Astronomy

Astronomers are puzzled by a ring around the icy dwarf planet Quaoar that is much farther from its parent body than thought possible

New dedicated observatories and crowdsourced smartphone apps will study strange sightings in the sky. But questionable data quality and a lack of shared research standards remain key challenges

A new model could explain the scarcity of certain planet sizes

Citizen scientists and researchers found that we are losing our view of the sky at an astonishing rate of almost 10 percent each year

Scientists find that magnetic fields and turbulence amplify each other inside stars’ hidden layers, slowing down the stellar cores’ spin

The James Webb Space Telescope is opening an exciting new chapter in the study of exoplanets and the search for life beyond Earth

Clues to the origin of this enormous cloud of gas have been maddeningly vague

Turning astronomical data into sound rather than images can inspire blind and visually impaired people—and maybe lead to some discoveries, too

A river’s “gut” revived, snake-saving social media, an intragalactic donut, and more success stories of the year

Two giant telescopes—one in Australia, the other in South Africa—will comprise the supersensitive Square Kilometer Array

By releasing astronomers’ data before they’ve had a chance to analyze the information, NASA will make research less fair and equitable

How the JWST’s cosmic images are made