Since their discovery by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in 2022, small red dots (LRDs) have been the subject of great interest to astronomers. Understanding the nature of these compact and extremely distant red sources has been a perplexing scientific endeavor. One popular theory is that the small red dots are supermassive black holes known
NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory captured an “orphan” black hole lighting up as it devoured a star on the outskirts of a distant galaxy. For starters, these phenomena are rare and none have ever been seen so far outside the core of a galaxy before. “We were looking for these star destruction events as a
Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have discovered a giant planet outside our solar system, called an exoplanet, hidden within one of the most intensively studied planetary systems in our Milky Way galaxy. The nearby young star Beta Pictoris was already known to host two giant planets: Beta Pictoris b, one of the first
Read this press release in Spanish here. How do black holes in the centers of galaxies form and grow over time? To answer this question, scientists need to detect and study supermassive black holes at great distances, which existed much earlier in the history of the universe. New research suggests that NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope gives us new insights into the distant future of solar systems like ours, as the agency continues to reveal the secrets of the universe and our place in it. Billions of years ago, a Sun-like star nearing the end of its life grew enormously in size to become a red
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured infrared light from numerous features that were previously impossible to see beyond the thick dust of the FS Tau star system. In addition to the countless background galaxies that come into view like fireworks for America’s 250th anniversary celebrations, this image flickers with a series of protostars, or