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Explanation: This colorful telescopic view towards the musical northern constellation Lyra reveals the faint outer halos and brighter central ring-shaped region of M57, popularly known as the Ring Nebula. To modern astronomers M57 is a well-known planetary nebula. With a central ring about one light-year across, M57 is definitely not a planet though, but the gaseous shroud of one of the Milky Way's dying sun-like stars. Roughly the same apparent size as M57, the fainter and more often overlooked barred spiral galaxy at the left is IC 1296. In fact, over 100 years ago IC 1296 would have been known...

Earth's famous Hubble Telescope has just revealed the first images of a mysterious interstellar object racing through our solar system. Spotted on Monday, Hubble has helped astronomers confirm that the massive, high-speed visitor is a comet from a distant part of the Milky Way galaxy. First spotted in late June, the comet named 3I/ATLAS has been on an 800-million-year journey to reach this solar system. The new images from Hubble captured what appears to be an icy tail that's ejecting rocky material from its 12-mile-long core. Those observations were reinforced by a new study published Tuesday morning which revealed 3I/ATLAS...

In a groundbreaking discovery published in The Planetary Science Journal, a team of astronomers led by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian has confirmed the existence of a rare object located far beyond Neptune. Known as 2020 VN40, this trans-Neptunian object is in a unique orbital resonance with the giant planet Neptune. For every ten orbits Neptune completes, 2020 VN40 completes one orbit around the Sun. This rare alignment provides key insights into how objects in the outer solar system behave and evolve over time. The research, which draws from extensive observations made by the Large Inclination Distant...