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.

Science

A newly found star circles the Milky Way’s central black hole every 8.7 years and passes it at about 25,000 kilometres a second, more than 8 percent of the speed of light, and the pass is so close that its discoverers say there is a fair chance of measuring the hole’s spin within a decade

S301 turned up as a smudge in a reconstructed image in 2023 and was then found again in archived pointings from 2021 and 2017. No spin has been measured. The decade-long timeline comes from a simulated dataset running to 2035, one assuming a radial velocity this star has never yielded and an astrometric precision the authors describe as the expected final performance of their upgraded instrument.

Sep 2, 2026

Solar Science

The November 2025 geomagnetic superstorm pushed satellite-positioning errors beyond 10 metres in parts of the continental US, with interference stretching nearly coast to coast. Researchers warn that had it struck during spring planting, it could have caused hundreds of millions of dollars in agricultural losses.

A new reconstruction of the November 2025 G4 storm finds mid-latitude GPS interference across much of the United States, exposing a seasonal risk to precision farming.

Sep 2, 2026

Science

In 2025, astronomers mapped Quipu, the largest reliably identified cosmic superstructure yet—a branching filament roughly 1.4 billion light-years long, 13,000 times the diameter of the Milky Way’s stellar disc, with an estimated mass of about 200 quadrillion Suns.

A map built from 68 X-ray-selected galaxy clusters reveals Quipu’s extraordinary scale, while its boundary, mass and cosmological meaning demand more careful language than “largest object.”

Sep 2, 2026

Science

An icy world only 500 kilometres across beyond Neptune was found in May 2026 to possess an atmosphere that should escape within 1,000 years. Scientists suspect a recent impact or continuing cryovolcanism—but still cannot explain what created or replenishes its improbable veil of gas.

A 2024 occultation indicates that the 500-kilometre trans-Neptunian object 2002 XV93 carries a 100-to-200-nanobar atmosphere, but neither an impact nor continuing outgassing has been demonstrated.

Sep 2, 2026

Science

Cloud-9 appears to be a dark-matter halo weighing five billion suns, containing a million solar masses of hydrogen but no detectable stars. Hubble observations announced in January 2026 identified it as the strongest known candidate for a primordial “failed galaxy”—a fossil from early galaxy formation that never crossed the threshold required to make stars.

Cloud-9 contains radio-bright neutral hydrogen but no detectable stellar population; if its gas is pressure-supported, an unseen halo of several billion solar masses must hold it together.

Sep 2, 2026

Science

Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS arrived from the direction of Sagittarius with the highest incoming speed of any known interstellar visitor, accelerated to nearly 250,000 kilometres per hour near the Sun, and is now escaping on a hyperbolic trajectory that will never bring it back.

The Sun temporarily raised 3I/ATLAS to about 246,000 kilometres per hour, but its record incoming excess speed and positive orbital energy guarantee a one-way departure.

Sep 2, 2026

Science

Gaia data revealed 6,594 nearby solar twins, including more than 1,500 born around the same time as the Sun. Researchers propose that many of them—and perhaps our Sun—migrated more than 10,000 light-years from the Milky Way’s turbulent inner disk, potentially placing Earth in the quieter galactic environment where complex life eventually evolved.

A catalogue of 6,594 Gaia solar twins contains an age pattern consistent with widespread outward migration during the Milky Way bar’s formation, though the proposed benefit to life remains a hypothesis.

Sep 2, 2026

Outer Planets

Pluto’s atmosphere has probably persisted in some form for millions of years, but observations suggest its pressure fell 16% between mid-2021 and July 2023. With Pluto continuing away from the Sun until 2114, astronomers may be witnessing the beginning of its nitrogen sky slowly freezing onto the surface.

Stellar occultations suggest Pluto’s long pressure plateau is ending as nitrogen gas begins condensing back onto its frozen surface.

Sep 1, 2026

Marsdaily

The organic carbon Perseverance found in Jezero Crater’s ancient river mudstones lies more than 3,500 kilometres from organic molecules detected by Curiosity in Gale Crater—evidence that the chemical ingredients associated with life may have been widespread across ancient Mars, rather than confined to a single lake system.

The discovery of organic molecules at two distant Martian lake beds hints that ancient Mars possessed the chemical building blocks for life across an entire planet, not just in isolated pockets.

Sep 1, 2026

Cosmology

In November 2025, astronomers argued that an overlooked age bias in supernova measurements meant the universe had already begun decelerating and dark energy was weakening. A Southampton-led team challenged that conclusion in June 2026, saying the supposed bias was largely already corrected for—but the original researchers have since disputed the rebuttal.

A fundamental mystery about the universe's fate hinges on whether astronomers have been systematically mismeasuring the most distant stellar explosions.

Sep 1, 2026

Exo Worlds

In 2025, astronomers reported evidence for a planet orbiting two brown dwarfs at nearly 90 degrees—the first candidate world circling over the poles of a binary. But the planet was inferred indirectly, and a later analysis found that a timing error may have produced the signal, leaving the extraordinary world unconfirmed.

The proposed polar planet around 2M1510 was inferred from backward orbital precession. A half-day timestamp mismatch may have manufactured the signal.

Sep 1, 2026

Science

For most of human history, anyone standing beneath a clear, moonless sky could see the Milky Way. Electric light began erasing that view little more than a century ago—and today, artificial skyglow hides our galaxy from more than one-third of humanity.

The one-third figure comes from a 2016 global model using 2014 satellite data and 35,000 ground checks. Later naked-eye reports suggest the visible night has continued to brighten.

Sep 1, 2026

Stellar Chemistry

Dead stars are supposed to cool steadily into darkness, but Gaia found a population whose brightness has barely changed for at least eight billion years—and the leading explanation is crystals floating inside them like ice cubes, forcing heavier liquid downward and releasing enough gravitational energy to keep the stars glowing.

Gaia's Q-branch pile-up and the old motions of its stars point to a multi-billion-year cooling delay powered by neon-22 distillation inside a minority of massive white dwarfs.

Sep 1, 2026

Solar Science

In May 2024, the Gannon geomagnetic storm—the strongest in more than two decades—compressed Earth’s plasmasphere to roughly one-fifth its previous radial extent, while the same disturbance pushed auroras unusually close to the equator, bringing the northern lights to Mexico and Japan and the southern lights across Australia.

Arase measurements show exactly how the May 2024 Gannon storm drove the plasmapause from L=7 to L=1.5 in nine hours while auroral ovals expanded towards low latitudes worldwide.

Aug 31, 2026

Science

Thirty-nine Hubble-timed globular clusters in the inner 20,000 light-years of the Milky Way revealed a third age-metallicity sequence — proof a 500-million-solar-mass dwarf named LKH was swallowed 11.8 billion years ago, 1.8 billion years before Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus

Our galaxy's earliest cosmic meal reveals itself in the chemical signatures of ancient star clusters—a dwarf galaxy devoured when the universe was barely a billion years old.

Aug 31, 2026

Stellar Chemistry

Empty space isn’t truly empty, according to quantum physics — and a magnetar with a magnetic field hundreds of trillions of times stronger than Earth’s has now produced the strongest evidence yet, polarizing X-rays in a pattern researchers struggled to explain without a 90-year-old quantum effect.

IXPE measured unusually strong, phase-dependent X-ray polarisation from magnetar 1E 1547.0−5408. The combined radio and X-ray geometry makes vacuum birefringence the strongest explanation so far, though a competing analysis shows why the result is not yet final proof.

Aug 31, 2026