MIT astronomers observed flashes of X-rays coming from a supermassive black hole at a steadily increasing clip. The source could be the core of a dead star that’s teetering at the black hole’s edge.

Astronomers have long tried to track down how elements like carbon, which is essential for life, become widely distributed across the universe. Now, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has examined one ongoing source of carbon-rich dust in our own Milky Way galaxy in greater detail: Wolf-Rayet 140, a system of two massive stars that follow a tight, elongated orbit.

As they swing past one another (within the central white dot in the Webb images), the stellar winds from each star slam together, the material compresses, and carbon-rich dust forms. Webb’s latest observations show 17 dust shells shining in mid-infrared light that are expanding at regular intervals into the surrounding space.

Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology (KICT) has developed a cost-effective and high-efficiency maintenance technology using satellite Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data.

The surface features of neutron stars are largely unknown. Nuclear theorists explored mountain building mechanisms active on the moons and planets in our solar system. Some of these mechanisms suggest that neutron stars are likely to have mountains. Neutron star mountains would be much more massive than any on Earth--so massive that gravity just from these mountains could produce ripples in the fabric of space and time.

A whitish, grey patch that sometimes appears in the night sky alongside the northern lights has been explained for the first time by researchers at the University of Calgary.

Dr John Coxon, esteemed member of Northumbria University’s world-leading Solar and Space Physics research group, has been recognised by the Royal Astronomical Society for his work.