From birth to death, stars generally slow by 100 to 1,000 times their initial rotation rates; in other words, they “spin down.” The sun’s total angular momentum has declined as material is gradually blown off at the surface as solar wind. By observing this, astronomers have theorized the interaction between magnetic fields and plasma flow to be the most efficient way to spin down stars.

When Mauna Loa erupted in 2022, the largest lava flow headed on a path headed directly toward Daniel K. Inouye State Highway 200, also known as Saddle Road, a critical route that carries many residents from their homes on one side to their jobs on the other.

Astronomers can use telescopes to find specific molecules in the atmospheres of neighboring planets, in nebulae—clouds of interstellar dust and gas—hundreds or thousands of light-years away, or in galaxies beyond the far reaches of the Milky Way.

Planets may actually form more easily around double stars than around single stars like our sun, according to new research from astrophysicists at the University of Lancashire. Binary stars are common in our galaxy, yet for a long time astronomers believed that the gravitational tug-of-war between two stars would make it harder for circumbinary planets, worlds that orbit both stars, to form. Famous fictional worlds such as Tatooine from Star Wars, with its iconic twin sunsets, were thought to be cosmic curiosities rather than something nature routinely produces.

Finding planets used to be a painstaking business. Astronomers would fix their gaze on a handful of carefully chosen stars, watch and wait, and hope to catch the faint dip in starlight that signals a world passing in front of its host. It worked. It worked brilliantly. But it also meant we were fishing with a very small net in a very big ocean.