A Space Daily column

Deep Field

Astronomy and cosmology

Deep Field covers astronomy and cosmology. Telescopes and what they find, planets near and far, and the strange physics of the deep universe, traced back to the journal papers and observatory data behind the headlines.

Outer Planets

For all its serene blue beauty from afar, Uranus hides a detail that would make a visitor recoil: its cloud tops are laced with hydrogen sulfide, the very gas that gives rotten eggs their stench, so Uranus literally reeks

The solar system's most boring-looking planet conceals a nauseating secret beneath its serene exterior.

Jul 30, 2026

Deep Space

Somewhere in the Milky Way tonight, drifting through the darkness between the stars, there are roughly 20 planets for every sun that burns — trillions of worlds, most thought to be ejected from the solar systems where they were born and now wandering the galaxy, according to a nine-year microlensing survey

The galaxy harbors trillions of orphaned worlds, cast out from their birth systems and now drifting alone through the void.

Jul 24, 2026

Space Scopes

In June 2025, on a Chilean mountaintop, scientists switched on the largest digital camera ever built — named for the astronomer who found the first convincing evidence for dark matter — at the start of a project whose decade-long survey may finally find a ninth planet hidden in the outer darkness of our solar system

A decade-long hunt for the solar system's missing tenth planet begins with the most powerful digital eye ever aimed at the sky.

Jul 24, 2026

Deep Space

Somewhere in the dried bed of an ancient Martian river, the Perseverance rover has been drilling into rocks for more than four years — and last June, NASA scientists announced that two of them contain the same complex carbon-based molecules that form the building blocks of life on Earth

The Perseverance rover has found carbon molecules in Martian rocks that mirror the chemistry underlying all known life—raising urgent questions about what conditions created them.

Jul 24, 2026

Constellations

How does a spacecraft with less computing power than a modern car key still send back science from beyond the Sun’s reach, almost 50 years after launch?

A spacecraft running on 1970s computer chips still transmits data from the edge of interstellar space—a feat of engineering that raises an uncomfortable question about what we've sacrificed for speed.

Jul 24, 2026

Outer Planets

Scientists think at least two of Uranus’s moons — Titania and Oberon — may harbour liquid water oceans beneath their icy crusts, kept warm not by the sun but by radioactive decay deep in their interiors. If true, they join a growing list of ocean worlds in the solar system

In the solar system's deep freeze, heat from within may unlock worlds we thought impossible to inhabit.

Jul 23, 2026

Science

At the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii, the air is so thin and so dry that astronomers can see light from galaxies billions of light-years away with a clarity impossible at sea level — which is why 11 countries have built 13 major telescopes on what is technically a dormant volcano

But the mountain is also sacred to Native Hawaiians, and decades of construction have ignited a battle over who gets to use Earth's most precious viewing platform.

Jul 23, 2026

Exo Worlds

NASA’s Webb telescope wasn’t looking for a new planet around Beta Pictoris — it was studying a known one — and found a giant world, Beta Pictoris d, lurking 63 light-years away inside a debris disk that had blocked every conventional search for more than a decade

A hidden world betrayed itself through the infrared haze—revealing how Webb sees through cosmic dust that defeated astronomers for over a decade.

Jul 23, 2026

Venusian Heat

A day on Venus is longer than its year — the planet turns so slowly, and backwards, that the Sun rises in the west and takes about 58 Earth days to cross the sky

The planet's backwards rotation and glacial spin create a cosmic paradox: sunrise comes in the west, and the Sun takes longer to cross the sky than Venus takes to orbit the Sun.

Jul 23, 2026

Outer Planets

How does a planet 4.5 billion kilometres from the Sun, where daylight is roughly 900 times dimmer than on Earth, whip up the fastest winds in the entire solar system?

Neptune radiates more heat than it receives from the Sun, yet somehow generates winds twice as fast as Earth's most violent hurricanes.

Jul 23, 2026

Saturn Daily

Scientists think it rains diamonds inside Saturn, with roughly 1,000 tons forming each year as lightning storms shatter methane into carbon soot, which the planet’s crushing pressure compresses into gems before they sink toward a possible ocean of liquid diamond at the core

A tantalizing theory built on lightning observations and physics calculations—not proof of a gem-filled world orbiting the sun.

Jul 23, 2026

Space Scopes

Astronomers searching for alien life aimed the James Webb Space Telescope at K2-18 b, a potentially ocean-bearing world 124 light-years away, and found tentative signs of gases associated on Earth with marine microbes — triggering months of debate over whether the molecules were really there and whether they would indicate life.

A faint spectral signature hinting at gases tied to Earth's ocean life has scientists arguing whether we're seeing biosignatures or just chemistry.

Jul 23, 2026

Stellar Chemistry

The gold in your wedding ring might an origin far more violent than you think: much of the universe’s gold was likely forged when two neutron stars collided — an event bright enough to outshine hundreds of millions of Suns for days, in a burst astronomers call a kilonova

Astronomers have long puzzled over where the universe's gold originates—now evidence points to the catastrophic collision of two neutron stars, an explosion so luminous it drowns out hundreds of millions of suns.

Jul 22, 2026

Saturn Daily

How did a moon smaller than Mars end up with rivers, rainfall and lakes without a single drop of water in any of them?

Titan has rivers, rain and seas—but none of them contain a drop of water, because on Saturn's moon, methane flows where water freezes solid.

Jul 22, 2026

Cosmology

What did astronomers find when they aimed a telescope at a patch of sky that looked completely empty and left it there for ten days?

A sliver of apparently barren sky revealed thousands of galaxies, fundamentally reshaping how we understand the universe's scale.

Jul 22, 2026

Exo Worlds

Astronomers found a planet 63 light-years away that appears as blue as Earth from space—but its colour comes from a scorching atmosphere where glass may rain sideways in 4,500-mile-per-hour winds

Beauty and horror collide on a world where azure skies hide an inferno of molten glass and apocalyptic winds.

Jul 22, 2026