See and Hear Galaxies From the Big Bang

🌌 Hear galaxies evolve across time

🔭 Webb redraws planet-star boundary

🪐 Two Earth cousins in eternal twilight

🚀 Artemis II crew to share postflight insights

☀️ Solar wind moves faster than expected

Leiden University's Professor Joop Schaye led an international team developing COLIBRE simulations that model cold interstellar gas and cosmic dust, previously missing ingredients essential for understanding how galaxies formed after the Big Bang.

The COLIBRE simulations required 72 million CPU hours on COSMA8 supercomputer, achieving 20 times higher resolution than earlier models while tracking gas cooling below 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit where stars actually form.

Dr. Evgenii Chaikin of Leiden University says COLIBRE demonstrates the standard cosmological model remains consistent with JWST observations of early galaxy masses that were previously thought to challenge existing theories.

NASA astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope to examine 29 Cygni b, a massive object that challenges traditional understanding of how planets form through bottom-up accretion of rock and ice particles.

JWST observations targeted 29 Cygni b to investigate whether heavyweight planets form like stars through gravitational collapse rather than gradual accumulation, testing formation theories at the planet-star boundary region.

The findings could redefine the dividing line between planets and brown dwarfs, according to NASA researchers, potentially requiring new classification criteria based on formation mechanisms rather than mass alone.

University of Geneva and University of Bern researchers within the NCCR PlanetS collaboration created the first climate maps of rocky exoplanets using continuous James Webb Space Telescope observations of the TRAPPIST-1 system.

JWST conducted 60 hours of continuous infrared observations revealing TRAPPIST-1b and TRAPPIST-1c exhibit temperature differences exceeding 500 degrees Celsius between permanent day and night sides, indicating absent atmospheres.

According to Professor Emeline Bolmont of UNIGE, the findings support hypotheses that intense red dwarf radiation strips planetary atmospheres, though theoretical models suggest outer habitable-zone planets may retain theirs.

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen will discuss their historic lunar mission at Johnson Space Center on April 16 following their April 10 splashdown near San Diego.

The Artemis II mission launched April 1 aboard NASA's SLS rocket, completing a nearly 10-day flight that included manual Orion piloting, lunar flyby with unprecedented views of Moon's far side, and record-setting distance from Earth.

To NASA, the mission achieved all primary objectives testing life support systems and spacecraft maneuvers, establishing groundwork for sustained lunar presence and eventual crewed Mars missions under the Artemis program.

ESA's Proba-3 mission team, led by principal investigator Andrei Zhukov of the Royal Observatory of Belgium, published first results from 57 artificial solar eclipses created by the dual-spacecraft formation since July 2025.

The ASPIICS coronagraph observed plasma blobs in the inner corona moving at 250-500 km/s versus expected 100 km/s, tracking structures down to 70,000 kilometers from the Sun's surface with unprecedented resolution.

ESA project scientist Joe Zender says these surprisingly fast slow solar wind measurements challenge existing models, requiring theoretical experts to reconcile observations with magnetic field and plasma acceleration theories.