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It rains soot and diamonds on PSR J2322-2650b, a "lemon-shaped" world orbiting a dead star. Astronomers expected water, methane, or CO2. Instead, they found Soot (Carbon). The spectrum shows distinct signs of molecular carbon (C2, C3). This chemistry is impossible if oxygen is present, meaning this world is an extreme "Carbon Planet."

Faster than a supernova. Brighter than a billion suns. Astronomers have finally decoded the mystery of the "Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transient" (LFBOT). Astronomers initially thought LFBOTs were strange supernovae. But the math didn't work. A normal supernova converts mass to energy. To match the energy of AT 2024wpp, a supernova would need to convert 10% of the Sun's entire mass into pure energy in just a few weeks. That's physically impossible for standard stellar colla

It started as a gravitational wave, looked like a kilonova, then turned into a supernova. Astronomers think they've found a "Russian Doll" explosion. LIGO data revealed one of the merging objects was "sub-solar"—less massive than our Sun. Neutron stars shouldn't be this small. How do you make a tiny neutron star? Theorists propose two violent scenarios happening inside a dying massive star.

Using advanced optics, astronomers have peered into the Taurus Molecular Cloud to find a massive planet and a shrouded star hiding in the darkness. Taurus is young (1-5 million years old). Finding these companions here provides crucial data points ("anchors") for models of how stars and planets form and evolve. The team plans to continue the KOINTREAU survey in Taurus and Ophiuchus to find more of these elusive, wide-orbit objects.

The Magellanic Clouds are our closest neighbors and perfect test beds for galaxy evolution. A new survey, 1001MC, will chemically map half a million stars to unlock their secrets. The LMC and SMC aren't just sitting there; they are interacting. As they orbit the Milky Way (and each other), tidal forces strip away gas, creating a massive structure called the Magellanic Stream.

Hubble has captured the interstellar interloper as it races past Earth. Its strange chemical fingerprint—heavy on CO2 and Nickel—hints at an exotic origin. Using the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), Hubble tracked the comet from 286 million km away. The spectral data revealed surprising features.

A stray comet from another star system is swinging past Earth before racing back into the interstellar void, never to return. Measuring a dark object millions of miles away is notoriously difficult. NASA estimates 3I/Atlas is somewhere between 440 meters and 5.6 kilometers wide.

Evidence suggests an intermediate-mass black hole hides in the Milky Way's largest star cluster. But when radio telescopes looked for it, they found only silence. Intermediate-mass black holes are the "missing link" of astronomy. To confirm the one in Omega Centauri, researchers used the Australia Telescope Compact Array to listen for radio waves.

An extraordinary amount of gas is falling onto NGC 7793 P13. New research reveals how this "supercritical" feeding frenzy spins up the star and builds towering columns of X-ray light. Using data from XMM-Newton, Chandra, and NICER, the team tracked P13 from 2011 to 2024. They found a direct link: when the star gets brighter, it spins faster. In 2021, the system went dim (faint phase).

We used to think Earth was lucky. New research suggests a nearby supernova "cooked" our solar system dry with cosmic rays—a recipe that might be common across the galaxy. Planets form from "planetesimals"—mountain-sized chunks of rock and ice. In the early solar system, these chunks were wet.

New data suggests that supermassive black holes behaved differently in the early universe, shaking the foundations of how we measure cosmic distance. For 50 years, astronomers believed in a universal rule: Brighter UV = Stronger X-Ray. The ratio was thought to be constant across all of time. The new study from the National Observatory of Athens used the eROSITA telescope to look deeper than ever before. They found that 6.5 billion years ago, this relationship was different.

Astronomers have directly imaged a massive planet orbiting two stars. It hugs its suns tighter than any other binary planet found to date.The data sat in archives for years. Taken between 2016 and 2019 by the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) in Chile, it contained a faint dot that went unnoticed. The "Common Proper Motion" Test: Stars move across the sky. Background stars stay relatively fixed. If a faint dot moves with a star, it's likely a planet bound to it by gravity.