Astronomy & Telescopes Archives

James Webb Space Telescope - NASA via Grok

Machine Learning And Deep Learning For Exoplanet Detection And Atmospheric Characterization With JWST And The Upcoming Ariel Mission

by Keith CowingJune 26, 2026June 26, 2026

The detection and atmospheric characterization of exoplanets have entered a new data-intensive era driven by the James Webb Space Telescope and the upcoming Ariel mission.

This illustration depicts the Sun-like star TOI-791 and two giant planets that NASA's TESS space telescope discovered in its orbit. These planets, designated TOI-791 b and TOI-791 c, are roughly the size of Jupiter but a tiny fraction of its mass, meaning they have an extraordinarily low density. NASA / Daniel Rutter

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TESS Reveals The Puffiest Exoplanets Ever Found

by Keith CowingJune 26, 2026June 26, 2026

Data from NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) mission has revealed two new “super-puff” planets, giant worlds so light that their density is comparable to cotton candy. Scientists calculate that […]

A: The average relative photosynthetic output rate, ν/νmax, as a function of main sequence stellar temperature/mass and orbital semi-major axis, a, for oxygenic, anoxygenic and hypothetical forms of photosynthesis (denoted by green crosses, red circles and blue triangles respectively). The error bars represent variance in antenna structure in the final evolved photosynthetic population output by the genetic algorithm. The faint dashed lines are a visual reference showing a 1/a2 dependence. B: The habitable zone (green) overlaid with contours of constant ν/νmax (coloured dashed lines) for oxygenic photosynthesis. The contours are interpolated from the data points which are shown as filled circles and the corresponding values of ν/νmax are shown as a percentage. For reference, several candidates worlds from the Habitable Worlds Catalogue (PHL UPR Arecibo 2026) are listed, alongside Earth. C: Same as B but for anoxygenic photosynthesis. D: Same as B but for the hypothetical NIR-driven oxygenic photosynthesis. Since only three stellar temperatures/masses were considered for the hypothetical form of photosynthesis (due to calculation cost), we added interpolated data points to generate the contours. -- astro-ph.EP

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An Agnostic Machine Learning Model of Photosynthetic Habitability

by Keith CowingJune 26, 2026June 26, 2026

The search for exoplanet biosignatures is guided by whether planetary environments can sustain photosynthesis.

Artist’s rendering of a brown dwarf orbiting a star.Credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Marenfeld Acknowledgement: William Pendrill

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NASA’s Backyard Worlds: Binaries Project

by Keith CowingJune 26, 2026June 26, 2026

Some stars have planets. Others are orbited by brown dwarfs, balls of gas too massive to be planets, but too low-mass to be stars. Astronomers love these brown dwarf-star pairs […]

Long period comet C/2006 P1 (McNaught) over the Pacific ocean, as imaged from Paranal Observatory in 2007. Credit: ESO/Sebastian Deiries

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Long-Period Comets’ Orbits Reflect Close Passage by Star HD 7977

by Keith CowingJune 26, 2026June 26, 2026

The Gaia mission has allowed researchers to understand the motions of stars like never before, even revealing possible interactions between our Solar System and nearby stars.

The setting Sun dips below the horizon of the Pacific Ocean, bathing the Paranal platform in light in this amazing aerial image from the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. The Cerro Paranal mountain top is home to the world’s most advanced ground-based facility for astronomy, hosting the four 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes of the Very Large Telescope, four 1.8-metre Auxiliary Telescopes and the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) — all of which are visible in this image. The 4.1-metre Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), also housed at Cerro Paranal, is hidden out of frame. -- ESO via Wikipedia

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VLT Beyond 2030 and Call for White Papers

by Keith CowingJune 26, 2026June 26, 2026

The VLT Beyond 2030 conference gathered participants from the community and ESO experts to present and discuss science and technological ideas for the future of both the Very Large Telescope […]

Images of comet 7P/Pons–Winnecke taken during a period of quiescence (left, taken at 2021 July 28 10:25:23 UTC) and the 2021 July 10 outburst (right, taken at 2021 July 10 02:29:58 UTC). The outburst ejecta is apparent as distortions in the observed surface brightness as compared to the ambient coma image. The bottom row shows the logarithmically scaled data with contours spaced every 0.5 mag/arcsec2 . A color bar provides the surface brightness scale. Images are oriented with north up, and east to the left. -⊙ represents the anti-solar direction and V is the heliocentric velocity direction, and a linear scale bar is shown. The blue arrows highlight two linear features as a result of the ejecta distribution that are meeting at a near-right angle in front of the nucleus. -- astro-ph.EP

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A Look At Eight Outbursts Of Comet 7P/Pons-Winnecke

by Keith CowingJune 26, 2026June 26, 2026

Cometary outbursts may be used as a means to infer the physical processes occurring on cometary nuclei. To that end, we studied eight outbursts of comet 7P/Pons-Winnecke identified between 2021 […]

Astrobiology (general), Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Astronomy & Telescopes, Policy, Reports, Roadmaps, & Plans

Input Sought: Review of Progress Toward the Decadal Survey Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 2020s

by Keith CowingJune 25, 2026June 25, 2026

The National Academies’ decadal survey, Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 2020s (Astro2020), identifies the most compelling science challenges and frontiers in astronomy and astrophysics and presents […]

Light curves of HIP 41378. Upper panel: K2 C5 campaign (long cadence). Bottom panel: K2 C18 campaign (short cadence). The pink curve represents the median of the best-fit model from photometry and RV analysis. The names of the planets are highlighted with their letters. -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy

A Decade Of Monitoring The HIP 41378’s Planetary System

by Keith CowingJune 25, 2026June 25, 2026

Multi-planetary systems provide key constraints on planet formation and evolution, as their architecture encodes the dynamical history of planets formed within a common protoplanetary disk.

Gallery of images for the epochs at which β Pic d is detected (source indicated with a white arrow). The JWST/NIRCam images have been processed with a high-pass filter to reduce disk flux. The known planet β Pic b is the bright source in the North-East of the image in epochs 1–3. In epochs 4 and 5, β Pic b is within the inner mask used for data reduction. We note that for the 2014-12-08 epoch (epoch 6), β Pic b and β Pic d are nearly coincident; planet β Pic b (open circle) has been subtracted here to allow the much fainter β Pic d (arrow) to be seen. All images use the same normalized color scale and field of view, with ticks spaced at 1 arcsec intervals. -- astro-ph.EP

Beta Pictoris

Direct Imaging Discovery of Giant Exoplanet β Pictoris d: A Decade-Long Game of Hide-and-Seek

by Keith CowingJune 24, 2026June 24, 2026

We report the direct imaging discovery of a third exoplanet in the β Pictoris system. We detect β Pictoris d in non-coronagraphic observations obtained with VLT/ERIS as well as multi-epoch […]