space

  1. Evidence mounts for dark energy from black holes

  2. A blue, cloudy planet sits against the dark backdrop of space with a star burning in the background—but still close enough to heat the planet to hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit.

    JWST finds first exotic ‘steam world’ shrouded in water vapor 

  3. Artist's rendering shows NASA's Europa mission spacecraft, which is being developed for a launch sometime in the 2020s. This view shows the spacecraft configuration, which could change before launch, as of early 2016. Image credit: NASA

    Europa Clipper: U-M experts available to comment

  4. A small black circle sits at the center of an illustration, representing a black hole. A thin blue spiral shows energetic material swirling around the black hole. The edge of the spiral gives way to a larger, thicker and more diffuse and broader red and orange cloud. Shooting up from the black hole, perpendicular to the cloud, is a narrow jet of radiation shown in bluish white.

    First data from XRISM space mission provides new perspective on supermassive black holes

  5. A nebula made up of cloudy gas and dust in the form of soft and wispy clouds and, in the center, thin and highly detailed layers pressed close together. Large, bright stars surrounded by six long points of light are dotted over the image, as well as some small, point-like stars embedded in the clouds. The clouds are lit up in blue close to the stars; orange colors show clouds that glow in infrared light.

    In six new rogue worlds, Webb Telescope finds more star birth clues

  6. Concept illustration of a comet floating in space. Image credit: Nicole Smith, made with Midjourney

    The origins of dark comets

  7. Temperate exoplanet LHS 1140 b may be a world completely covered in ice (left) similar to Jupiter’s moon Europa or be an ice world with a liquid substellar ocean and a cloudy atmosphere (centre). LHS 1140 b is 1.7 times the size of our planet Earth (right) and is the most promising habitable zone exoplanet yet in our search for liquid water beyond the Solar System. Image credit: B. Gougeon/Université de Montréal

    Astronomers find surprising ice world in the habitable zone with JWST data

  8. The high-resolution ELT instrument ANDES (formerly known as HIRES), will allow astronomers to study astronomical objects that require highly sensitive observations. It will be used to search for signs of life in Earth-like exoplanets, find the first stars born in the Universe, test for possible variations of the fundamental constants of physics, and measure the acceleration of the Universe's expansion. Image credit: ESO

    U-M part of consortium to design, construct powerful new instrument to unlock universe’s secrets

  9. Concept illustration of solar eruptions. Image credit: Nicole Smith, made with Midjourney

    Weekend geomagnetic storm: Experts can discuss potential US impacts

  10. A total solar eclipse combined with stars and some clouds. Image credit: iStock

    Total eclipse: U-M experts leap at rare chance to view sun’s atmosphere from the ground

  11. This artist’s impression shows the formation of a gas giant planet embedded in the disk of dust and gas in the ring of dust around a young star. A University of Michigan study, led by U-M astronomer Gabriele Cugno, aimed the James Webb Space Telescope at a protoplanetary disk surrounding a protostar called SAO 206462, hoping to find a gas giant planet in the act of forming. Image credit: ESO/L. Calçada

    U-M astronomers conduct first search for forming planets with new space telescope

  12. On the left are three yellow half-rings, which show how the shape of the circumstellar gas cloud changes as it expands with time. At first, shown in the innermost ring, the gas cloud is a simple torus (a 3D ring). Later, shown in the middle ring, 16 lumps of equal size are beginning to form, like a string of beads. Finally, shown in the outermost ring, the 16 lumps become distinct clumps. A flattened gas cloud extends from the line of clumps. The right side shows vortices, or regions of rapidly rotating flow. At first, there is no rotation in the flow, and so there are no vortices. The first blue ring therefore aligns with the beaded string on the left (the middle yellow half-ring). Sixteen arcs align with the 16 beads on the mirrored side. The arcs then pinch off into isolated vortex loops, which correspond to the clumps on the mirrored side. The simulation shows the shape of the gas cloud on the left and the vortices, or regions of rapidly rotating flow, on the right. Each ring represents a later time in the evolution of the cloud. It shows how a gas cloud that starts as an even ring with no rotation becomes a lumpy ring as the vortices develop. Eventually the gas breaks up into distinct clumps. Credit: Michael Wadas, Scientific Computing and Flow Laboratory

    Explaining a supernova’s ‘string of pearls’

  13. Shadows cast by the leaves of a tree show the central phase of the annular eclipse in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, on Oct. 14, 2023. The space between leaves acts as a natural pinhole projector to safely view the progress of an eclipse. Image credit: David Gerdes

    U-M astronomer: Get to the path of April’s total solar eclipse

  14. This artist impression shows ultra-fast winds blasting out from the center of galaxy Markarian 817. These winds, moving at many millions of kilometers per hour, clear out interstellar gas from a vast region of space. Without this gas, the galaxy can’t form new stars and the black hole in the galactic center has little left to eat. Image credit: ESA (acknowledgement: work performed by ATG under contract to ESA)

    U-M, XMM-Newton spot a black hole giving ‘fierce feedback’

  15. Concept illustration of extreme conditions in space. Image credit: Nicole Smith, made with Midjourney

    Extreme conditions in stars produce the universe’s heaviest elements

  16. The space junk appears as many small white points surrounding Earth, which has bright blue oceans and green and brown continents. The space junk is thick enough to form a cloud that obscures most of the black background when viewed from the edges around Earth.

    Tracking undetectable space junk

  17. A Baltimore oriole in flight. Orioles are nocturnal migratory birds. Image credit: Andrew Dreelin

    Space weather disrupts nocturnal bird migration, study finds

  18. U-M Block M Logo

    NASA astronaut returns in person to U-M’s Saturday Morning Physics

  19. An artist's representation of matter in the early universe slowly coalescing into large cosmic structures in the late universe. Image credit: Minh Nguyen, University of Michigan and Thanh Nguyen (spouse)

    The universe caught suppressing cosmic structure growth

  20. This artist’s illustration depicts the "tidal disruption event" (TDE) called ASASSN-14li, which is the focus of the latest study. As a star approached too closely to the supermassive black hole at the system, the strong gravity tore the star apart. This artist's impression depicts the aftermath of this destruction. After the star was ripped apart, some of its gas (red) was left orbiting around and falling into the black hole. A portion of the gas was driven away in a wind (blue). Image credit: NASA/CXC/University of Michigan/J. Miller et al; Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

    A giant black hole destroys a massive star