Science on Startgaze — Astronomy, Stargazing & Space Sciencehttps://www.startgaze.com/categories/science/Recent content in Science on Startgaze — Astronomy, Stargazing & Space ScienceHugoen-usSat, 11 Jul 2026 07:46:00 +00003I/ATLAS: Webb's spectra point to an interstellar comet older than the Sunhttps://www.startgaze.com/posts/2026-07-11-3i-atlas-jwst-older-than-the-sun/Sat, 11 Jul 2026 07:46:00 +0000https://www.startgaze.com/posts/2026-07-11-3i-atlas-jwst-older-than-the-sun/Webb measured deuterium, CO₂ and methane in interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. The isotopes point to a comet that formed 10–12 billion years ago, older than the Sun.A decade ago LIGO caught one black hole collision. The catalog now holds 390.https://www.startgaze.com/posts/2026-07-07-gravitational-wave-catalog-390-detections/Tue, 07 Jul 2026 07:40:36 +0000https://www.startgaze.com/posts/2026-07-07-gravitational-wave-catalog-390-detections/The new GWTC-5.0 gravitational-wave catalog lists 390 detections since 2015. What LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA learned from a black-hole census on that scale.JWST's 'little red dots' aren't galaxies. They're black holes wrapped in gas.https://www.startgaze.com/posts/2026-06-23-jwst-little-red-dots-black-hole-stars/Tue, 23 Jun 2026 07:37:57 +0000https://www.startgaze.com/posts/2026-06-23-jwst-little-red-dots-black-hole-stars/Webb's deepest spectrum of a little red dot confirms these early-universe objects are supermassive black holes in dense gas cocoons, not impossibly massive galaxies.Astronomers detected a true sugar in interstellar space for the first timehttps://www.startgaze.com/posts/2026-06-11-first-true-sugar-in-interstellar-space/Thu, 11 Jun 2026 07:37:18 +0000https://www.startgaze.com/posts/2026-06-11-first-true-sugar-in-interstellar-space/A team detected erythrulose, a four-carbon sugar and precursor to TNA, in a molecular cloud 26,000 light-years from Earth. First true monosaccharide in space.JWST found methane on a Saturn-sized world with Earth-like temperatureshttps://www.startgaze.com/posts/2026-05-30-jwst-methane-exo-saturn-toi-199b/Sat, 30 May 2026 07:37:38 +0000https://www.startgaze.com/posts/2026-05-30-jwst-methane-exo-saturn-toi-199b/TOI-199b is the first temperate giant exoplanet whose atmosphere JWST has characterized. Methane, and hints of ammonia, open a new class of worlds to study.JWST's largest survey mapped the cosmic web across 13 billion yearshttps://www.startgaze.com/posts/2026-05-17-jwst-maps-the-cosmic-web/Sun, 17 May 2026 07:36:27 +0000https://www.startgaze.com/posts/2026-05-17-jwst-maps-the-cosmic-web/The COSMOS-Web survey used JWST to map 164,000 galaxies across the cosmic web, tracing filaments and voids back to when the universe was one billion years old.The cosmic distance ladder: how astronomers measure distances from the Moon to the edge of the universehttps://www.startgaze.com/posts/2026-05-03-cosmic-distance-ladder/Sun, 03 May 2026 07:40:00 +0000https://www.startgaze.com/posts/2026-05-03-cosmic-distance-ladder/Astronomers don't use one ruler. The cosmic distance ladder chains five techniques from the Moon to the universe's edge — and one rung is in trouble.