Project
NASA/ESA space observatory in orbit since 1990, capturing high-resolution optical and ultraviolet images of galaxies and star clusters.
JWST's NIRSpec recorded the same unexplained 1.6-micrometer emission line twice in a Hubble Ultra Deep Field patch in 2023. Earlier Hubble and JWST data show nothing at the spot, and a brief flare from something too dim to see is one possible reading.
Reality
Astronomers re-reading 1999 Hubble spectra of white dwarf HS 0209+0832 found unusually high niobium that may trace matter the star shed as it died. The team proposes that some of that debris built a gas giant hinted at in TESS data, though the planet remains a candidate.
Reality
Warwick-led astronomers tie niobium at over 1,000 times solar levels in a white dwarf to a candidate planet made from what the star shed as it died. If it holds up, it shows planets can still form after a star has died.
Perspective Coverage
6 publishersReality
Cosmologists' simulations suggest primordial magnetic fields may have sped hydrogen formation, shifting the 67 km/s/Mpc rate read from the CMB. That gives the 6 km/s/Mpc Hubble tension a physical cause.
Reality
Harley Katz's team at the University of Chicago ran three years of simulations showing the Milky Way assembling from thousands of smaller galaxies. Published across six papers, the models can now be checked against what Webb actually records.
Reality
Hubble observations suggest the core of NGC 4693, a Virgo Cluster spiral about 55 million light-years away, turns out of step with its arms and bulge. Both explanations on offer point to outside influence, though nothing reported yet settles which applies.
Reality
Hubble imaging and Gaia orbits separate a third population of ancient star clusters in the galaxy's inner regions, evidence of a dwarf galaxy swallowed about 11.8 billion years ago.
Perspective Coverage
3 publishersReality
Katalyst's Link spacecraft never got close enough to grab the sinking telescope. Swift now reenters later this year, and on-orbit rescue remains a demonstration, not a planning assumption.
Perspective Coverage
6 publishersReality
Saturn's northern hexagon has looked the same for more than 40 years, so a second polygon that only shows up in images from 2023 onward hands atmospheric modellers a formation they can watch happen rather than a finished structure to explain.
Perspective Coverage
10 publishersReality
NASA says the Wide Field Instrument and the coronagraph are both working in space. The two published accounts of the milestone disagree about when science observations start and how long the mission runs.
Reality
University of Utah astronomers observed 29 massive stars in six dwarf galaxies with Hubble and found winds weaken sharply below a fifth of solar metallicity. None of the stars sits in an early galaxy, so the link to Webb's early galaxies remains an inference.
Reality
NASA pointed the telescope at galaxy cluster MACS J0417 on September 19 to catch a second appearance of supernova Athena, predicted before early March 2027, and the timing would constrain both the cluster's mass and the expansion rate.
Reality
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope should return its first images in early 2027, and its Wide Field Instrument will deliver them over at least 100 times the sky Hubble frames in a single pointing.
Reality
The Utah-led TEMPOS survey took ultraviolet spectra of 29 massive stars in six nearby dwarf galaxies, and at the lowest metallicities the winds slow far faster than the trend measured in more metal-rich stars.
Reality
The new Hubble picture of NGC 4698 shows arms that stop short of the glowing center and a bulge tilted out of the disk, while the case that a small merger built that geometry rests on one short tail of hydrogen.
Perspective Coverage
3 publishersReality
The LSST Camera's first image released for science stacks hundreds of exposures of the COSMOS field, where Hubble worked two decades ago, and Rubin's deputy director calls the field a testing ground for the ten-year survey.
Reality
Ignacio Trujillo's team spent two June nights hunting starlight in a gas cloud near the galaxy M94 and found none, which tightens the ceiling on any stars there without settling where the hydrogen came from.
Reality
Every dollar of the $4.3bn observatory rode one vehicle from one provider, which is the concentration number to carry into any space-sector position, whatever the science eventually turns out to be worth.
Reality
The telescope's first proposal round came back twelvefold oversubscribed. Hubble and Webb have posted the same result for years: the figure describes how much telescope time exists, not Roman's standing in particular.
Reality
The experimental instrument riding alongside Roman's survey camera carries the first deformable mirrors NASA has flown, and its science teams have pre-committed to a test that tells them whether the fault is theirs.
Reality