Astronomy & Physics (2026)

14/01/2026

Imagine an asteroid made mostly of iron and nickel — just like Earth’s core — worth a staggering $10,000 quadrillion! 🤑

Meet 16 Psyche, a massive metal-rich rock orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. NASA’s Psyche mission, launched in 2023, is heading there to uncover its secrets and learn how planets like ours form.

Could this space treasure help us understand Earth’s origins? 🚀✨

14/01/2026

🔭 In the early 1800s, Uranus was acting strange.

Its orbit did not match what scientists expected, as if something invisible was pulling on it.

Two mathematicians, Urbain Le Verrier in France and John Couch Adams in England, used math to predict where this unseen planet should be.

Le Verrier shared the calculations with the Berlin Observatory. On September 23, 1846, a telescope was pointed to that exact spot and Neptune was found almost exactly where the math predicted.

It was not luck.
It was math.

Neptune became the first planet discovered using equations, not just observation.

14/01/2026

Approaching Jupiter’s South Pole 🌌

Step into this breathtaking enhanced-color view of Jupiter’s south pole, created by citizen scientist Gabriel Fiset using raw data from NASA’s JunoCam aboard the Juno spacecraft.

The planet’s swirling storms and chaotic cloud patterns paint a dramatic portrait of the gas giant’s raw power and mystery. Images like this don’t just look stunning — they help scientists and the public explore Jupiter up close like never before.

📸 Data: JunoCam, NASA’s Juno Mission
🧑‍💻 Image Processing: Gabriel Fiset

14/01/2026

Neptune Like You’ve Never Seen Before 🌊🔭

JWST vs Hubble
Why does Neptune look like two completely different planets in these images? Let’s unpack it 👇

🔸 JWST’s View
The Ghostly Neptune
The James Webb Space Telescope sees the universe in infrared light, invisible to human eyes. In these images, Neptune appears pale, icy, and almost glowing.

That’s because methane absorbs most infrared light, leaving the planet dark except for high altitude clouds that reflect the light back. The result feels otherworldly 👻

✨ Those rings though
JWST revealed Neptune’s rings with incredible clarity. We haven’t seen them this sharply since Voyager 2 flew past in 1989. Even Hubble had trouble capturing them because the rings are faint and Neptune sits far from the Sun.

🔹 Hubble’s View
The Blue Giant
Hubble observes Neptune in visible light, the same spectrum our eyes use. That’s why the planet appears deep blue and vibrant.

Methane absorbs red light and reflects blue, giving Neptune its iconic color in Hubble images 💙

📅 JWST released its first Neptune image in September 2022, stunning astronomers and revealing details never seen before.

Two telescopes. Two wavelengths. One planet that keeps surprising us 🌌

13/01/2026

February & March Are Packed With Jaw-Dropping Sky Events 🌌

🌕 Feb 1 – Full Snow Moon
Where: Visible worldwide in the night sky

🔥 Feb 17 – Ring of Fire Solar Eclipse (Annular Eclipse)
Where: The full Ring of Fire will be visible only from Antarctica
A partial eclipse will be seen across southern South America and southern Africa

🪐 Feb 26 – Venus–Mercury Conjunction
Where: Visible worldwide, low in the western sky just after sunset

🌍 Feb 28 – Grand Planetary Parade (6-Planet Alignment)
Where: Visible worldwide in the evening sky
Mercury, Venus, and Saturn will cluster low in the west after sunset
Jupiter will shine high in the eastern sky near the Moon
Uranus and Neptune are also part of the alignment but require binoculars or a telescope

🔴 Mar 3 – Blood Moon (Total Lunar Eclipse)
Where: Asia, Australia, the Americas, and the Pacific region

🪐 Mar 8 – Venus–Saturn Conjunction
Where: Visible worldwide, low in the western sky after sunset

🌌 Clear skies and happy stargazing
The universe has a busy schedule ahead ✨

13/01/2026

A lemon-shaped planet orbiting a city-sized star has just shattered everything astronomers thought they knew about how planets form.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, scientists have discovered PSR J2322-2650b — a Jupiter-mass exoplanet so extreme it barely fits any existing category. Instead of orbiting a normal star, this world circles a rapidly spinning pulsar, a neutron star packing the Sun’s mass into a space the size of a city.

Its atmosphere is unlike anything seen before. Rather than water v***r or methane, it is dominated by helium and molecular carbon — including exotic forms like C₂ and C₃. Dark, soot-like clouds cloak the planet, and researchers believe crushing internal pressures may turn carbon into diamonds deep beneath the surface.

The planet orbits just 1 million miles from its host — about 100 times closer than Earth is to the Sun — completing a full orbit in only 7.8 hours. The pulsar’s immense gravity stretches the planet into a distorted, lemon-like shape.

Led by University of Chicago astrophysicist Michael Zhang, the team says the planet’s carbon-rich composition defies every known model of planetary formation. It doesn’t match standard gas giant origins, and it also fails to fit “black widow” systems where pulsars strip material from companion stars.

JWST’s powerful infrared vision made the discovery possible, allowing scientists to capture the planet’s spectrum throughout its entire orbit — something rarely achievable due to stellar glare.

This strange world is forcing astronomers to rethink where and how planets can form — even in the most violent corners of the universe.

📄 Michael Zhang et al., The Astrophysical Journal Letters (2025)

13/01/2026

More than 50 years after Stephen Hawking proposed his black hole area theorem, it has finally been confirmed — with 99.999% confidence — using the loudest gravitational wave signal ever detected.

The event, GW250114, came from the collision of two black holes each about 30–40 times the mass of the Sun, located 1.3 billion light-years away. Detected by an upgraded LIGO observatory operating at three times its previous sensitivity, the signal was twice as powerful as any earlier detection, allowing scientists to study the newborn black hole’s event horizon in unprecedented detail.

Hawking’s 1971 theorem predicts that when black holes merge, the total area of their event horizons can never decrease — a rule closely tied to the second law of thermodynamics. By analyzing subtle gravitational-wave overtones after the merger, researchers have now confirmed this prediction with extraordinary precision, far surpassing earlier tests.

The result also strengthens Roy Kerr’s decades-old theory, showing that black holes are fully described by just two properties: mass and spin.

As gravitational-wave detectors grow more sensitive, physicists are edging closer to uncovering how Einstein’s relativity and quantum mechanics truly connect — using black holes as their cosmic laboratory.

📄 A. G. Abac et al., Physical Review Letters (2025)

12/01/2026

Betelgeuse’s dimming mystery finally solved—it has a stellar companion named Siwarha.

After nearly eight years of observations, astronomers have confirmed that Betelgeuse, the red supergiant in Orion’s shoulder, harbors a hidden companion. Using Hubble and ground-based observatories in Arizona and Spain, researchers tracked a dense wake of gas trailing through Betelgeuse’s outer atmosphere as Siwarha speeds through it.

Betelgeuse’s long puzzling brightness cycles—400 days from internal pulsations and a mysterious 2,100-day cycle—now make sense. Orbiting just 2.3 stellar radii within Betelgeuse’s chromosphere, Siwarha stirs the supergiant’s atmosphere, producing a ripple effect like a boat cutting through water.

Ultraviolet iron emissions revealed the companion’s signature: a repeating spectral pattern every 5.77 years, perfectly matching the long-period variability. Siwarha is currently hidden behind Betelgeuse and won’t reappear until August 2027, giving astronomers a clear target for future observations.

This discovery not only explains Betelgeuse’s dimming but also sheds light on how massive stars evolve, shed material, and eventually explode as supernovae.

📄 Research Paper
Andrea K. Dupree et al, Betelgeuse: Detection of the Expanding Wake of the Companion Star, The Astrophysical Journal (2026)

12/01/2026

Satellite observations reveal that Earth’s coldest naturally occurring temperatures aren’t at the poles’ surface, but high atop the East Antarctic Plateau. Data collected from 2004 to 2016 by the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado Boulder shows that regions above Vostok Station can drop to around −98 °C (−144.4 °F) during the polar night, when the Sun disappears for months.

These extreme lows occur at elevations of roughly 3,800–4,050 meters, where thin, dry air and a powerful Antarctic polar vortex trap cold air like an invisible barrier. While still a product of natural atmospheric dynamics, these temperatures are far warmer than those achieved in labs, where scientists have cooled matter close to absolute zero, a realm where atoms nearly stop moving and quantum physics takes over.

12/01/2026

It sounds impossible, but the numbers confirm it. Earth hosts roughly three trillion trees, according to global ecological studies. By comparison, astronomers estimate the Milky Way contains between 100 and 400 billion stars—far fewer than the trees rooted across our planet.

This contrast reveals more than a fun fact. It underscores how extraordinarily alive Earth is, and how fragile that abundance can be. Each tree plays a vital role in storing carbon, regulating climate, producing oxygen, and sustaining entire ecosystems. When forests disappear, the loss ripples far beyond the landscape.

Seeing Earth at this scale changes perspective. Our planet is not insignificant in a vast universe—it is one of the densest reservoirs of life we know. Protecting it means safeguarding something truly rare.

12/01/2026

This is the clearest image ever captured of a gigantic jet, one of the rarest forms of upper atmospheric lightning, photographed from above Earth.

NASA astronaut and U.S. Air Force Major Nichole Rhea Ayers captured this extraordinary moment from the International Space Station while orbiting above Mexico and the southern United States. The event likely originated from a thunderstorm near Sabinas, Coahuila, around 1:30 a.m. local time.

Gigantic jets belong to a family of transient luminous events that occur far above thunderstorms. Unlike ordinary lightning, these electric discharges shoot upward, growing to enormous sizes and briefly connecting storms to the upper layers of the atmosphere. Some reach heights of 50 to 60 miles, brushing the edge of the mesosphere where meteors burn up.

They last only fractions of a second, glow an intense electric blue from excited nitrogen, and are so rare that most of what scientists know comes from lucky photographs like this one.

This single image offers a rare window into one of Earth’s least understood electrical phenomena.

12/01/2026

Astronomers have ruled out an extraterrestrial origin for our solar system’s newest interstellar guest. Despite early speculation, the object known as 3I ATLAS is not an alien probe—it’s a natural comet.

This visitor is only the third confirmed interstellar object ever observed passing through our solar system, after 1I Oumuamua in 2017 and 2I Borisov in 2019. To investigate its origins, scientists used the 100-meter Green Bank Telescope as part of the Breakthrough Listen initiative, scanning the comet for narrowband radio emissions—signals that could indicate artificial technology.

The search was extraordinarily sensitive, capable of detecting transmissions as weak as 0.1 watts, far below the power of a typical mobile phone. While several potential signals initially appeared, all were ultimately traced to human-made radio interference from Earth, a familiar challenge in technosignature research. No evidence of extraterrestrial technology was found.

Previous observations had already shown that 3I ATLAS behaves exactly like a natural comet, displaying the expected physical structure and activity. The telescope’s wide frequency coverage ensured the search was thorough across a large portion of the radio spectrum.

Although the results may disappoint alien hunters, 3I ATLAS is far from unimportant. As a rare object formed around another star, it offers scientists a unique glimpse into the materials and conditions beyond our solar system.

Looking ahead, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory and its upcoming 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time are expected to uncover many more interstellar visitors. With a larger sample, astronomers may finally be able to separate the ordinary from the truly extraordinary.

📄 Research paper
Benjamin Jacobson Bell et al.
Breakthrough Listen Observations of 3I ATLAS with the Green Bank Telescope at 1–12 GHz
arXiv, 2025

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