For the first time, astronomers combined Hubble and Webb space telescopes to hunt down some of the smallest, faintest objects ever spotted in the outer Solar System.
The post Hubble and Webb Team Up to Spy Tiny Frozen Worlds beyond Neptune appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
A new images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveals LHA 120-N44, a striking nebula located roughly 160,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.
The post Hubble Spots ‘Superbubble’ in Large Magellanic Cloud appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has glimpsed a strange ten-sided atmospheric wave at Saturn’s south pole, the first regular-sided jet pattern ever observed there.
In a recent paper published in Science Advances, researchers examined Saturn’s peculiar decahedron, detecting signs of an entirely new atmospheric phenomenon for the gas giant. A similar hexagon-shaped wave resides at Saturn’s north pole but differs in noticeable ways.
Years of Hubble observations from 2023 to 2025 allowed the team to trace subtle hints that they eventually resolved into the decagonal wave at Saturn’s south pole.
“We’ve never seen anything quite like this in Saturn’s southern hemisphere,” said co-author Amy Simon, OPAL principal investigator, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The northern hexagon has been there every time we’ve looked for more than 40 years. This feature is different — it appears to be strengthening, giving us the rare opportunity to watch a giant atmospheric pattern develop.”
Since its 1990 launch into low Earth orbit, the Hubble Space Telescope has been observing our solar system, uncovering new details about our planetary neighbors. One such project is the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program, which began collecting data with observations of Uranus in 2014 and now provides the crucial evidence for this discovery, with high-resolution images that resolve murky hints from ground-based observations.
As Saturn’s seasons changed, its south pole came into alignment with ground-based observatories. In images from those telescopes submitted to the Planetary Virtual Observatory Laboratory, amateur astronomers Trevor Barry and Jean-Paul Oger, along with Agustín Sánchez-Lavega of the University of the Basque Country in Spain, noticed something interesting happening on the gas giant.
The researchers spotted an undulating band along Saturn’s south pole, which, in further 2025 ground-based telescope images, began to suggest a decagonal (ten-sided) structure. With its incredible image clarity and spatial resolution, Hubble’s imagery finally allowed researchers to resolve the decagonal shape with certainty.
“Given Saturn’s symmetry in its north-south jet stream system, we have been searching for a counterpart to Saturn’s northern hexagon on the south pole in Hubble images since 1990,” said lead author Agustín Sánchez-Lavega of the University of the Basque Country in Spain. “Images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which orbited Saturn between 2004 and 2017, showed no inkling of a long-lived formation, either. The Hubble data confirmed the feature’s presence back to 2023.”
The wave is an interesting three-dimensional feature that extends through multiple layers of the atmosphere within one of the planet’s jet streams. Because Hubble can image the planet in multiple wavelengths, the decagon’s location appears to shift between observations, as each wavelength penetrates the atmosphere to a different degree.
“The most intriguing part to me is that this seems to have just formed recently,” said Simon. “The question is, why did it suddenly form now when we haven’t seen one before?”
Recognizing Saturn’s decagonal wave is only a first step. Follow-up observations to collect more data and computer models to piece together what is occurring on the planet will be required to firmly grasp the phenomenon. Questions remain about how it formed, how long it may last, and how similar it is compared to the northern hexagonal wave.
One thing the team will be sure to watch for in their continued observations is whether the shape evolves or maintains its decagonal structure. Their continued work could provide important new insights into how atmospheric dynamics operate on gas giants and what they can reveal about our own planet’s atmospheric phenomena.
The paper, “A Decagon Wave Around Saturn’s South Pole,” appeared in Science Advances on September 2, 2026.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.
For almost five decades, Saturn’s north pole has been famous for hosting a bizarre, six-sided jet stream known as the hexagon, a feature first spotted by NASA’s Voyager spacecraft in the 1980s and still churning today.
The post Astronomers Discover Decagonal Wave circling Saturn’s South Pole appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
A stunning new image captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the lopsided intermediate spiral galaxy NGC 4654, whose unusual shape was sculpted by both a close encounter with another galaxy and a headlong plunge through the hot gas of the Virgo Cluster.
The post Hubble Spots Spiral Galaxy Warped by Cosmic Forces appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
After decades of searching, astronomers have pinpointed the first of an estimated 10,000 stellar-mass black holes thought to lurk in Omega Centauri, the most massive stellar system in the Milky Way found so far, with a stellar mass of 3.6 million solar masses.
The post Astronomers Find Omega Centauri’s First Stellar-Mass Black Hole appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
Using near-UV spectroscopic data from the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers discovered four white dwarfs orbiting nearby red dwarf stars.
The post Astronomers Discover Four New White Dwarfs in Solar Neighborhood appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
New Webb and Hubble data not only confirm the existence of two distinct populations of stars in the ancient stellar system Terzan 5, once classified as a globular cluster, but also provides evidence for two more recent rounds of star formation.
The post Astronomers Find Four Separate Generations of Stars in ‘Globular Cluster’ Terzan 5 appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
O telescópio espacial Nancy Grace Roman está prestes a partir para investigar os maiores mistérios do Universo profundo. Vai à procura do “invisível”, entre os mil milhões de galáxias que promete observar.
The post Nancy Grace Roman: Telescópio que vê 100 vezes melhor do que o Hubble já tem data de partida appeared first on Tek Notícias.
As NASA prepares an attempt to reboost an astronomy spacecraft in a decaying orbit, it is open to doing something similar for Hubble, if its operating costs can be reduced.
The post NASA interested in Hubble reboost if costs can be reduced appeared first on SpaceNews.
Notice anything unusual about these galaxies? Each of the scenes above is crafted from observations from the Hubble Arp Galaxy Survey, which turned the talents of the Hubble Space Telescope toward 216 targets in the Arp and Arp–Madore catalogs. These catalogs contain galaxies that are visibly out of equilibrium, either caught in the middle of an interaction with another galaxy, sporting strange structures, or illuminated by brilliant starbursts. Julianne Dalcanton (Flatiron Institute; University of Washington), Meredith Durbin (University of Washington; University of California, Berkeley), and Benjamin Williams (University of Washington) designed the survey to create an archive of previously unobserved sources in these catalogs of peculiar galaxies. In addition to providing a new high-resolution view of these sources, the team hopes that the survey will serve as a launchpad for new investigations and complementary observations from facilities like JWST and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. To learn more about the Hubble Arp Galaxy Survey and see more of the new images, be sure to check out the full article linked below.
“The Hubble Arp Galaxy Survey,” Julianne J. Dalcanton et al 2026 ApJS 283 25. doi:10.3847/1538-4365/adfc67
The post Featured Image: Disequilibrium on Display appeared first on AAS Nova.
The seemingly warped and stretched galaxies in the image above show the work of gravitational lensing, in which the powerful gravitational pull of galaxies or galaxy clusters bends the light from background objects. Xiaosheng Huang (University of San Francisco and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) and coauthors have used a neural network to amass a sample of 3,500 gravitational lensing candidates in data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Legacy Surveys. Now, the team has used the Hubble Space Telescope to confirm some of the most promising candidates. Four of the newly confirmed systems are presented in the image above, with the DESI data shown in color and the higher-resolution Hubble data in black and white. Huang and collaborators also demonstrated the ability of their forward-modeling pipeline, GIGA-Lens, to constrain lens properties rapidly, even for large images like those from Hubble. Ultimately, Huang and coauthors hope to identify lensing systems that can be used to search for low-mass dark matter halos and test our theories of cosmology, as well as those that can be monitored for signs of lensed supernovae — providing a way to measure the expansion rate of the universe. To learn more about this sample of gravitational lenses and what the team plans to do next, be sure to check out the full research article linked below.
“DESI Strong Lens Foundry. I. HST Observations and Modeling with GIGA-Lens,” Xiaosheng Huang et al 2026 ApJ 998 69. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ae22d2
The post Featured Image: A Treasure Trove of Strong Lenses appeared first on AAS Nova.
In 1999–2000, the Hubble Space Telescope captured what was then the most detailed image ever taken of the Crab Nebula. In the quarter-century since the release of that image, the nebula — the remnant of a star observed to explode as a supernova in July 1054 — has been slowly unfurling and changing as the ejected stellar material expands into space. Now, as reported in a research article by William Blair (Johns Hopkins University) and collaborators, astronomers have turned Hubble’s inquisitive eye toward the Crab Nebula once again. One of the new images is shown above (click for the full view!). By comparing the new and old Hubble images, Blair’s team uncovered dramatic changes in the nebula’s intricate filamentary structure. These changes are due to the nebula’s three-dimensional expansion as well as evolution in the density of its knots and filaments. To learn more about the new Hubble portrait of the Crab Nebula, be sure to check out the full article linked below.
“The Crab Nebula Revisited Using HST/WFC3,” William P. Blair et al 2026 ApJ 997 81. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ae2adc
The post Featured Image: Hubble Revisits the Crab Nebula appeared first on AAS Nova.
Hubble Space Telescope image of Dracula’s Chivito. [Monsch et al 2026]
“Hubble Reveals Complex Multiscale Structure in the Edge-On Protoplanetary Disk IRAS23077+6707,” Kristina Monsch et al 2026 ApJ 996 45. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ae247f
The post Featured Image: Hubble Samples a Dusty Cosmic Sandwich appeared first on AAS Nova.
Editor’s Note: For the remainder of 2025, we’ll be looking at a few selections that we haven’t yet discussed on AAS Nova from among the most-downloaded articles published in AAS journals this year. The usual posting schedule will resume January 2nd.
Red ellipses overplotted on the first eight rings identified with Hubble in the Bullseye galaxy. Click to enlarge. [Pasha et al 2025]
Galaxy mergers and interactions are commonplace in the universe, but it is very rare for a dwarf galaxy to strike right through a large galaxy’s core. When this does happen, the collision sends shock waves through the impaled galaxy, sweeping gas and dust outward and forming rings where star formation can occur (hence the name, collisional ring galaxy). These galaxies are valuable sites to explore galactic structure and evolution as well as provide a unique case to study galaxy mergers and interactions. Previously discovered collisional ring galaxies have at most two or three rings, so when Pasha and collaborators found the stunning nine in the Bullseye, it was clear they caught something significant.
Why does the Bullseye have so many rings? Theoretical studies of these head-on collisions predict that many rings will form and travel outward after the initial crash; however, the rings tend to dissolve after only a few hundred million years. Catching this collision only 50 million years after it happened means we are witnessing the earlier stages of the Bullseye’s evolution. This lucky discovery not only confirms theoretical predictions for collisional ring galaxies, it also may be a clue to how another unique galaxy type, giant low-surface brightness galaxies, originate. Given the wispy ring material found at very large radii from the Bullseye, the authors suggested that collisional ring galaxies may evolve into giant low-surface brightness galaxies as they expand outward and fade. Further investigation and a larger sample of collisional ring galaxies are necessary to confirm this hypothesis, but the Bullseye provides interesting and critical observational evidence of these predictions for the first time.
Imad Pasha et al 2025 ApJL 980 L3. doi:10.3847/2041-8213/ad9f5c
The post Selections from 2025: The Nine-Ringed Bullseye Galaxy appeared first on AAS Nova.
Editor’s Note: For the remainder of 2025, we’ll be looking at a few selections that we haven’t yet discussed on AAS Nova from among the most-downloaded articles published in AAS journals this year. The usual posting schedule will resume January 2nd.
3I/ATLAS as seen by Hubble on 21 July 2025, when the comet was 3.83 au from the Sun. [Adapted from Jewitt et al. 2025]
3I/ATLAS is just the third known object to visit our solar system from another planetary system. With such a small sample size, every interstellar object discovered is a source of fascination. Are these objects more like comets or asteroids? How many of them roam the space between the stars? What, exactly, launches them into interstellar space? Using all available tools, including powerful observatories like Hubble, researchers can extract as much information as possible when interstellar objects make their brief journeys through our solar system, and get us closer to answering these key questions.
After interstellar objects 1I/ʻOumuamua and 2I/Borisov zipped through the solar system in 2017 and 2019, respectively, researchers knew it was only a matter of time before the next interstellar interloper paid a visit. In preparation for the next arrival, Jewitt’s team proposed a target-of-opportunity observation with Hubble. This allowed them to disrupt the telescope’s planned observing schedule once 3I/ATLAS was discovered, getting an early high-resolution look that could guide further observations. Since then, researchers have published more than 30 articles in the AAS journals alone about 3I/ATLAS. In these articles, researchers have sought to understand where 3I/ATLAS came from, investigated its polarization properties, collected JWST data of the object, found it in pre-discovery data, and much more, crafting a comprehensive view of a rare visitor to our neighborhood.
David Jewitt et al 2025 ApJL 990 L2. doi:10.3847/2041-8213/adf8d8
The post Selections from 2025: Hubble Observes 3I/ATLAS appeared first on AAS Nova.
Multiple research teams have turned to the famous red supergiant Betelgeuse in search of a possible companion star hiding in its glare. A carefully designed spectroscopic search has placed new constraints on the identity of Betelgeuse’s stellar buddy.
An image of Betelgeuse and its probable companion star from the ‘Alopeke instrument on the Gemini North telescope. [International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA; Image Processing: M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab); CC BY 4.0]
Betelgeuse, a nearby red supergiant, is a variable star with a 400-day primary pulsation period and a 2,100-day secondary variation period. Recent studies have speculated that this secondary period is due to the presence of an 0.5–2.0-solar-mass companion star (often nicknamed “Betelbuddy”), and researchers using a speckle imaging technique likely spotted this companion earlier this year.
As is often the case when there’s an intriguing astronomical possibility, multiple research teams have sought out Betelgeuse’s purported stellar companion in different ways. One avenue recently described in a published paper was spectroscopic, searching for signs of ultraviolet emission lines from a growing young star.
In just 10 million years, Betelgeuse has sped through its main-sequence lifetime and taken on a new starring role as a red supergiant. In contrast, a 0.5–2.0-solar-mass companion star would not have even reached the main sequence in the same span of time. How is it possible to spot a tiny young stellar object next to a much brighter supergiant?
Hubble observing pattern, showing how the quadrants are arrayed around Betelgeuse. Click to enlarge. [Goldberg et al. 2025]
The search is on: Goldberg and collaborators observed Betelgeuse with the Hubble Space Telescope in November 2024, timed to when the companion star’s emission lines would be shifted relative to Betelgeuse. The observations split Betelgeuse’s disk into quadrants, only one or two of which should contain the companion, helping the team tease out the signal from the smaller star, if present. Ultimately, though, no statistically significant signals were found.
Emission around Betelgeuse’s 1504.82 Angstrom H2 line from each of the four observed quadrants as well as combinations of two quadrants. No significant signals were detected at the expected radial velocity of the companion star. [Goldberg et al. 2025]
A lack of a significant detection doesn’t mean that the companion isn’t there, but it does place constraints on its identity. The data confidently rule out a companion star twice as massive as the Sun, marginally permit a star in the 1.1–1.5-solar-mass range, and favor a star lower than 1.1 solar masses.
Researchers assigned a likely mass of about 1.5 solar masses to the probable companion star imaged earlier this year. Though this is at the limit of what’s permitted by the ultraviolet observations, Goldberg and coauthors note that the companion star’s ultraviolet output could be suppressed due to tidal coupling with Betelgeuse or other processes. If the star’s ultraviolet emission is lower than expected, a 1.5-solar-mass companion remains consistent with Hubble’s non-detection of the star.
This is a fantastic example of how multiple lines of inquiry can converge on similar solutions. With the companion star expected to swing around to a favorable observing position again in 2027, this is certainly not the last chapter in the tale of Betelgeuse and Betelbuddy.
“Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse, Betel-buddy? Constraints on the Dynamical Companion to α Orionis from HST,” Jared A. Goldberg et al 2025 ApJ 994 101. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ae0c0c
The post Hubble on the Hunt: A Spectroscopic Search for Betelbuddy appeared first on AAS Nova.
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