EurekAlert! In the Spotlight - Global Astronomy Month

Welcome to In the Spotlight, where each month we shine a light on something exciting, timely, or simply fascinating from the world of science.

In honor of Global Astronomy Month, we’re exploring the science of space. Learn how astronomy connects us through curiosity, discovery, and a shared wonder for what lies beyond.

Latest News Releases

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 25-Jul-2025 03:11 ET (25-Jul-2025 07:11 GMT/UTC)

10-Jun-2025

SwRI-led PUNCH mission images huge solar eruption

Southwest Research Institute
Reports and Proceedings

SAN ANTONIO — June 10, 2025 — Southwest Research Institute’s Dr. Craig DeForest discussed the latest accomplishments of NASA’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission during a media event at the 246th American Astronomical Society meeting in Anchorage, Alaska. As the spacecraft constellation completes commissioning, early PUNCH data showed coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, as they erupted from the Sun and traveled across the inner solar system.

10-Jun-2025

Supernovae may have kicked off abrupt climate shifts in the past, and they could again

University of Colorado at Boulder
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Robert Brakenridge has spent decades trying to understand how distant exploding stars may have affected Earth’s atmosphere in the past. A new analysis indicates the need for continued research in the field.

Journal: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

10-Jun-2025

Exoplanet discovery database, ExoFOP, reaches 1 million files and counting

Caltech IPAC

On March 3, the Exoplanet Follow-up Observing Program (ExoFOP) database surpassed one million user-submitted data files, relying solely on voluntary submissions from more than 1,700 registered individuals.

10-Jun-2025

First Ohio State professor named CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar

Ohio State University
Grant and Award Announcement

Melisa Diaz, an associate professor in earth sciences and the principal investigator of the Polar and Environmental Geochemistry Lab at The Ohio State University, has been named a 2025–2027 CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar.

10-Jun-2025

Silicate clouds discovered in atmosphere of distant exoplanet

Trinity College Dublin
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Astrophysicists have gained precious new insights into how distant “exoplanets” form and what their atmospheres can look like, after using the James Webb Telescope to image two young exoplanets in extraordinary detail. Among the headline findings were the presence of silicate clouds in one of the planet’s atmospheres, and a circumplanetary disk thought to feed material that can form moons around the other.

In broader terms, understanding how the “YSES-1” super-solar system formed offers further insight into the origins of our own solar system, and gives us the opportunity to watch and learn as a planet similar to Jupiter forms in real time.

Journal: Nature

10-Jun-2025

Deciphering the behavior of heavy particles in the hottest matter in the universe

University of Barcelona
Peer-Reviewed Publication

An international team of scientists has published a new report that moves towards a better understanding of the behaviour of some of the heaviest particles in the universe under extreme conditions, which are similar to those just after the big bang. The paper, published in the journal Physics Reports, is signed by physicists Juan M. Torres-Rincón, from the Institute of Cosmos Sciences at the University of Barcelona (ICCUB), Santosh K. Das, from the Indian Institute of Technology Goa (India), and Ralf Rapp, from Texas A&M University (United States).

Journal: Physics Reports