Object File heic1901a: The Triangulum Galaxy A full spiral galaxy, caught in finer detail than any camera has managed before, fills the frame, and the light that built that picture left home long before you did. The galaxy is Messier 33, better known as the Triangulum Galaxy, and ESA/Hubble and NASA both publish its distance … Read more
A Rock the Size of a Tall Building Passed Earth, and We Clocked the Exact Minute A rock roughly the size of a tall building passed Earth, and astronomers knew its path precisely enough to name the exact minute it would come closest. On October 25, 2026, at 09:27 UTC, asteroid 2026 TB8 reached that … Read more
The Planet That Shouldn’t Exist Picture a beach ball that weighs less than the pool toy floating next to it. That’s the shape of the problem 1,181 light-years from Earth, where a planet called WASP-193 b measures 14.8 times Earth’s radius but carries only 35.6 times Earth’s mass. Something that big, built the way Earth … Read more
A Rock That Missed by Five Moons An asteroid slipped past Earth at a distance five times wider than the Moon’s own orbit, and nobody on the ground saw a thing. That’s the headline number for near-Earth object 2026 UE, which made its closest approach on October 25, 2026, at 05:49 UTC. The gap sounds … Read more
A Year That Fits Inside a Work Shift Picture clocking in for a full shift and watching an entire planet live out a complete year before you clock out. On PSR J2322-2650 b, one lap around its star, its whole year, takes 27,904.089 seconds. Divide that by 3,600 and you land on about 7.75 to … Read more
A House-Sized Rock Passed Five Moons From Earth A rock roughly the size of a house, maybe closer to a small apartment block, slipped past Earth, and nobody saw it happen. No telescope flagged a naked-eye streak, no alarms, nothing. It was never going to hit anything. It just went by. The rock has a … Read more
2026 UE: A Rock the Size of a House, Five Moons Out A house-sized asteroid slipped past Earth at just over five Moon-distances away, close enough to count, far enough to never make the news. The object, 2026 UE, made its closest approach on October 25, 2026, at 05:53 UTC, passing at 1,250,000 miles (about … Read more
The Planet Where a Year Ends Before Your Shift Does Start a long shift at nine in the morning, and somewhere past the constellations you already recognize, a planet is about to finish an entire year before you clock out. TOI-4552 b, a small rocky world circling a faint red dwarf star, completes one full … Read more
A Building-Sized Rock Passed Earth, Five Moons Out A rock somewhere between a house and a small apartment block flew past Earth without ever coming close to the Moon‘s own orbit. That’s the whole story in one line, the next one is where the actual numbers live. On September 19, 2026, at 15:34 UTC, a … Read more
A Planet Light Enough to Float Line up nine Earths edge to edge and you’d just about match the width of Kepler-51 d. Add up everything the planet is made of, though, and it comes to only about 7.6 Earths’ worth of mass, mass, not weight; you can’t exactly put a planet on a bathroom … Read more
