The NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile has unveiled the very first “mega” images of the cosmos obtained thanks to the extraordinary features and wide-field view of its LSST camera—the largest in the world. The camera took nearly two decades to build and involved hundreds of scientists across the globe, including a number of CNRS teams. The world-wide First Look unveiling event is held on 23 June at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.

The Center for Space Exploration Research at the University of California, Davis, has partnered with Proteus Space to launch a US government-sponsored satellite into space with a custom AI-enabled payload. The UC Davis-designed payload is a dynamic digital twin that models the current condition and predicts the future state of the spacecraft’s power system, running in real time onboard the spacecraft instead of in ground-based mission control.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has made it possible to characterize known exoplanets since it was commissioned in 2022. Thanks to research led by a CNRS researcher at the Observatoire de Paris-PSL associated with the Université Grenoble Alpes, the telescope recently captured the direct image of a previously unknown exoplanet. This discovery, which will be published in the journal Nature, is a first for the telescope, and was achieved using the French-produced coronagraph installed on the JWST’s MIRI instrument.

New research published in the American Physical Society June 24 and led by Rice University physicist Christopher Tunnell and postdoctoral researcherDorian Amaral, the study’s first author and lead analyst, sees the first direct search for ultralight dark matter using a magnetically levitated particle. In collaboration with physicists from Leiden University, the team suspended a microscopic neodymium magnet inside a superconducting enclosure cooled to near absolute zero. The setup was designed to detect subtle oscillations believed to be caused by dark matter waves moving through Earth.

Astronomers from The University of New Mexico, along with U.S. and international researchers, have confirmed the existence of a new giant exoplanet, made possible through a collaboration with citizen sciences around the world. The discovery is detailed in a new paper published in The Astronomical Journal, with Postdoctoral Fellow Zahra Essack, Ph.D. as lead author, and Assistant Professor Diana Dragomir as co-author.

Three new frog species have recently been discovered in the Cordillera de Huancabamba, a mountainous region in Northwestern Peru. The species are Pristimantis chinguelas, P. nunezcortezi, and P. yonke. The discovery was made by a team of scientists who conducted difficult expeditions in the rugged terrain, searching for signs of amphibian life. The team observed signs of habitat degradation, fire damage, and expanding farmland, highlighting the need for conservation efforts.