Saturday, January 31, 2026

AI Unlocks Hundreds of Cosmic Anomalies in Hubble Archive

Six previously undiscovered, weird and fascinating astrophysical objects are displayed in this new image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. They include three lenses with arcs distorted by gravity, one galactic merger, one ring galaxy, and one galaxy that defied classification.


A team of astronomers has employed a cutting-edge, artificial intelligence-assisted technique to uncover rare astronomical phenomena within archived data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The team analyzed nearly 100 million image cutouts from the Hubble Legacy Archive, each measuring just a few dozen pixels (7 to 8 arcseconds) on a side. They identified more than 1,300 objects with an odd appearance in just two and a half days — more than 800 of which had never been documented in scientific literature.

Most of the anomalies were galaxies undergoing mergers or interactions, which exhibit unusual morphologies or trailing, elongated streams of stars and gas. Others were gravitational lenses, where the gravity of a foreground galaxy distorts spacetime and bends light from a background galaxy into arcs or rings. Additional discoveries included galaxies with massive star-forming clumps, jellyfish-looking galaxies with gaseous “tentacles,” and edge-on planet-forming disks in our own galaxy resembling hamburgers. Remarkably, several dozen objects defied existing classification schemes entirely.

Identifying such a diverse array of rare objects within the vast and growing repository of Hubble and other telescope data presents a formidable challenge. Never in the history of astronomy has such a volume of observational data been available for analysis.

To address this challenge, researchers David O’Ryan and Pablo Gómez of ESA (the European Space Agency) developed an AI tool capable of inspecting millions of astronomical images in a fraction of the time required by human experts. Their neural network, named AnomalyMatch, was trained to detect rare and unusual objects by recognizing patterns in data — mimicking the way the human brain processes visual information.

“Archival observations from the Hubble Space Telescope now span 35 years, offering a rich dataset in which astrophysical anomalies may be hidden,” said David O’Ryan, lead author of the study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Traditionally, anomalous images are discovered through manual inspection or serendipitous observation. While expert astronomers excel at identifying unusual features, the sheer volume of Hubble data makes comprehensive manual review impractical. Citizen science initiatives have helped expand the scope of data analysis, but even these efforts fall short when faced with archives as extensive as Hubble’s or those from wide-field survey telescopes like Euclid, an ESA mission with NASA contributions.

The work by O’Ryan and Gómez represents a significant advancement. By applying AnomalyMatch to the Hubble Legacy Archive, they conducted the first systematic search for astrophysical anomalies across the entire dataset. After the algorithm flagged likely candidates, the researchers manually reviewed the top-rated sources and confirmed more than 1,300 as true anomalies.

“This is a powerful demonstration of how AI can enhance the scientific return of archival datasets,” Gómez said. “The discovery of so many previously undocumented anomalies in Hubble data underscores the tool’s potential for future surveys.”

Hubble is just one of many astronomical archives poised to benefit from AI-driven analysis. Facilities such as NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, a well as ESA’s Euclid and the National Science Foundation and Department of Energy’s Vera C. Rubin Observatory, will generate unprecedented volumes of data. Tools like AnomalyMatch will be essential for navigating this data deluge, enabling astronomers to uncover new and unexpected phenomena — and perhaps even objects never before seen in the universe.

The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.



Editor: Andrea Gianopoulos

 Location: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

 Contact Media:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov

Bethany Downer
ESA/Hubble
Baltimore, Maryland

Ann Jenkins and Christine Pulliam
Space Telescope Science Institute
Baltimore, Maryland


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Friday, January 30, 2026

NASA's Chandra Releases Deep Cut From Catalog of Cosmic Recordings

X-ray Images of Sagittarius A*
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk



  • The Chandra Source Catalog (CSC) is a free-to-all resource that compiles the detections made by NASA’s X-ray Observatory.

  • Scientists use the CSC to combine Chandra’s X-rays with data from other missions like NASA’s James Webb and Hubble Space Telescopes.

  • The latest version of the CSC was released in fall 2025 and contains over 1.3 million individual X-ray detections across the sky.

  • A new image of the Galactic Center illustrates that, showing 3,300 Chandra sources in this field of view that spans just 60 light-years across.


Like a recording artist who has had a long career, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has a “back catalog” of cosmic recordings that is impossible to replic,ate. To access these X-ray tracks, or observations, the mission has developed the ultimate compendium: the Chandra Source Catalog.

The Chandra Source Catalog contains the X-ray data detected by Chandra, the world’s premier X-ray telescope and one of NASA’s “Great Observatories,” from its launch in 1999 up to the end of 2021. [AF2.1]The latest version of the Chandra Source Catalog, known as CSC 2.1, contains over 400,000 unique compact and extended sources and over 1.3 million individual detections in X-ray light.

Within the Chandra Source Catalog, there is a wealth of information gleaned from the Chandra observations — from precise positions on the sky to diagnostic tools of the X-ray output and much more. This allows scientists using other telescopes — both on the ground and in space, including NASA’s James Webb and Hubble space telescopes — to combine this exclusive X-ray data with information from other types of light.

The richness of the Chandra Source Catalog is illustrated in a new image of the Galactic Center, the region around the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. In this image that spans just about 60 light-years across, a veritable pinprick on the entire sky, Chandra has detected over 3,300 individual sources that emit X-rays. This image is the sum of 86 observations added together, representing over three million seconds of Chandra observing time.

Another new representation of the vast scope of the Chanda Source Catalog is found in a just-released sonification, the translation of astronomical data into sound. This sonification encompasses a new map that includes 22 years of Chandra observations across the sky. Because many X-ray sources have been observed multiple times over the life of the Chandra mission, this sonification represents those repeat X-ray sightings over time through different notes.

Chandra Source Catalog Sonification. Sonification (video)
Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)
[Larger Version Available Here]

In the view of the sky, projected similarly to how Earth is often depicted in world maps, the core of the Milky Way is in the center and the Galactic plane is horizontal across the middle of the image. A circle appears at the position of each detection, with the size of the circle determined by the number of detections in that location over time. A year counter appears at the top of the frame, with the text changing to “… and beyond” after 2021 as the telescope continues to collect observations. During the video, a collage of images produced by Chandra fades in as a background. In the final frames of the video, thumbnail images representing the thousands of Chandra observations taken over the lifetime of the mission appear behind the sky map.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.




Visual Description:
A very deep Chandra X-ray Observatory image around the Sagittarius A* supermassive black hole, located in the center of the Milky Way galaxy, is shown. The image is dominated by burnt orange, deep gold and blue hues, with a sprinkling of rich green. The area looks both intricate and full, with a dense population of tiny dots, along with larger clumps and diffuse areas and nebulous areas peeking through.

At the center of the image, there is a bright, lumpy area in pale gold showing the intense X-ray radiation emanating from the Sagittarius A* black hole. In the surrounding area, there are more smaller lumps layered throughout, feathering out to a large almost butterfly shape filling much of the screen. The image appears textured, like dozens of blue and orange glow worms are paused in their wriggling.

The image offers an unprecedented view of lobes of hot gas extending for a dozen light years on either side of the black hole. These lobes provide evidence for powerful eruptions occurring several times over the last ten thousand years. The image also contains several mysterious X-ray filaments, some of which may be huge magnetic structures interacting with streams of energetic electrons produced by rapidly spinning neutron stars. Such features are known as pulsar wind nebulas. Chandra has detected over 3,300 individual sources that emit X-rays in this field of view. This image is the sum of 86 observations added together, representing over three million seconds of Chandra observing time.


Fast Facts for Sagittarius A*:

 Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk
 Release Date: January 23, 2026
 Scale: Image is about 8.4 arcmin (63.5 light-years) across.
 Category: Black Holes
Coordinates (J2000): RA 17h 45m 41.1s | Dec -29° 01´ 14.7"
 Constellation: Sagittarius
Observation Dates: 86 Observations from Oct, 2000 to Jul 2020
 Observation Time: 825 hours 30 minutes (2 days 7 hours 30 minutes)
Obs. ID: 1560, 1561, 2943, 2951, 2952, 2953, 2954, 3392, 3393, 3549, 3663, 3665, 4683, 4684, 5360, 5950, 5951-5954, 6113, 6363, 6639-6646, 7554-7559, 9169-9174, 10556, 11843, 13016, 13017, 14702-14704, 14941-14946, 15041-15045, 16210-16218, 16508, 16597, 16964, 16965, 18057, 18058, 18731, 18732, 19703, 19704, 20446, 20447, 20750, 20751, 22230, 22288, 23295
Instrument: ACIS/HRC
Also Known As: Galactic Center
 Color Code: X-ray: red, green, and blue
 Distance Estimate: About 26,000 light-years from Earth

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Thursday, January 29, 2026

The Day the Sky Wouldn’t Stop Exploding: the Mystery of the Ultra-Long Gamma-Ray Burst

Artist’s impression of one possible explanation for the ultra-long gamma-ray burst GRB 250702B, showing the moment of explosion as a stellar-mass black hole merges with the massive star it is tearing apart and blasts a powerful jet into space. Image credit: NASA/LSU/Brian Monroe. Download Image


On July 2, 2025, space telescopes monitoring the sky for brief, one-and-done flashes of high-energy light saw something that nobody expected: a gamma-ray burst (GRB) that came back again and again, stretching what is usually a single “burst” lasting seconds to minutes into an all-day event. NASA’s Fermi spacecraft triggered on multiple gamma-ray episodes from the same patch of sky over several hours, and other satellites soon reported compatible detections. Compared to the known population of GRBs that have been studied for decades, this was an outlier beast of a different species.

At first, the event’s location near the crowded plane of the Milky Way made it tempting to suspect something closer to home, located in our own Galaxy. But follow-up imaging overturned that assumption. Observations with the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile narrowed down the position and, together with Hubble and JWST, revealed that the transient was coincident with a dusty, irregular host galaxy. The distance is extreme: the light from the explosion began its journey roughly 8 billion years ago. In other words, whatever happened was not a local flare—it was a truly cosmic-scale detonation, or, rather, a string of detonations.

The duration of this event was not the only weird thing about it. Archival data showed that low-energy X-rays were already present almost a day before the main gamma-ray fireworks—an “X-ray precursor” that is hard to reconcile with standard models of GRBs. Meanwhile, the gamma-ray behavior itself looked like a stuttering engine. Fermi detected a sequence of short flares separated by long gaps, collectively implying multi-hour activity from a central engine rather than the single, clean explosion typical of such events.

So, what could power an event that (1) repeats, (2) lasts for hours to a day, and (3) shows X-rays both before and after the gamma-ray fireworks? Two families of ideas have dominated the discussion. One idea keeps it in the GRB family but pushes the engine to extremes. Typical GRBs arise from the death, or collapse, of massive stars, which can produce a narrow, relativistic jet that emits gamma rays. Perhaps some aspect of the collapse, either the stellar type or the nature of the compact remnant(s) left behind could produce a central power source that simply refuses to shut off on normal timescales. The other main idea is an event completely unlike traditional GRBs and instead invokes a star wandering too close to a black hole, being torn apart, and feeding a jet aimed toward Earth. Such phenomena, known as tidal disruption events, were first predicted in the mid-1970s, but only detected twenty-five years later. Currently, we find a handful of these energetic shredding events each month, but what would make this tidal disruption event so different from the previously observed examples? The catch is that each scenario explains part of the puzzle and strains against the rest, leaving GRB 250702B as a genuine classification stress-test for high-energy astrophysics.

 NuSTAR catches the engine in the act, days later

NuSTAR is built to detect high-energy X-rays, and in this event, it provided an important piece of forensic evidence. The system stayed restless well after the headline gamma-ray activity. A comprehensive X-ray campaign led by Brendan O’Connor (Instituto de Radioastronomía y Astrofísica, Mexico) combining data from the NuSTAR, Swift, and Chandra satellites found that the X-ray emission faded steeply overall. But, crucially, Swift and NuSTAR continued to detect rapid X-ray flares out to about two days after discovery. That short-timescale variability is difficult to attribute to a simple, smoothly decaying afterglow alone; instead, it points to ongoing, intermittent activity from the central engine long after standard GRB models would expect the fireworks to be over.

NuSTAR’s high-energy X-ray spectrum also helped connect competing interpretations to actual physical constraints. In the analysis jointly led by Gor Oganesyan and Annarita Ierardi (GSSI, Italy), and Elias Kammoun (Caltech, USA), the Swift lower-energy X-ray decline is shown to be extremely rapid over the first days but also shows persistent flaring activity. The NuSTAR high-energy X-ray measurement (taken about ten days after the trigger) is consistent with that same rapid fade. One idea is that this event could be associated with a "micro-tidal disruption event" in which a star was torn apart by a stellar-mass black hole, i.e., a black hole with a mass approximately ten times that of the Sun, rather than traditional tidal disruption events that involve black holes with masses thousands to millions of times that of the Sun. In short, NuSTAR did not just add data to the pot—it anchored the high-energy X-ray behavior that makes the event so hard to explain simply as a standard GRB or a standard tidal disruption event.

Where things stand now is both satisfying and unsettling. GRB 250702B is almost certainly extragalactic, almost certainly powered by a jet, and almost certainly driven by an engine that stays active far longer than a canonical GRB. But whether that engine was a star being shredded by a black hole or an unprecedented variant of a GRB progenitor remains an unanswered question, precisely because the observations pull in both directions. Resolving the origin may require what high-energy astronomers love most: the next strange event, caught early, followed deeply, and watched closely until the power source finally, and unambiguously, goes dark.

Author: Elias Kammoun (Postdoctoral Researcher, Caltech)

Full animation on NASA SVS: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14916


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Wednesday, January 28, 2026

Massive Cloud With Metallic Winds Discovered Orbiting Mystery Object

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Artist’s Illustration of Cloudy Disk Orbiting Distant Star

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Starry Night, Laser Light


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Gemini South at Cerro Pachón
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Gemini South at Cerro Pachón


Astronomers using the Gemini South telescope achieve unprecedented detection of vaporized metals within a dusty, gaseous cloud during rare stellar occultation

Sweeping winds of vaporized metals have been found in a massive cloud that dimmed the light of a star for nearly nine months. This discovery, made with the Gemini South telescope in Chile, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, partly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and operated by NSF NOIRLab, offers a rare glimpse into the chaotic and dynamic processes still shaping planetary systems long after their formation.

In September 2024, a star 3000 light-years away suddenly became 40 times dimmer than usual, and remained so until May 2025. The star, J0705+0612, is similar to our Sun, so its stark dip in brightness caught the attention of Nadia Zakamska, professor of astrophysics at Johns Hopkins University. “Stars like the Sun don’t just stop shining for no reason,” she says, “so dramatic dimming events like this are very rare.”

Recognizing the opportunity to study such an event over many months, Zakamska and her team initiated observations with the Gemini South telescope, located on Cerro Pachón in Chile, as well as the Apache Point Observatory 3.5-meter telescope and the 6.5 meter Magellan Telescopes. The findings are published in a paper appearing in The Astronomical Journal.

By combining their observations with archival data on J0705+0612 [1], the team determined the star had been occulted, or temporarily obscured by, a vast, slow-moving, cloud of gas and dust. They estimate the cloud is about two billion kilometers (1.2 billion miles) from its host star and roughly 200 million kilometers (120 million miles) in diameter.

The data indicate that this cloud is gravitationally bound to a secondary object that itself orbits the star in the outer reaches of its planetary system. While the nature of this object remains unknown, it must be massive enough to hold the cloud together. Observations constrain it to be at least a few times the mass of Jupiter, though it could be larger. Possibilities range from a planet to a brown dwarf to an extremely low-mass star.

If the mystery object is a star, the cloud would be classified as a circumsecondary disk — a debris disk orbiting the less massive member of a binary system. If the object is a planet, it would be a circumplanetary disk. In either case, directly observing a star being occulted by a disk surrounding a secondary object is exceptionally rare, with only a handful of known examples.

To investigate the cloud’s composition, the team used Gemini South’s cutting-edge instrument, the Gemini High-resolution Optical SpecTrograph (GHOST). In March 2025, GHOST observed the occultation for just over two hours, dispersing the light from the star into a spectrum that reveals the chemical elements present in the intervening material.

“When I started observing the occultation with spectroscopy, I was hoping to unveil something about the chemical composition of the cloud, as no such measurements had been done before. But the result exceeded all my expectations,” says Zakamska.

The GHOST data revealed multiple metals — elements heavier than helium — within the cloud. More remarkably, the high precision of the spectra allowed the team to directly measure how the gas is moving in three dimensions. This marks the first time astronomers have measured the internal gas motions of a disk orbiting a secondary object such as a planet or low-mass star. The observations show a dynamic environment with winds of gaseous metals, including iron and calcium.

“The sensitivity of GHOST allowed us to not only detect the gas in this cloud, but to actually measure how it is moving,” says Zakamska. “That’s something we’ve never been able to do before in a system like this.”

“This study illustrates the considerable power of Gemini’s newest facility instrument, GHOST,” notes Chris Davis, NSF Program Director for NOIRLab, “and further highlights one of Gemini’s great strengths — rapidly responding to transient events like this occultation.”

The precise measurements of the speed and direction of the wind show that the cloud is moving separate from its host star. This, combined with how long the occultation lasted, further confirm that the occulter is a disk around a secondary object and that it orbits in the outer reaches of its host star’s stellar system.

The source shows infrared excess, typically associated with disks around young stars. However, J0705+0612 is more than two billion years old, meaning the disk is unlikely to be leftover debris from the system’s early planet formation stage. So how did it form?

Zakamska proposes that it originated after two planets collided with each other in the outer reaches of this star’s planetary system, ejecting dust, rocks, and debris and forming the massive cloud now seen passing in front of the star.

The discovery highlights how new technology enables new insights into the Universe. GHOST has opened a new window into studying hidden phenomena in distant star systems, and the findings provide valuable clues about the long-term evolution of planetary systems and how disks can form around old stars.

“This event shows us that even in mature planetary systems, dramatic, large-scale collisions can still occur,” says Zakamska. “It’s a vivid reminder that the Universe is far from static — it’s an ongoing story of creation, destruction, and transformation.”



Notes
[1] A study using archival data from Harvard found that J0705+0612 underwent two other similar dimming events in 1937 and 1981, establishing a 44-year period.


More information
This research was presented in a paper titled “ASASSN-24fw: Candidate Gas-rich Circumsecondary Disk Occultation of a Main-sequence Star” appearing in The Astronomical Journal. DOI: 10.3847/1538-3881/ae1fd9
The team is composed of Nadia L. Zakamska (Johns Hopkins University, Institute for Advanced Study), Gautham A. Pallathadka (Johns Hopkins University), Dmitry Bizyaev (New Mexico State University, Moscow State University), Jaroslav Merc (Charles University, Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands), James E. Owen (Imperial College London), Henrique Reggiani (Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab), Kevin C. Schlaufman (Johns Hopkins University), Karolina Bąkowska (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń), Sławomir Bednarz (Silesian University of Technology), Krzysztof Bernacki (Silesian University of Technology), Agnieszka Gurgul (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń), Kirsten R. Hall (Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian), Franz-Josef Hambsch (Association for Astronomy, Meteorology, Geophysics and Related Sciences, German Association for Variable Stars), Barbara Joachimczyk (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń), Krzysztof Kotysz (University of Warsaw, University of Wrocław), Sebastian Kurowski (Jagiellonian University), Alexios Liakos (National Observatory of Athens), Przemysław J. Mikołajczyk (University of Warsaw, National Centre for Nuclear Research, University of Wrocław), Erika Pakštienė (Vilnius University), Grzegorz Pojmański (University of Warsaw), Adam Popowicz (Silesian University of Technology), Daniel E. Reichart (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Łukasz Wyrzykowski (University of Warsaw, National Centre for Nuclear Research), Justas Zdanavičius (Vilnius University), Michał Żejmo (University of Zielona Gora), Paweł Zieliński (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń), and Staszek Zola (Jagiellonian University).

NSF NOIRLab, the U.S. National Science Foundation center for ground-based optical-infrared astronomy, operates the International Gemini Observatory (a facility of NSF, NRC–Canada, ANID–Chile, MCTIC–Brazil, MINCyT–Argentina, and KASI–Republic of Korea), NSF Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), NSF Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), the Community Science and Data Center (CSDC), and NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory (in cooperation with DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory). It is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with NSF and is headquartered in Tucson, Arizona.

The scientific community is honored to have the opportunity to conduct astronomical research on I’oligam Du’ag (Kitt Peak) in Arizona, on Maunakea in Hawai‘i, and on Cerro Tololo and Cerro Pachón in Chile. We recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence of I’oligam Du’ag to the Tohono O’odham Nation, and Maunakea to the Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) community.



Links

Contacts:

Nadia Zakamska
Johns Hopkins University
Email: zakamska@jhu.edu

Josie Fenske
Public Information Officer
NSF NOIRLab
Email: josie.fenske@noirlab.edu

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Dark Energy Survey Scientists Release Analysis of All Six Years of Survey Data

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Bullet Cluster with DECam

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Open Skies and an Open Dome

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Mapping matter distribution (horizontal) 
 
 
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Mapping matter distribution (horizontal)

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Mapping matter distribution (vertical)


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Observing with the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope
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Observing with the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope


Four methods for studying dark energy come together in a single experiment for the first time


The Dark Energy Survey Collaboration collected information on hundreds of millions of galaxies across the Universe using the U.S. Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera, mounted on the U.S. National Science Foundation Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at CTIO, a Program of NSF NOIRLab. Their completed analysis combines all six years of data for the first time and yields constraints on the Universe's expansion history that are twice as tight as past analyses.

The Dark Energy Survey (DES) is an international, collaborative effort to map hundreds of millions of galaxies, detect thousands of supernovae, and find patterns of cosmic structure that will help reveal the nature of the mysterious dark energy that is accelerating the expansion of our Universe.

From 2013 to 2019, the DES Collaboration carried out a deep, wide-area survey of the sky using the 570-megapixel DOE-fabricated Dark Energy Camera (DECam), mounted on the NSF Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at NSF Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile. For 758 nights over six years, the DES Collaboration recorded information from 669 million galaxies that are billions of light-years from Earth, covering an eighth of the sky.

Today, the DES Collaboration is releasing results that, for the first time, combine all six years of data from weak lensing and galaxy clustering probes — two techniques for measuring the Universe’s expansion history. The collaboration also presents the first results found by combining all four methods of measuring the expansion history of the Universe — baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO), Type-Ia supernovae, galaxy clusters, and weak gravitational lensing — as proposed at the inception of DES 25 years ago. The paper, submitted to Physical Review D, represents a summary of 18 supporting papers.

“It is an incredible feeling to see these results based on all the data, and with all four probes that DES had planned. This was something I would have only dared to dream about when DES started collecting data, and now the dream has come true,” says Yuanyuan Zhang, assistant astronomer at NSF NOIRLab and member of the DES Collaboration.

The analysis yields new, tighter constraints that narrow down the possible models for how the Universe behaves. These constraints are more than twice as strong as those from past DES analyses while remaining consistent with previous DES results.

“These results from the Dark Energy Survey shine new light on our understanding of the Universe and its expansion,” said Regina Rameika, Associate Director for the Office of High Energy Physics in the DOE’s Office of Science (DOE/SC). “They demonstrate how long-term investment in research and combining multiple types of analysis can provide insight into some of the Universe’s biggest mysteries.”

The first clue for dark energy was uncovered about a century ago when astronomers noticed that distant galaxies appeared to be moving away from us. In fact, the farther away a galaxy is, the faster it recedes. This provided the first key evidence that the Universe is expanding. But since the Universe is permeated by gravity, a force that pulls matter together, astronomers expected the expansion would slow down over time.

Then, in 1998, two independent teams of cosmologists used distant supernovae to discover that the Universe’s expansion is accelerating rather than slowing. To explain these observations, they proposed a new kind of phenomenon that is responsible for driving the Universe’s accelerated expansion: dark energy. Astrophysicists now believe dark energy makes up about 70% of the mass-energy density of the Universe. Yet, we still know very little about it.

In the following years, scientists began devising experiments to study dark energy, including DES. Today, DES is an international collaboration of over 400 astrophysicists and scientists from 35 institutions in seven countries led by DOE’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

For the latest results, DES scientists greatly advanced methods using weak lensing to robustly reconstruct the distribution of matter in the Universe. Weak lensing is the distortion of light from distant galaxies due to the gravity of intervening matter, like galaxy clusters. They did this by measuring the probability of two galaxies being a certain distance apart and the probability that they are also distorted similarly by weak lensing. By reconstructing the matter distribution over six billion years of cosmic history, these measurements of weak lensing and galaxy distribution tell scientists how much dark energy and dark matter there is at each moment.

In this analysis, DES tested two models of the Universe against their data. There is the currently accepted standard model of cosmology — Lambda cold dark matter (ΛCDM) — in which the dark energy density is constant. There is also an extended model, in which the dark energy density evolves over time — wCDM.

DES found that their data mostly aligned with the standard model of cosmology. Their data also fit the evolving dark energy model, but no better than they fit the standard model.

However, one parameter is still off. Based on measurements of the early Universe, both the standard and evolving dark energy models predict how matter in the Universe clusters at later times. In previous analyses, galaxy clustering was found to be different from what was predicted. When DES added the most recent data, that gap widened, but not yet to the point of certainty that the standard model of cosmology is incorrect. The difference persisted even when DES combined their data with those of other experiments.

Next, DES will combine this work with the most recent constraints from other dark energy experiments to investigate alternative gravity and dark energy models. This analysis is also important because it paves the way for the new NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, funded by the NSF and DOE/SC, and jointly operated by NSF NOIRLab and SLAC, to collect complementary data during its decade-long Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). LSST is a deep and wide survey that will catalog about 20 billion galaxies across the entire Southern Hemisphere sky. The data can be combined with those from surveys like DES to enable high-accuracy measurements of cosmological parameters that will further refine our understanding of dark energy and the expansion history of the Universe.

>“DES has been transformative, and the NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory will take us even further,” said Chris Davis, NSF Program Director for NOIRLab. “Rubin’s unprecedented survey of the southern sky will enable new tests of gravity and shed light on dark energy.”



More information
This research is presented in a paper titled “Dark Energy Survey Year 6 Results: Cosmological Constraints from Galaxy Clustering and Weak Lensing,” submitted to Physical Review D and appearing on arXiv.

These results are presented by the DES Collaboration.

NSF NOIRLab, the U.S. National Science Foundation center for ground-based optical-infrared astronomy, operates the International Gemini Observatory (a facility of NSF, NRC–Canada, ANID–Chile, MCTIC–Brazil, MINCyT–Argentina, and KASI–Republic of Korea), NSF Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), NSF Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), the Community Science and Data Center (CSDC), and NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory (in cooperation with DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory). It is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with NSF and is headquartered in Tucson, Arizona.

The scientific community is honored to have the opportunity to conduct astronomical research on I’oligam Du’ag (Kitt Peak) in Arizona, on Maunakea in Hawai‘i, and on Cerro Tololo and Cerro Pachón in Chile. We recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence of I’oligam Du’ag to the Tohono O’odham Nation, and Maunakea to the Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) community.

This work is supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. The Dark Energy Survey is a collaboration of more than 400 scientists from 26 institutions in seven countries. Funding fo the DES Projects has been provided by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, U.S. National Science Foundation, Ministry of Science and Education of Spain, Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom, Higher Education Funding Council for England, ETH Zurich for Switzerland, National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics at Ohio State University, Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M University, Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos, Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico and Ministério da Ciência e Tecnologia, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and the collaborating institutions in the Dark Energy Survey.

NCSA at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign provides supercomputing and advanced digital resources for the nation’s science enterprise. At NCSA, University of Illinois faculty, staff, students, and collaborators from around the globe use advanced digital resources to address research grand challenges for the benefit of science and society. NCSA has been advancing one-third of the Fortune 50® for more than 30 years by bringing industry, researchers, and students together to solve grand challenges at rapid speed and scale.

Fermilab is America’s premier national laboratory for particle physics and accelerator research. A U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science laboratory, Fermilab is located near Chicago, Illinois, and operated under contract by the Fermi Research Alliance LLC, a joint partnership between the University of Chicago and the Universities Research Association, Inc.

The DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time.



v Links



Contacts: Yuanyuan Zhang
DES Collaboration
NSF NOIRLab
Email: yuanyuan.zhang@noirlab.edu

Josie Fenske
Public Information Officer
NSF NOIRLab
Email: josie.fenske@noirlab.edu

Tracy Marc
Media Relations Manager
Fermilab
Email: tracym@fnal.gov

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Tuesday, January 27, 2026

New insights into the origins of the chemistry of life

In the heart of our Galaxy, scientists discovered the first sulfur-bearing six-membered ring molecule hiding in an interstellar cloud. © MPE/ NASA/JPL-Caltech

This is a state-of-the-art self-developed laboratory spectrometer. MPE scientists Christian Endres and Mitsunori Araki (right) orchestrate the experiment: one drives the production of a new molecule, while the other captures its signatures through precision spectroscopy. At the center of the photo stands a massive vacuum chamber—the arena where a new molecule is born and immediately put under measurement. © MPE


Astrophysicists Discover Largest Sulfur-Containing Molecular Compound in Space

• For the first time, a complex, ring-shaped molecule containing 13 atoms—including sulfur—has been detected in interstellar space, based on laboratory measurements.

• The discovery closes a critical gap by linking simple chemistry in space with the complex organic building blocks found in comets and meteorites.

• This represents a major step toward explaining the cosmic origins of the chemistry of life

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE), in collaboration with astrophysicists from the Centro de Astrobiología (CAB), CSIC-INTA, have identified the largest sulfur-bearing molecule ever found in space: 2,5-cyclohexadiene-1-thione (C₆H₆S). They made this breakthrough by combining laboratory experiments with astronomical observations. The molecule resides in the molecular cloud G+0.693–0.027, about 27,000 light-years from Earth near the center of the Milky Way. With a stable six-membered ring and a total of 13 atoms, it far exceeds the size of all previously detected sulfur-containing compounds in space.

“This is the first unambiguous detection of a complex, ring-shaped sulfur-containing molecule in interstellar space—and a crucial step toward understanding the chemical link between space and the building blocks of life.”
— Dr. Mitsunori Araki, scientist at MPE and lead author of the study

Until now, astronomers had only detected small sulfur compounds—mostly with six atoms or fewer—in interstellar space. Large, complex sulfur-containing molecules were expected, particularly due to sulfur’s essential role in proteins and enzymes, yet these larger molecules had remained elusive. This gap between interstellar chemistry and the organic inventory found in comets and meteorites had been a central mystery in astrochemistry.

The newly discovered C₆H₆S is structurally related to molecules found in extraterrestrial samples—and is the first of its kind definitively detected in space. It establishes a direct chemical “bridge” between the interstellar medium and our own solar system. The team synthesized the molecule in the lab by applying a 1,000-volt electrical discharge to the evil smelling liquid thiophenol (C₆H₅SH). Using a self-developed spectrometer, they precisely measured the radio emission frequencies of C₆H₆S, producing a unique “radio fingerprint” with more than seven significant digits. This signature was then matched to astronomical data from a large observational survey led by CAB, collected with the IRAM 30m and the Yebes 40-meter radio telescopes in Spain.

“Our results show that a 13-atom molecule structurally similar to those in comets already exists in a young, starless molecular cloud. This proves that the chemical groundwork for life begins long before stars form.”
— Dr. Valerio Lattanzi, Scientist at MPE

The discovery suggests that many more complex sulfur-bearing molecules likely remain undetected—and that the fundamental ingredients of life may have formed in the depths of interstellar space, long before Earth came into existence.



Contacts:

Dr. Mitsunori Araki
Postdoc at Center for Astrochemical Studies
Tel: +49 89 30000-3314
araki@mpe.mpg.de
Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics

Dr. Valerio Lattanzi
Scientist at Center for Astrochemical Studies
Tel: +49 89 30000-3808
lattanzi@mpe.mpg.de

Prof. Dr. Paola Caselli
Director of the CAS group at MPE
Tel: +49 89 30000-3400
Fax: +49 89 30000-3399
caselli@mpe.mpg.de
Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching


Publication
M. Araki, M. Sanz-Novo, C. P. Endres, P. Caselli, V. M. Rivilla, I. Jiménez-Serra, L. Colzi, S. Zeng, A. Megías, A. López-Gallifa, A. Martínez-Henares, D. San Andrés, S. Martín, M. A. Requena-Torres, J. García de la Concepción, V. Lattanzi
Sulfur-Bearing Cyclic Hydrocarbons in Space
Nature Astronomy Issue 1 Nr. 10 2026

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Monday, January 26, 2026

Theory-Breaking Extremely Fast-Growing Black Hole

Artist’s impression of a supermassive black hole system. Infalling gas forms a bright corona near the black hole. In some systems, a jet is launched. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech - Download image (578KB)


An international research team has discovered a supermassive black hole growing rapidly while radiating bright X-rays and radio waves. This combination of features contradicts the current models of black hole growth, requiring astronomers to look for a new explanation.

Supermassive black holes, millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun, sit in the centers of most galaxies. They grow by pulling in surrounding gas. As gas spirals inward, it can power a compact region of hot plasma known as a corona which emits X-rays. Some supermassive black holes also form a jet of outflowing material that emits strongly at radio wavelengths.

But if gas falls towards a supermassive black hole too quickly, radiation from the gas starts to push back on the material flowing behind it, causing the flow to slow down. This sets a self-regulating “Eddington Limit,” a speed limit on how fast gas can flow in. Like most speed limits, the Eddington Limit is broken sometimes, enabling rapid mass build-up over short cosmic timescales.

To test whether such extreme growth occurs in the early Universe, a team led by scientists at Waseda University and Tohoku University used the Subaru Telescope to measure the motion of gas around a supermassive black hole that existed when the Universe was less than 1.5 billion years old and found that it is accreting gas at 13 times the Eddington Limit. More surprisingly, the object also emits bright X-rays and radio waves. In the current models, super-Eddington accretion should change the gas flow and suppress X-ray and radio wave production. This unexpected combination hints at physical mechanisms not yet fully captured by current models of extreme accretion.

The team thinks the object is in a short-lived transitional stage. A sudden burst of inflowing gas may have pushed the system into a super-Eddington state, while a bright X-ray corona and a strong radio-wave emitting jet remained simultaneously energized for a limited time before the system settles toward a more typical regime.

This discovery offers a rare glimpse of time-variable black hole growth in the early Universe—an important step toward understanding the rapid growth of massive black holes.



Detailed Article(s)

"Rule-Breaking," Extremely Fast-Growing Supermassive Black Hole in the Early Universe
Subaru Telescope


Release Information

 Researcher(s) Involved in this Release

Sakiko Obuchi (Waseda Universiy)
Kohei Ichikawa (Tohoku University)

 Coordinated Release Organization(s)

National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, NINS
Waseda University
Tohoku University

 Paper(s)

Obuchi et al. “Discovery of an X-ray Luminous Radio-Loud Quasar at z = 3.4: A Possible Transitional Super-Eddington Phase”, in The Astrophysical Journal, DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ae1d6d


Related Link(s)

Rule-Breaking, Extremely Fast-Growing Supermassive Black Hole in the Early Universe (Waseda University)

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Sunday, January 25, 2026

Are Water Worlds Just Made of Soot?

Illustration of K2-18b, a potential water world exoplanet.
Credit:NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)

Title: Soot Planets Instead of Water Worlds
Authors: Jie Li et al.
 First Author’s Institution: University of Michigan
 Status: Published in ApJL

They Might Be Planets with a Lot of Water…

Since the discovery of PSR B1257+12 c and d in 1992 and  51 Pegasi b in 1995, we have found evidence for thousands of planets in other star systems. One of the most striking things (aside from how common planets seem to be) is how many of them are so unlike anything we had imagined we would find. Our growing list of exoplanets includes a truly remarkable variety of types, from cold rocky planets smaller than Earth to scorching hot giants bigger than Jupiter.

However, one category of planets is particularly interesting: the sub-Neptunes. These planets, smaller than Neptune but larger than Earth, are characterized by their low densities, which suggests they could be dominated by water or volatile-rich atmospheres. What makes sub-Neptunes so intriguing is that we don’t have a clear counterpart for them in our own solar system. As such, we don’t really know a lot about them other than there seem to be a lot of them out there.

Although these planets are sometimes theorised to be rocky worlds with large hydrogen–helium envelopes, they have alternatively been considered as water worlds, i.e., worlds with giant planet-wide oceans thousands of kilometres deep. The thinking goes that since water ice appears to be abundant beyond the snow line, water worlds would be a natural consequence of planet formation. And if these planets exist, some might host a temperate liquid ocean with the conditions for life.

…or They May Just Be CHON(ky)

However, today’s article suggests that these supposed water worlds may not be as wet as we think they are. They may instead be rich in what are called refractory carbonaceous materials. This term describes solids rich in carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, or CHON. It is a bit of a mouthful and is often just referred to as “soot,” but it is important to remember that it is different from the black stuff you would find in ye old chimney. Soot, in this case, is a major component of comets. We know that this type of material is present around planet formation, as protoplanetary dust contains not just silicates (rock) and water ice but also a significant amount of CHON, and comets are leftovers from this dust.

Soot is stable and remains in the solid state to much greater temperatures (∼500K) than water ice (∼160K), so the authors argue that there should be regions in the protoplanetary disk where planets accrete both rock and soot but little water. They define a “soot line” akin to the snow line and look at three archetypical planets that may form, shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Illustration of a protoplanetary disk and three chemically distinct planet types that may form as the distance from the host star increases. Close in, the temperature in the disk is too high for volatiles to exist in the solid state, but farther out, the temperature drops to allow for water to freeze into ice beyond the water ice line, also known as the snow line. Between the two regions lies another where it’s cool enough for carbonaceous materials or “soot” to avoid destruction via thermally driven reactions. Depending on where planets form, they may contain a varying amount of astrophysical soot. Credit: Li et al. 2026

Inside the soot line, planets would be rock-rich worlds with low carbon or water content (e.g., terrestrial planets) because it is just too hot for any soot to stay together. Beyond the soot line but before the snow line, you would find carbon-rich rocky worlds (soot planets). They have low water content, as it is still too hot for water ice to exist, but these planets are rich in CHON. Beyond the snow line, a combination of rock/carbon/water worlds becomes possible, here labelled as soot-water worlds. The authors note that even though the last one has a significant fraction of water, it is distinct from traditional “water worlds” because it includes a significant component of hydrocarbon-rich material. Again, it is also important to remember that a soot world wouldn’t mean a black powder ball hanging in space, but rather a world that is composed of a lot of CHON, like Saturn’s moon Titan.

What Do the Models Say?

The authors got down to modelling planet compositions based on both observations of protoplanetary disks and the distribution of solid materials found in comets.

They considered two model planets. One is fully stratified, i.e., with a metallic core enclosed in a silicate mantle overlain by a hydrocarbon-rich layer and then a water-ice surface layer. The other, a single-layer mixed planet, is a hypothesised scenario where iron, silicate, soot, and water are fully mixed throughout the planet as a result of exotic chemistry from the high temperature inside the sub-Neptune planet. They expect any potential real planets to lie somewhere between the two extremes. The mass–radius relations for these models can be seen in Figure 2, where they are also compared to a number of known exoplanets, of which several fall within the models’ parameter spaces.

Figure 2: Mass–radius relations for model Earth-like rocky planets (black curves), soot planets (gray bands), and soot-water worlds (blue bands). On the left are multi-layer planets, while on the right are single-layer planets. Overlaid are a number of exoplanets along with their respective uncertainties. Also shown as dashed lines are models for Earth-like planets with 50% rock and 50% water. These fall squarely within the same region as soot-water worlds, making the two indistinguishable from each other. Credit: Li et al. 2026

A particularly interesting result that the authors note is that the predicted mass–radius relationship for the water worlds, which incorporates soot, is similar to that predicted previously for a 50% water planet with no carbon. That is, if you base your interpretation on the mass–radius relationship alone, it is impossible to distinguish between a world made of rock and water and a water-rich planet that incorporates a significant amount of soot.

We Might Have a Telescope That Can Help

How might we break through this impasse? Well, because significant fractions of methane and other simple hydrocarbons are expected to be released from the interior, the soot-rich planets may feature methane-rich atmospheres. These may naturally lead to the formation of hydrocarbon hazes, akin to the tholins in Titan’s atmosphere.

Looking at the atmospheres of exoplanets is one of the main mission goals of JWST. Many of the spectra from sub-Neptunes have so far been featureless, which may indicate the presence of clouds or photochemical haze. The telescope also has the ability to detect carbon-bearing species in the atmospheres of other sub-Neptunes, like with the discovery of CO2 and CH4 in the atmospheres of K2-18b and TOI-270d. Although these planets currently orbit interior to the soot lines of their respective stars, they may have originally formed farther out and later migrated inward during their evolution. Of particular interest is TOI-270d. Aside from also showing signs of water, it has a carbon-to-oxygen ratio that is moderately high for the planet, hinting that it could be a world with a considerable amount of soot.

The presence of soot may have significant implications when it comes to habitability. The planet’s core may be rich in diamond, which would impede the movement of volatiles in the mantle. This would make it challenging for the planet to generate a magnetic field and thus leaving any potential life vulnerable to cosmic radiation. However, they could also be abundant in methane and other volatile organic compounds, substances thought to be crucial for the development of prebiotic chemistry. Regardless, it is interesting that there might be something out there that is not so unlike something we know from our own solar system, a hazy supersized Titan. While the frigid moon is unlikely to show signs of life, a temperate soot-water world might be one place to look in the future.

Original astrobite edited by Sowkhya Shanbhog.



About the author, Kasper Zoellner:
I have a Master of Science in astronomy and I am currently working towards a PhD in physics and educational science. My greatest passion is the search for exoplanets and how stellar variability may influence the possibility of life. I am also interested in science outreach, education and discussing what sci-fi novel to read next!


Editor’s Note: Astrobites is a graduate-student-run organization that digests astrophysical literature for undergraduate students. As part of the partnership between the AAS and astrobites, we occasionally repost astrobites content here at AAS Nova. We hope you enjoy this post from astrobites; the original can be viewed at astrobites.org.

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Saturday, January 24, 2026

Dwarf stars in a glittering sky

A cluster of stars inside a large nebula. The clouds of gas and dust are predominantly bright red in colour and wispy, akin to flames. They are clumped in the bottom-left corner. Other clouds, deeper in the cluster behind many of the stars, appear pale pink. The stars are concentrated in the top half of the image and are mostly small, bright white and six-pointed. They cast blue light over the nebula. Other stars with very long spikes surrounding them lie in the foreground. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, V. Almendros-Abad, M. Guarcello, K. Monsch, and the EWOCS team.


The final ESA/Webb Picture of the Month feature for 2025 showcases a festive-looking region filled with glowing clouds of gas and thousands of sparkling stars. This star cluster, known as Westerlund 2, resides in a stellar breeding ground known as Gum 29, located 20,000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Carina (the Keel).

This image of Westerlund 2 uses data from Webb’s Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI). The cluster measures between 6 light-years and 13 light-years across, and is host to some of our Milky Way galaxy's hottest, brightest, and most massive stars. It was also the feature of Hubble’s 25th anniversary image in 2015.

;: This new Webb image captures the bright, brilliant cluster near the top that is packed with young, massive stars whose intense light shapes the entire scene. Below and around them, swirls of orange and red gas form sculpted walls and tangled clouds - material that is being pushed, eroded, and illuminated by the cluster’s powerful radiation. Threaded throughout the view are countless tiny stars just beginning to shine, some still surrounded by the gas and dust from which they formed. The soft blues and pinks are wisps of thinner material drifting between the denser clouds. Scattered across the field are also many bright stars much closer to us, whose sharp, star-shaped patterns are created by Webb’s optics. The result is a vivid portrait of a stellar nursery in action, where intense energy from newborn stars carves dramatic shapes into the surrounding nebula and drives the ongoing cycle of star formation.

These new Webb observations of Westerlund 2 have revealed, for the first time, the full population of brown dwarfs in this extremely massive young star cluster, including objects as small as about 10 times the mass of Jupiter. This data is allowing astronomers to find several hundred stars with discs in various evolutionary states to facilitate our understanding of how discs evolve and how planets form in such massive young clusters. This image was developed using data from Webb’s programme #3523 (M. Guarcello) as part of the Extended Westerlund 1 and 2 Open Clusters Survey (EWOCS).



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Friday, January 23, 2026

NASA Webb Finds Young Sun-Like Star Forging, Spewing Common Crystals

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s 2024 NIRCam image shows protostar EC 53 circled. Researchers using new data from Webb’s MIRI proved that crystalline silicates form in the hottest part of the disk of gas and dust surrounding the star — and may be shot to the system’s edges. Credit Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Klaus Pontoppidan (NASA-JPL), Joel Green (STScI); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

This illustration represents half the disk of gas and dust surrounding the protostar EC 53. Stellar outbursts periodically form crystalline silicates, which are launched up and out to the edges of the system, where comets and other icy rocky bodies may eventually form. Credit Illustration: NASA, ESA, CSA, Elizabeth Wheatley (STScI)

This image of protostar EC 53 in the Serpens Nebula, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam), shows compass arrows, scale bar, and color key for reference. Credit Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Klaus Pontoppidan (NASA-JPL), Joel Green (STScI); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)


Astronomers have long sought evidence to explain why comets at the outskirts of our own solar system contain crystalline silicates, since crystals require intense heat to form and these “dirty snowballs” spend most of their time in the ultracold Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud. Now, looking outside our solar system, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has returned the first conclusive evidence that links how those conditions are possible. The telescope clearly showed for the first time that the hot, inner part of the disk of gas and dust surrounding a very young, actively forming star is where crystalline silicates are forged. Webb also revealed a strong outflow that is capable of carrying the crystals to the outer edges of this disk. Compared to our own fully formed, mostly dust-cleared solar system, the crystals would be forming approximately between the Sun and Earth.

Webb’s sensitive mid-infrared observations of the protostar, cataloged EC 53, also show that the powerful winds from the star’s disk are likely catapulting these crystals into distant locales, like the incredibly cold edge of its protoplanetary disk where comets may eventually form.

“EC 53’s layered outflows may lift up these newly formed crystalline silicates and transfer them outward, like they’re on a cosmic highway,” said Jeong-Eun Lee, the lead author of a new paper in Nature and a professor at Seoul National University in South Korea. “Webb not only showed us exactly which types of silicates are in the dust near the star, but also where they are both before and during a burst.”

The team used Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) to collect two sets of highly detailed spectra to identify specific elements and molecules, and determine their structures. Next, they precisely mapped where everything is, both when EC 53 is “quiet” (but still gradually “nibbling” at its disk) and when it’s more active (what’s known as an outburst phase).

This star, which has been studied by this team and others for decades, is highly predictable. (Other young stars have erratic outbursts, or their outbursts last for hundreds of years.) About every 18 months, EC 53 begins a 100-day, bombastic burst phase, kicking up the pace and absolutely devouring nearby gas and dust, while ejecting some of its intake as powerful jets and outflows. These expulsions may fling some of the newly formed crystals into the outskirts of the star’s protoplanetary disk.

“Even as a scientist, it is amazing to me that we can find specific silicates in space, including forsterite and enstatite near EC 53,” said Doug Johnstone, a co-author and a principal research officer at the National Research Council of Canada. “These are common minerals on Earth. The main ingredient of our planet is silicate.” For decades, research has also identified crystalline silicates not only on comets in our solar system, but also in distant protoplanetary disks around other, slightly older stars — but couldn’t pinpoint how they got there. With Webb’s new data, researchers now better understand how these conditions might be possible.

“It’s incredibly impressive that Webb can not only show us so much, but also where everything is,” said Joel Green, a co-author and an instrument scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. “Our research team mapped how the crystals move throughout the system. We’ve effectively shown how the star creates and distributes these superfine particles, which are each significantly smaller than a grain of sand.”

Webb’s MIRI data also clearly shows the star’s narrow, high-velocity jets of hot gas near its poles, and the slightly cooler and slower outflows that stem from the innermost and hottest area of the disk that feeds the star. The image above, which was taken by another Webb instrument, NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), shows one set of winds and scattered light from EC 53’s disk as a white semi-circle angled toward the right. Its winds also flow in the opposite direction, roughly behind the star, but in near-infrared light, this region appears dark. Its jets are too tiny to pick out.

Look ahead

EC 53 is still “wrapped” in dust and may be for another 100,000 years. Over millions of years, while a young star’s disk is heavily populated with teeny grains of dust and pebbles, an untold number of collisions will occur that may slowly build up a range of larger rocks, eventually leading to the formation of terrestrial and gas giant planets. As the disk settles, both the star itself and any rocky planets will finish forming, the dust will largely clear (no longer obscuring the view), and a Sun-like star will remain at the center of a cleared planetary system, with crystalline silicates “littered” throughout.

EC 53 is part of the Serpens Nebula, which lies 1,300 light-years from Earth and is brimming with actively forming stars.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).



Related Links

Read more: Webb’s Star Formation Discoveries

Explore more: Image Tour: Herbig-Haro 46/47

Read more: First-of-Its-Kind Detection Made in Striking New Webb Image

Read more: Infographic: Recipe for planet formation

Explore more: Star formation in the Eagle Nebula

Video: Exploring Star and Planet Formation

More Webb News

More Webb Images

Webb Science Themes

Webb Mission Page


Location: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

 Contact Media:

Laura Betz
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
laura.e.betz@nasa.gov

Claire Blome
Space Telescope Science Institute
Baltimore, Maryland

Christine Pulliam
Space Telescope Science Institute
Baltimore, Maryland

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