host star through a stellar merger that either affected the evolution of the host star or produced 8 Ursae Minoris b as a second-generation planet.

A transiting planet with a period of about 8.5 days and a radius 0.4 times that of Jupiter is reported within the debris disk around the star AU Microscopii.

Observations of TOI-849b reveal a radius smaller than Neptune’s but a large mass of about 40 Earth masses, indicating that the planet is the remnant core of a gas giant.

A spectroscopic thermal phase curve of GJ 1214b obtained with the JWST in the mid-infrared is reported and a planet with a high metallicity atmosphere blanketed by thick and reflective clouds or haze is found.

Bright star \(\nu\) Indi shows elevated levels of alpha-process elements, suggesting great age, and is kinematically heated, probably from the merger of a dwarf galaxy with the Milky Way. Chaplin et al. make a case for \(\nu\) Indi being an accurate indicator of the timing for the Gaia–Enceladus merger.

The giant planet KELT-9b has a dayside temperature of about 4,600 K, which is sufficiently high to dissociate molecules and to evaporate its atmosphere, owing to its hot stellar host.

Transmission spectroscopy observations from the James Webb Space Telescope show the detection of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of the gas giant exoplanet WASP-39b.

Phase curve measurements for the small (1.3 Earth radii) terrestrial exoplanet LHS 3844b show absence of a thick atmosphere, in agreement with theoretical predictions.