Tag Archives: Astronomers

Astronomers caught a star system at the moment when solid grains began to form planets. This snapshot reveals how planets first start to form, just as Earth once did. The infant star HOPS-315 sits about 1,300 light-years, roughly 7.6 quadrillion miles, away in the constellation Orion. Around it whirls a disc of gas and dust where heat is high enough …

Astronomers have found that a weird space rock at the edge of the solar system is locked in a rhythmic dance with Neptune. The object, designated 2020 VN40, is part of a family of distant solar system objects called trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). 2020 VN40 is the first object discovered that orbits the sun once for every ten orbits Neptune makes. …

What was meant to be a lighthearted moment during Coldplay’s Wednesday night concert turned into a full blown public relations disaster for a high flying tech CEO and the footage is nothing short of mortifying. During the band’s performance at Gillette Stadium in Boston frontman Chris Martin decided to spice up the crowd with the classic kiss cam. But what happened next left the audience …

Astronomers in Japan have spotted a distant object orbiting the Sun far beyond Neptune, pointing to an extraordinary event that took place during the earliest years of the solar system. Astronomers used the Subaru Telescope, perched atop a dormant volcano in Hawaii, to make the discovery. They observed a small object orbiting at a farthest distance of 252 AU from …

Astronomers have discovered the earliest seeds of rocky planets forming in the gas around a baby sun-like star, providing a precious peek into the dawn of our own solar system. It’s an unprecedented snapshot of “time zero”, scientists reported on Wednesday, when new worlds begin to gel. “We’ve captured a direct glimpse of the hot region where rocky planets like …

A team of astronomers may have made the first ever discovery of a newborn supermassive black hole. If confirmed, the discovery would mean that supermassive black holes can form rapidly, and not just soon after the Big Bang, but throughout the history of the cosmos. The black hole candidate has been discovered in a distant galaxy known as the Infinity …

Astronomers have discovered a massive new solar system body located beyond the orbit of Pluto. The weird elongated orbit of the object suggests that if “Planet Nine” exists, it is much further from the sun than thought, or it has been ejected from our planetary system altogether. The strange orbit of the object, designated 2023 KQ14 and nicknamed “Ammonite,” classifies …

In a groundbreaking discovery published in The Planetary Science Journal, a team of astronomers led by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian has confirmed the existence of a rare object located far beyond Neptune. Known as 2020 VN40, this trans-Neptunian object is in a unique orbital resonance with the giant planet Neptune. For every ten orbits Neptune completes, …

Astronomers have witnessed the birth of a planetary system that could one day resemble the solar system. The discovery offers scientists a proxy to study how our home planetary system formed around the sun around 4.6 billion years ago. The team was able to pinpoint the moment specks of material that will one day forge planets began to form around …

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. CNN  —  A collision observed between two black holes, each more massive than a hundred suns, is the largest merger of its kind ever recorded, according to new research. A team of astronomers discovered the event, dubbed GW231123, when the …