From hidden planets to invisible cosmic signals, some of the most important astronomical discoveries happened while scientists were chasing something else entirely.

By Kat Troche September 2025 marks ten years since the first direct detection of gravitational waves as predicted by Albert Einstein’s 1916 theory of General Relativity. These invisible ripples in […] ...

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most energetic and luminous explosions in the universe. However, they are fleeting and often only last for a matter of milliseconds. The 2023 GRB, designated GRB ...

Astronomy is increasingly becoming an online affair. Recent discoveries of interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS and R2 SWAN have highlighted this fact, when both were first discussed on message boards and ...

The most luminous kilonova candidate to date (short gamma-ray burst 200522A) was detected using the Hubble Space Telescope, Swift Observatory and other telescopes. A kilonova is a "the afterglow ...

The first stars in the universe formed out of pristine hydrogen and helium clouds, in the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang. New James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations reveal ...

A gravitational wave observatory, like LIGO, is built with two tunnels, each approximately 2.5 miles long, arranged in an "L" shape. At the end of each tunnel, a highly polished 40 kg mirror (about 16 ...