Planetary nebula NGC 6537 is nicknamed the Red Spider Nebula for its narrow ‘body’ and spindly ‘legs’ that stretch into the cosmos. But in this new view from the James Webb Space Telescope, what leaps

As an astronomer, I collect stars. There are several hundred billion of them in our Galaxy, the Milky Way, so it’s important to find a way to categorise them. While others might rank their stars by co

An artist’s impression of Cha 1107-7626 accreting material ...

Astronomers are now regularly detecting planets thousands of light years from Earth – but have we missed one in our own Solar System?

The year 2025 has been a vintage one for astronomy. In January, we were hooked on reports of a building-sized asteroid on course to collide with Earth. The risk was quickly downgraded from worrying to

The comet dubbed 3I/ATLAS, a rare extrasolar intruder, continues to barrel through the Solar System, attracting interest and speculation from astronomers and space scientists worldwide. Harvard astron