Astronomy on IT News

A Potentially Habitable Planet Just 25 Light-Years Away

Sat, 04 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0800

There are about 300,000 stars within 100 light-years of Earth. Most of them are probably hiding planets. The hard part is finding the ones that might actually support life.

Astronomers may have found the Milky Way's missing-link black hole

Sat, 04 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0800

There’s a hole in our understanding of black holes. Astrophysicists know that stellar-mass black holes form when stars collapse, and they know that supermassive black holes — the kind that sit at the center of nearly every galaxy — can grow to billions of solar masses. How you get from one to the other has always been an open question.

An international team led by Dr. Zheng Xiaochen from the Beijing Planetarium may have found the answer hiding near the largest black hole we already know about.

NASA Launches Daring Rescue to Save the Swift Space Observatory from Burning Up

Sat, 04 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0800

Twenty-two years is a long time for anything in low Earth orbit to stay alive. The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, launched in November 2004 to catch gamma-ray bursts as they flash across the universe, has been doing exactly that. But orbital decay is patient — and without intervention, the aging space telescope would fall below the survivable 300-kilometer altitude threshold this autumn, eventually burning up in the atmosphere.

NASA isn’t letting that happen.

Large Asteroid to Safely Pass Earth This Saturday, Visible with Small Telescopes

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 23:29:00 +0800

The European Space Agency has confirmed that a large near-Earth asteroid will make a close but perfectly safe pass by our planet this weekend, offering amateur astronomers a rare chance to spot a sizable interplanetary visitor. Asteroid (152637) 1997 NC1, a rocky body first catalogued in 1997, will reach its closest approach to Earth on Saturday at 19:14 Beijing time (11:14 UTC), coming within approximately 2.56 million kilometers — more than six times the distance between Earth and the Moon.

Hubble Telescope Detects Ultraviolet Light from Galaxy Just 1.4 Billion Years After the Big Bang

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 13:12:00 +0800

NASA announced on June 23 that astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have successfully detected ultraviolet light originating from a galaxy that existed a mere 1.4 billion years after the Big Bang. The discovery marks a significant breakthrough in observational cosmology, piercing a veil that researchers long believed to be impenetrable.

Chinese Scientists Discover Mysterious Double-Flash X-Ray Source That Defies Explanation

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 23:28:00 +0800

Astronomers using China’s Einstein Probe satellite have uncovered a deeply puzzling X-ray transient source that refuses to fit into any known category of cosmic explosion. Designated EP240305a, the source exhibits a distinctive double-flash pattern and jet-like afterglow strongly reminiscent of a gamma-ray burst — yet, crucially, no gamma rays were ever detected. The findings, published June 13 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, have sparked intense interest across the international astronomy community and may point to an entirely new class of high-energy transient.

Einstein Probe Detects Mysterious Double-Flash X-Ray Source That Defies Known Theories

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 18:40:00 +0800

Astronomers using the Einstein Probe (EP) satellite have uncovered a deeply puzzling cosmic transient — an X-ray source that behaves like a gamma-ray burst in nearly every respect, yet produces no detectable gamma rays whatsoever. The discovery, designated EP240305a, has left researchers scrambling for explanations, with existing theories falling short of a definitive account.