Artist's depiction of two black holes nearing a merger.

Astrobites reports on how researchers are preparing for future detections of merging supermassive and intermediate-mass black holes.

combined Hubble and JWST image of GRB 221009A

Two powerful telescopes examined the brightest gamma-ray burst ever observed by humans, hundreds of days after the burst was first detected. What did they see?

With their extremely low surface brightness, ultra-diffuse galaxies are very difficult to detect, but a recent study has spotted one by searching for its globular clusters.

Messier 87 jet

The massive nearby elliptical galaxy Messier 87 hosts one of the most-studied supermassive black holes in the universe. What have researchers recently learned about this black hole’s spin, jets, and flares?

quasar pair J0749+2255

Astrobites reports on JWST observations of a mysterious binary quasar system from cosmic noon.

Illustration of a planet around a red dwarf star

The troubles continue for planets around the smallest and coolest stars: new research suggests that it’s even harder than previously suspected for these planets to hold on to their atmospheres.

multi-wavelength image of the Bullet Cluster

Astrobites reports on the famous Bullet Cluster — what JWST observations reveal about its complex merger history and the constraints these observations place on self-interacting dark matter.

Messier 81

Recent observations of a well-studied but confounding galaxy provide new insights into the structure of low-luminosity active galactic nuclei.