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For 2,000 years, the "Star" that stopped in the sky has baffled astronomers. A new study suggests a rare cometary orbit matches the biblical description perfectly. The Gospel of Matthew describes the star as moving before the Magi and then "standing over" the place where the child was. The Problem: Stars don't stop. Due to Earth's rotation, everything in the sky rises in the East and sets in the West constantly. To an observer, a "stopping" star sounds like a miracle or a m

NGC 1266 is slowly dying. ALMA has revealed a massive fountain of molecular gas being pushed out of the galaxy, robbing it of the fuel needed to make new stars. The Target: NGC 1266, a lenticular galaxy 97.5 million light-years away. In visible light, it looks calm. The ALMA View: By looking at radio frequencies (Band 3, 6, 7), astronomers found a violent outflow driven by the galaxy's Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN).

It should be a dead rock. Instead, JWST found a super-Earth shrouded in a thick, volatile atmosphere, defying the laws of planetary survival. The Expectation: TOI-561 b orbits its star every 10 hours. It is bombarded with radiation. A bare rock should bake at 2,700°C on the dayside. The Observation: JWST's infrared sensors measured a "cool" 1,800°C.

Two leading X-ray telescopes have captured a black hole doing something unprecedented: whipping up a wind at 20% the speed of light in a single day. The black hole in NGC 3783 is 30 million times the mass of our Sun. It is surrounded by a swirling disk of superheated matter.

With the ISS retiring, Russia plans to build a successor. The strategy? Detach its old modules and start over—but critics warn the hardware may be too toxic to reuse. The original plan (OPSEK) to separate the Russian segment was abandoned in 2017 but has been revived due to geopolitical tensions. The Plan: When ISS retires (c. 2030), Russia intends to detach its modules—Zarya, Zvezda, Nauka, etc.—to form the core of the new Russian Orbital Station (ROS).

In ancient salt crystals from Ontario, scientists have cracked open a time capsule. Inside was a sample of Earth's atmosphere from a time before animals, revealing a world far more habitable than we imagined. A billion years ago, a subtropical lake evaporated, leaving behind Halite (rock salt). As the crystals formed, they trapped tiny pockets of brine and air bubbles.

Getting into a car is easy. Getting into the Orion spacecraft for a trip to the moon requires a specialized "pit crew." Meet the Artemis II Closeout Team. When astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen arrive at the launch pad, five people will be waiting for them. These are the last humans the crew will see before leaving Earth. Led by Taylor Hose, the team acts like a Formula 1 pit crew, but with much higher stakes.

Is the universe the same in every direction? A new study on the "Cosmic Dipole Anomaly" suggests it might not be, threatening the very foundation of modern cosmology. The Assumption: The "Standard Model" (Lambda-CDM) assumes the universe is isotropic (looks the same in all directions).

In a protoplanetary disk 500 light-years away, JWST has found Carbon Monoxide behaving in a way never seen before—glowing hot while spinning cold. The Target: HD 131488, a young star (15 Myr) with a debris disk. The Discovery: JWST detected Carbon Monoxide (CO) gas in the inner disk (0.5–10 AU) with a bizarre property.

Shipping cement to the Moon is impossibly expensive. To land massive rockets like Starship, we must build pads from local dust—but a new study reveals a dangerous paradox in the design. Why build a pad? You can't just land in the dirt. A rocket plume kicks up high-velocity rocks that can destroy nearby habitats or damage the rocket itself.

Just like your cellphone switches networks when you travel, NASA's new PExT technology proves spacecraft can "roam" between government and commercial satellites. It’s a game-changer. Imagine if your phone only worked on one specific tower in your hometown. Drive 20 miles away, and you have zero signal. That was essentially the reality for early space missions. They were locked into specific government networks.

New analysis of Cassini data strengthens the case for life on Enceladus. By looking at "fresh" samples, scientists have found the ingredients for a habitable world. The Old Data: Most previous studies looked at Saturn's E-Ring. While this ring is made of material from Enceladus, it floats in space for a long time, getting blasted by radiation that alters its chemistry.