This recent JWST image shows a galaxy-scale strong lensing system, consisting of a distant spiral galaxy that is being lensed by a bright, massive elliptical galaxy in the galaxy cluster SMACSJ0028.2-7537. This combined image is composed of four individual images obtained using the JWST’s Near-InfraRed Camera, shown in yellow and red, along with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for

Barnard’s Star is one of the closest and most studied M dwarfs, and various attempts have been undertaken to determine whether it hosts planets. Despite these efforts, the first exoplanetary detection came only in 2024 by radial velocity data from the ESPRESSO spectrograph on the VLT (J. I. González Hernández et al. Astron. Astrophys. 690, A79; 2024). The same study found three other unconfirmed signals

The stellar demographics of the central Milky Way have remained somewhat unclear due to observational challenges posed by high interstellar extinction. To provide a comprehensive picture of this region, Danny Horta Darrington, Michael Petersen and Jorge Peñarrubia have conducted a population study of metal-rich red giants ([Fe/H] > –0.8) in the inner Galaxy (r < 5 kpc) from APOGEE and Gaia DR3. They

Stars travelling faster than the escape speed of a galaxy — so-called hypervelocity stars — reach their velocities following an external force majeure event, such as a supernova explosion or a passage close to a black hole. Twenty-one main-sequence B-stars in the Galactic halo were identified as being unbound in the hypervelocity star (HVS) survey, and recent analysis from Jiwon Jesse Han and colleagues

Bob Kurucz, a giant in the field of stellar spectral modelling, was committed to sharing his science and expertise with the community.

Artificial intelligence has much to offer in the way of convenience and efficiency, but there may also be hidden costs that only become apparent with time. Astronomers should be aware of the drawbacks and potentially consider mitigating actions.

On 13 February 2023, just after 01:00 UTC, a high-energy muon passed through the sensor field of the seawater-based KM3NeT neutrino experiment, stimulating bursts of Cherenkov light that triggered 28,086 detections. The event was designated KM3-230213A (Nature 638, 376–382; 2025). The path of the muon is shown in red in the image, with the likely shape of the Cherenkov light cones in blue. Muons lose

The interplay of dark and baryonic matter across cosmic time is complex, highly non-linear, and a crucial probe of multiple astrophysical processes. Cosmological hydrodynamical simulations drive our understanding of this dynamic, but they are computationally expensive and suffer from a trade-off between volume and resolution. Mauro Bernardini and colleagues present a new deep-learning framework to

The atmospheres of brown dwarfs are chemistry laboratories for investigating their formation mechanisms and also those of gas giant exoplanets. With JWST/MIRI, Elisabeth Matthews and colleagues observed a T-type brown dwarf binary system, WISE J045853.90+643451.9 (WISE-0458). They found absorption features from hydrogen cyanide (HCN) and acetylene (C2H2) for the first time in a brown dwarf atmosphere

PDS 70 is a very young star of around 5 Myr of age that hosts two accreting giant exoplanets in wide orbits (PDS 70 b at ~21 au and PDS 70 c at ~34 au) embedded in its protoplanetary disk. Both exoplanets have been directly imaged and thus provide a rare window to look at the processes of planetary formation. Laird Close and colleagues and Yifan Zhou and co-authors present two independent studies focusing

Masatoshi Hirabayashi and colleagues, by simulating the initial plume, determined that the effectiveness of the momentum transfer along the orbit track was reduced by the curved surface of Dimorphos, attaining only 44 ± 10% of that had the asteroid surface been flat. The efficiency is reduced the more a target asteroid is globally curved. In a paper published contemporaneously, Fabio Ferrari and colleagues

Ten years ago, 195 countries signed the so-called Paris Agreement that aims to limit global warming within 2 degrees compared to pre-industrial time. According to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this objective can be only reached if anthropocentric greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions decrease to net zero by 20501. To achieve this challenge, all human activities, including scientific research

The adage that ideas are cheap in astronomy, with execution being paramount, may already be obsolete. The impact of large language models (LLMs) on research looms on the horizon, compelling the astronomy community to reevaluate the very metrics of merit, the definition of research identity and methodology, and the foundations of education.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere — from billion-dollar investments in companies like Anthropic, to chatbot romances, and even conservationists using it to save the red squirrel. In science, its applications are undeniable, but what happens when we try to use AI to tackle the very technical art of scientific writing? My colleagues and I recently gathered at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical

Streaming horizontally across the field of view, this small region of the ISM is heated by the supernova’s light such that it glows in the infrared, revealing a rich striation into tightly layered sheets and woodgrain-like knots on spatial scales of around 400 AU. Such scales are comparable to those of the individual star systems that themselves are born out of this material, and have not been resolved

The submission of multiple research articles in a coordinated way — a paper ‘package’ — offers benefits that are more than the sum of the parts. We welcome proposals for such packages, to potentially be published solely in Nature Astronomy or spread across the Nature Portfolio.

Whistler-mode chorus waves are a form of electromagnetic radiation whose frequency changes with time, a phenomenon called chirping. It is generally believed that chorus waves are governed by the planetary magnetic dipolar field. Recently Chengming Liu and colleagues reported results from NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission that support the idea of field–particle energy transfer from thermal

Ultra diffuse galaxies (UDGs) have enjoyed a resurgence in the discovery space over the last decade thanks to improved telescope sensitivity, but their formation pathways remain unclear. The spatially resolved spectroscopy that is needed to map their stellar population properties is expensive due to their inherent faintness, with the result that only 2 UDGs have previously been observed in this way

Some white dwarfs (WDs) show unique metallic features in their spectra, which are considered to originate from recently accreted planetesimals. Among these ‘metal-polluted’ WDs, only a few have lithium (Li) in their photosphere. Benjamin Kaiser and colleagues investigated five known Li-enhanced WDs and evaluated the physical parameters of the sample under different hypotheses for the Li enhancement

Solidified molecular material, called ices, can often be found in the cold, dense regions of space, such as molecular clouds or the environs around protostars. In 2007, the AKARI satellite serendipitously detected two icy objects during an infrared spectral Galactic plane survey. Takashi Shimonishi and colleagues have now performed follow-up observations with ALMA, discovering that the two regions

Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are runaway thermonuclear explosions in white dwarfs that result in the disruption of the white dwarf star, and possibly its nearby stellar companion. SNe Ia occur over an immense range of stellar population age and host galaxy environments, and play a critical role in the nucleosynthesis of intermediate-mass and iron-group elements, primarily the production of nickel, iron