SPACE/COSMOS
New breakthrough in detecting ‘ghost particles’ from the Sun
University of Oxford
image:
The 12-metre-diameter acrylic vessel surrounded by 9,000 photomultiplier tubes at the heart of the the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory and SNO+ experiments. The vessel currently holds about 800 tonnes of liquid scintillator for neutrino detection. Image credit: SNOLAB.
view moreCredit: SNOLAB.
First observation of carbon-neutrino interactions opens new frontiers in nuclear and particle physics.
More images available via the link in the Notes Section.
Neutrinos are one of the most mysterious particles in the universe, often called 'ghost particles' because they rarely interact with anything else. Trillions stream through our bodies every second, yet leave no trace. They are produced during nuclear reactions, including those that take place in the core of our Sun. Their tendency to not interact often makes detecting neutrinos notoriously difficult. Neutrinos from the Sun have only been seen to interact on a handful of different targets. Now, for the first time, scientists have succeeded in also observing them transform carbon atoms into nitrogen inside a vast underground detector.
The breakthrough, led by researchers at Oxford, was made using the SNO+ detector located two kilometres underground in SNOLAB, an international world-class facility housed in a working mine in Sudbury, Canada. The deep location was crucial to shield the lab from cosmic rays and background radiation that would mask the faint neutrino signals.
The team searched for events where a carbon-13 nuclei is struck by a high-energy neutrino and transformed into radioactive nitrogen-13, which decays about ten minutes later. They used a ‘delayed coincidence’ method, which looks for two linked signals: an initial flash from a neutrino striking a carbon-13 nucleus, followed several minutes later by a second flash from the resulting radioactive decay. This distinctive pattern allows researchers to confidently separate real neutrino interactions from background noise.
The analysis found 5.6 observed events over a 231-day period, from 4 May 2022 to 29 June 2023. This is statistically consistent with the 4.7 expected to be generated by neutrinos during this time.
Neutrinos are bizarre particles that are essential for understanding stellar processes, nuclear fusion, and the evolution of the universe. According to the researchers, this discovery lays the groundwork for future studies of similar low-energy neutrino interactions
Lead author Gulliver Milton, a PhD student at the University of Oxford’s Department of Physics, said: “Capturing this interaction is an extraordinary achievement. Despite the rarity of the carbon isotope, we were able to observe its interaction with neutrinos, which were born in the Sun’s core and travelled vast distances to reach our detector.”
Co-author Professor Steven Biller (Department of Physics, University of Oxford) added: “Solar neutrinos themselves have been an intriguing subject of study for many years, and the measurements of these by our predecessor experiment, SNO, led to the 2015 Nobel Prize in physics. It is remarkable that our understanding of neutrinos from the Sun has advanced so much that we can now use them for the first time as a ‘test beam’ to study other kinds of rare atomic reactions!”
SNO+ repurposes the SNO experiment, which showed that neutrinos oscillate between three types: electron, muon, and tau neutrinos on their journey from the Sun to the Earth. SNO’s lead investigator, Arthur B. McDonald, shared the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics for solving the solar neutrino problem, opening the door for new research into neutrino properties and their role in the universe, says SNOLAB staff scientist Dr Christine Kraus.
“This discovery uses the natural abundance of carbon-13 within the experiment's liquid scintillator to measure a specific, rare interaction,” Kraus said. “To our knowledge, these results represent the lowest energy observation of neutrino interactions on carbon-13 nuclei to date and provides the first direct cross-section measurement for this specific nuclear reaction to the ground state of the resulting nitrogen-13 nucleus.”
Notes to editors:
For media enquiries or interview requests, contact Gulliver Milton: gulliver.milton@jesus.ox.ac.uk
The paper ‘First Evidence of Solar Neutrino Interactions on 13C’ will be published in Physical Review Letters at 15:00 GMT / 10:00 ET Wednesday 10 December 2025, DOI https://doi.org/10.1103/1frl-95gj . To view a copy of the study before this under embargo, contact Gulliver Milton: gulliver.milton@jesus.ox.ac.uk
Further images of SNOLAB approved for media can be found here: https://www.snolab.ca/about/for-the-media/
About the University of Oxford
Oxford University has been placed number 1 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for the tenth year running, and number 3 in the QS World Rankings 2024. At the heart of this success are the twin-pillars of our ground-breaking research and innovation and our distinctive educational offer.
Oxford is world-famous for research and teaching excellence and home to some of the most talented people from across the globe. Our work helps the lives of millions, solving real-world problems through a huge network of partnerships and collaborations. The breadth and interdisciplinary nature of our research alongside our personalised approach to teaching sparks imaginative and inventive insights and solutions.
Through its research commercialisation arm, Oxford University Innovation, Oxford is the highest university patent filer in the UK and is ranked first in the UK for university spinouts, having created more than 300 new companies since 1988. Over a third of these companies have been created in the past five years. The university is a catalyst for prosperity in Oxfordshire and the United Kingdom, contributing around £16.9 billion to the UK economy in 2021/22, and supports more than 90,400 full time jobs.
About SNOLAB
SNOLAB, the deepest-cleanest underground research facility in the world, has made Canada a leader in underground science, infrastructure, and expertise. Located two kilometres down, our facility at Vale’s Creighton Mine in Greater Sudbury uses the Canadian Shield to protect experiments from the cosmic rays that constantly bombard the Earth’s surface.
By hosting and enabling the world’s most advanced and sensitive underground experiments, SNOLAB bolsters Canada’s scientific reputation, attracts new talent to our country and Northern Ontario, trains more highly skilled people, provides more opportunities for Canadian researchers to lead international projects, and generates economic benefits for Ontarians and Canadians.
The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory cavity and detector under construction two kilometres underground in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. Image credit: SNOLAB.
Credit
SNOLAB.
Event display in the SNO+ control room at SNOLAB. Image credit: SNOLAB.
Credit
SNOLAB.
Event display console in the SNO+ control room at SNOLAB. Image credit: SNOLAB.
Credit
SNOLAB.
Physical Review Letters
Article Title
First Evidence of Solar Neutrino Interactions on 13C
Article Publication Date
10-Dec-2025
SETI Institute tracks pulsar “twinkle” to reveal how space distorts radio signals
Noticeable scintillation can help SETI scientists distinguish between human-made radio signals and signals from other star systems.
image:
Allen Telescope Array, Hat Creek Radio Observatory
view moreCredit: SETI Institute
December 10, 2025, Mountain View, CA -- For 10 months, a SETI Institute–led team watched pulsar PSR J0332+5434 (also called B0329+54) to study how its radio signal "twinkles" as it passes through gas between the star and Earth. The team used the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) to take measurements between 900 and 1956 MHz and observed slow, significant changes in the twinkling pattern, or scintillation, over time.
Pulsars are spinning remnants of massive stars that emit flashes of radio waves, a type of light, in very precise and regular rhythms. Due to their high rotation speed and incredible density. Scientists can use sensitive radio telescopes to measure the exact times at which pulses arrive in the search for patterns that can indicate phenomena such as low-frequency gravitational waves. However, gas in interstellar space can scatter a pulsar’s radio waves—spreading them out and slightly delaying when each pulse is received. Understanding and correcting these tiny, changing delays, which can be as small as tens of nanoseconds (a nanosecond is one-billionth of a second), helps keep pulsar timing as precise as possible.
Just as starlight “twinkles” in Earth’s atmosphere, pulsar radio waves also “twinkle”, or scintillate, in space. As the signal travels through clouds of electrons between the pulsar and Earth, it creates bright and dim patches across radio frequencies. These patterns aren’t static; they evolve as the pulsar, the gas, and Earth move relative to each other. This twinkling delays the pulses, and the amount of scintillation matches the extent of the delay. By frequently monitoring a single bright, nearby pulsar, the team observed these patterns shift and translated them into tiny timing delays. These methods can then correct the delays that matter for the most precise pulsar experiments.
“Pulsars are wonderful tools that can teach us much about the universe and our own stellar neighborhood,” said project leader Grayce Brown, a SETI Institute intern. “Results like these help not just pulsar science, but other fields of astronomy as well, including SETI.” All radio signals passing through the interstellar medium experience scintillation. Noticeable scintillation can help SETI scientists distinguish between human-made radio signals and signals from other star systems.
The ATA observations used a wide range of radio frequencies and frequent, short observation sessions). The team measured the scintillation bandwidth (the size of the bright spots in the twinkling pattern) almost daily for ~300 days with the ATA and found that the amount of scintillation changed noticeably over timescales ranging from days to months. The observations suggest an overarching long-timescale variation of about 200 days. The study also included a newly developed, more robust method to estimate how scintillation increases with radio frequency, leveraging the ATA's wide frequency range.
"The Allen Telescope Array is perfectly designed for studying pulsar scintillation due to its wide bandwidths and ability to commit to projects that need to run for long stretches of time," said Dr. Sofia Sheikh, co-author and Technosignature Research Scientist at the SETI Institute.
The observations provide a window into pulsars, Earth, and the space between them, helping scientists better understand how to distinguish radio frequency interference from a signal of potentially artificial origin.
The paper can be found at doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ae0fff.
About the SETI Institute
Founded in 1984, the SETI Institute is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary research and education organization whose mission is to lead humanity's quest to understand the origins and prevalence of life and intelligence in the universe and to share that knowledge with the world. Our research encompasses the physical and biological sciences and leverages expertise in data analytics, machine learning and advanced signal detection technologies. The SETI Institute is a distinguished research partner for industry, academia and government agencies, including NASA and NSF.
Journal
The Astronomical Journal
Article Title
Long-term Monitoring of Scintillation in the Pulsar J0332+5434
Article Publication Date
10-Dec-2025
Lunar soil analyses reveal how space weathering shapes the Moon’s ultraviolet reflectance
SwRI scientists help interpret data for future lunar missions
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Southwest Research Institute collaborated with UT San Antonio to analyze lunar soil samples and determine the effects of space weathering on their far-ultraviolet reflectance. SwRI measured the reflectance of the Apollo 11 soil sample in SwRI’s Slater Crater ultra-high vacuum instrument suite. Weathering increases the abundance of nanophase iron inclusions on the grain rims shown in these TEM images, which is primarily responsible for its darker ultraviolet reflectance
view moreCredit: Southwest Research Institute
SAN ANTONIO — December 10, 2025 — Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) scientists are collaborating with researchers at UT San Antonio to study how space weathering can alter the lunar surface materials to help interpret regional and global far-ultraviolet (FUV) maps of the Moon.
The study looked at how such weathering influences the FUV spectral response. By analyzing just a few grains of returned samples from the Apollo missions, the team gained important insights into the evolution of the lunar surface shaped by solar wind and micrometeoroid impacts over eons, said SwRI’s Dr. Ujjwal Raut.
Using modern instruments and investigative techniques, the team gleaned new information from soil samples returned to Earth by NASA’s Apollo missions in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s (Apollo 11, 16 and 17).
“These Apollo-era samples continue to be a cornerstone of lunar science, providing the most direct link to the Moon’s surface processes and evolution, including space weathering,” Raut said.
The research was led by Caleb Gimar, who recently completed a doctoral degree in physics through the SwRI-UT San Antonio Joint Graduate Program, with support from NASA’s Lunar Data Analysis Program. Raut served as principal investigator of the project.
“We are investigating how space weathering drives physical and chemical changes in lunar grains that largely control their far-ultraviolet reflectance — explaining why soils with different degrees of weathering vary in brightness and the way they scatter light in this spectral region,” Gimar said.
This is important because it allows researchers to better interpret remote sensing data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Lyman-Alpha Mapping Project (LRO-LAMP), which has been orbiting the Moon since 2009.
“The SwRI-led LAMP instrument was designed to search for signs of water ice by peering into the permanently shadowed polar craters using far-ultraviolet light from stars instead of the Sun,” said Dr. Kurt D. Retherford, principal investigator of the LAMP instrument. “Accurately identifying that ice and estimating its abundance depends on understanding the far-ultraviolet reflectance of the dry lunar soil — while accounting for any mineralogical differences caused by space weathering — to robustly isolate hydration signatures from the soil itself.”
This work highlights a close collaboration between SwRI’s Center for Laboratory Astrophysics and Space Science Experiments (CLASSE) and UT San Antonio’s Kleberg Advanced Microscopy Center (KAMC), which led the key nanoscale imaging of the lunar grains.
“We used a state-of-the-art transmission electron microscope — one that can actually image individual atoms,” said Dr. Ana Stevanovic, KAMC director. “This microscope allows us to look deep inside individual grains of lunar dust and identify tiny minerals and space-weathering features while also measuring their chemical makeup.”
The images revealed that the outer rims of the heavily weathered grains are studded with countless tiny particles of iron, known as nanophase iron, the width roughly one ten-thousandth that of a human hair, Stevanovic said. Less weathered grains contained far fewer of these nanophase iron inclusions, appearing brighter in the far-UV.
The new study is published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.
For more information, visit https://www.swri.org/markets/earth-space/space-research-technology/space-science/planetary-science.
Southwest Research Institute collaborated with UT San Antonio to analyze lunar soil samples and determine the effects of space weathering on their far-ultraviolet reflectance. SwRI measured the reflectance of the Apollo 11 soil sample in SwRI’s Slater Crater ultra-high vacuum instrument suite. Weathering increases the abundance of nanophase iron inclusions on the grain rims shown in these TEM images, which is primarily responsible for its darker ultraviolet reflectance
Credit
Southwest Research Institute
Journal
Journal of Geophysical Research Planets
Method of Research
Imaging analysis
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
The Influence of Space Weathering on the Far-Ultraviolet Reflectance of Apollo-Era Soils
Article Publication Date
3-Dec-2025
Einstein’s theory comes wrapped up with a bow: astronomers spot star “wobbling” around black hole
Study confirms general relativity predictions as Einstein foretold more than 100 years ago
Cardiff University
image:
An artist's impression depicts the accretion disc surrounding a black hole, in which the inner region of the disc wobbles. In this context, the wobble refers to the orbit of material surrounding the black hole changing orientation around the central object. Credit NASA.
view moreCredit: NASAThe cosmos has served up a gift for a group of scientists who have been searching for one of the most elusive phenomena in the night sky.Their study, presented today in Science Advances, reports on the very first observations of a swirling vortex in spacetime caused by a rapidly rotating black hole.
The process, known as Lense-Thirring precession or frame-dragging, describes how black holes twist the spacetime that surrounds them, dragging nearby objects like stars and wobbling their orbits along the way.
The team, led by the National Astronomical Observatories at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and supported by Cardiff University, examined AT2020afhd, a tidal disruption event (TDE) where a star was torn apart by a supermassive black hole.
A swirling disk formed around the black hole made up of the star’s leftovers, from which powerful jets of matter shot out at nearly the speed of light.
Through rhythmic changes in both X-ray and radio signals coming from the event, the team observed the disk and the jet were wobbling in unison, repeating every 20 days.
First theorised by Einstein in 1913 and then mathematically defined by Lense and Thirring in 1918, the observation confirms a general relativity prediction, offering scientists new avenues for studying black hole spin, accretion physics, and jet formation.
Dr Cosimo Inserra, a Reader in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Cardiff University and one of the paper’s co-authors, said: “Our study shows the most compelling evidence yet of Lense-Thirring precession – a black hole dragging space time along with it in much the same way that a spinning top might drag the water around it in a whirlpool.
“This is a real gift for physicists as we confirm predictions made more than a century ago. Not only that, but these observations also tell us more about the nature of TDEs – when a star is shredded by the immense gravitational forces exerted by a black hole.
“Unlike previous TDEs studied, which have steady radio signals, the signal for AT2020afhd showed short-term changes, which we were unable to attribute to the energy release from the black hole and its surrounding components. This is further confirmed the dragging effect in our minds and offers scientists a new method for probing black holes.”
The team modelled X-ray data from the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory (Swift) and radio signal data from the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to identify the frame dragging effect.
Further analysis of the composition, structure and properties of the cosmic matter with electromagnetic spectroscopy enabled them to describe and identify the process.
“By showing that a black hole can drag space time and create this frame-dragging effect, we are also beginning to understand the mechanics of the process,” explains Dr Inserra.
“So, in the same way a charged object creates a magnetic field when it rotates, we’re seeing how a massive spinning object – in this case a black hole – generates a gravitomagnetic field that influences the motion of stars and other cosmic objects nearby.
“It’s a reminder to us, especially during the festive season as we gaze up at the night sky in wonder, that we have within our grasp the opportunity to identify ever more extraordinary objects in all the variations and flavours that nature has produced.”
The paper, ‘Detection of disk–jet coprecession in a tidal disruption event’, is published in Science Advances.
ENDS
Notes to editors
Image
Caption: An artist's impression depicts the accretion disc surrounding a black hole, in which the inner region of the disc wobbles. In this context, the wobble refers to the orbit of material surrounding the black hole changing orientation around the central object. Credit NASA.
Interviews
Interviews with Dr Cosimo Inserra are available on request.
For more information contact:
Jonathan Rees
Communications and Marketing
Cardiff University
Cardiff University is recognised in independent government assessments as one of Britain’s leading teaching and research universities and is a member of the Russell Group of the UK’s most research-intensive universities. The 2021 Research Excellence Framework found 90% of the University’s research to be world-leading or internationally excellent. Among its academic staff are two Nobel Laureates, including the winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize for Medicine, Professor Sir Martin Evans. Founded by Royal Charter in 1883, today the University combines impressive modern facilities and a dynamic approach to teaching and research. The University’s breadth of expertise encompasses: the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences; the College of Biomedical and Life Sciences; and the College of Physical Sciences and Engineering. Its University institutes bring together academics from a range of disciplines to tackle some of the challenges facing society, the economy, and the environment. More at www.cardiff.ac.u
Journal
Science Advances
Method of Research
Observational study
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
Detection of disk-jet co-precession in a tidal disruption event
Article Publication Date
10-Dec-2025
ICE-CSIC leads a pioneering study on the feasibility of asteroid mining
A team led by ICE-CSIC analyzed meteorites from historical falls and NASA's Antarctic meteorite collection
image:
Reflected light image of a thin section of carbonaceous chondrite CV3 from NASA's Antarctic collection, analyzed in the study. Several chondrules with bright olivine crystals embedded in a carbonaceous matrix can be seen
view moreCredit: Credits: J.M.Trigo-RodrÃguez/ICE-CSIC.
Much remains to be known about the chemical composition of small asteroids. Their potential to harbour valuable metals, materials from the early solar system, and the possibility of obtaining a geochemical record of their parent bodies makes them promising candidates for future use of space resources. A team led by the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) has analyzed samples of C-type asteroids, carbon-rich minor bodies of the Solar System, progenitors of the carbonaceous chondrites. Their findings, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, support the idea that these asteroids can serve as crucial material sources and identify their parent bodies, as well as for planning future missions and developing new technologies for resource exploitation.
In a natural way, carbonaceous chondrites fall from the sky, although with a proportion of 5% regarding the rest of meteorite falls. However, many of them are so fragile that they fragment and are never recovered. Therefore, they are usually rare and are mainly located in desert regions, such as the Sahara or Antarctica. “The scientific interest in each of these meteorites is that they sample small, undifferentiated asteroids, and provide valuable information on the chemical composition and evolutionary history of the bodies from which they originate,” says Josep M. Trigo-RodrÃguez, first author of the study and astrophysicist at ICE-CSIC, affiliated to the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC).
The physical and chemical composition of asteroids
The scientific team from ICE-CSIC selected, characterized, and provided the asteroid samples, which were analyzed using mass spectrometry at the University of Castilla-La Mancha by Professor Jacinto Alonso-Azcárate. This allowed them to determine the precise chemical abundances of the six most common classes of carbonaceous chondrites, fostering the discussion among the scientific community of whether their future extraction would be feasible.
The Asteroids, Comets, and Meteorites research group at ICE-CSIC investigates the physicochemical properties of the materials that make up the surfaces of asteroids and comets and has made numerous contributions in this field over the last decade. “At ICE-CSIC and IEEC, we specialize in developing experiments to better understand the properties of these asteroids and how the physical processes that occur in space affect their nature and mineralogy,” says Trigo-RodrÃguez, who leads this group.
Furthermore, for over a decade he has been involved in selecting and requesting from NASA the several carbonaceous chondrites analyzed in this study, as well as devising several experiments with them, since the ICE-CSIC is the international repository for NASA's Antarctic meteorite collection. "The work now being published is the culmination of that team effort," he adds.
“Studying and selecting these types of meteorites in our clean room using other analytical techniques is fascinating, particularly because of the diversity of minerals and chemical elements they contain. However, most asteroids have relatively small abundances of precious elements, and therefore the objective of our study has been to understand to what extent their extraction would be viable,” says Pau Grèbol Tomás, ICE-CSIC predoctoral researcher.
“Although most small asteroids have surfaces covered in fragmented material called regolith -and it would facilitate the return of small amounts of samples-, developing large-scale collection systems to achieve clear benefits is a very different matter. In any case, it deserves to be explored because the search for resources in space could be susceptible to minimizing the impact of mining activities on terrestrial ecosystems,” points out Jordi Ibáñez-Insa, Geosciences Barcelona (GEO3BCN-CSIC) researcher and co-author of the study.
The future of exploration and resource extraction on small asteroids
Given the diversity present in the main asteroid belt, it is crucial to define what types of resources could be found there. According to Trigo-RodrÃguez: “They are small and quite heterogeneous objects, heavily influenced by their evolutionary history, particularly collisions and close approaches to the Sun. If we are looking for water, there are certain asteroids from which hydrated carbonaceous chondrites originate, which, conversely, will have fewer metals in their native state. Let's not forget that, after 4.56 billion years since their formation, each asteroid has a different composition, as revealed by the study of chondritic meteorites.”
One of the study's conclusions is that mining undifferentiated asteroids—the primordial remnants of the solar system's formation considered the progenitor bodies of chondritic meteorites—is still far from viable. On the other hand, the study points to a type of pristine asteroid with olivine and spinel bands as a potential target for mining. A comprehensive chemical analysis of carbonaceous chondrites is essential to identify promising targets for space mining. However, the team states that this effort must be accompanied by new sample-return missions to verify the identity of the progenitor bodies.
“Alongside the progress represented by sample return missions, companies capable of taking decisive steps in the technological development necessary to extract and collect these materials under low-gravity conditions are truly needed. The processing of these materials and the waste generated would also have a significant impact that should be quantified and properly mitigated,” adds Trigo-RodrÃguez.
The team is confident of very short-term progress, given that the use of in-situ resources will be a key factor for future long-term missions to the Moon and Mars, reducing dependence on resupply from Earth. In this regard, the authors point out that if water extraction were the goal, water-altered asteroids with a high concentration of water-bearing minerals should be selected.
Exploiting these resources under low-gravity conditions requires the development of new extraction and processing techniques. “It sounds like science fiction, but it also seemed like science fiction when the first sample return missions were being planned thirty years ago,” says Pau Grèbol Tomà s.
In an international context, several proposals have been put forward, such as capturing small asteroids that pass close to Earth and placing them in a circumlunar orbit for exploitation. “For certain water-rich carbonaceous asteroids, extracting water for reuse seems more viable, either as fuel or as a primary resource for exploring other worlds. This could also provide science with greater knowledge about certain bodies that could one day threaten our very existence. In the long term, we could even mine and shrink potentially hazardous asteroids so that they cease to be dangerous,” Trigo-RodrÃguez explains.
ICE-CSIC Communication & Outreach Office
Journal
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
Assessing the metal and rare earth element mining potential of undifferentiated asteroids through the study of carbonaceous chondrites
Article Publication Date
10-Dec-2025
The leaking star cluster
First evidence of particle outflow from a young massive star cluster
image:
Fig. 1: An image of the star cluster Westerlund 1, captured with the Near-InfraRed Camera on NASA’s James Webb’s Space Telescope. The cluster is largely hidden at visible wavelengths by dust clouds, which infrared light penetrates.
view moreCredit: Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb), M. G. Guarcello (INAF-OAPA) and the EWOCS team
Star clusters – galactic nurseries
Star clusters are of great importance in any galaxy: they are the birthplace of new stars, often containing massive stars of 10 solar masses or more. Such massive stars often drive powerful winds; the combined action of all stars in the cluster then leads to the formation of a “superbubble” – a cavity in the interstellar medium.
Among the many star clusters in the Milky Way, Westerlund 1 stands out. It’s the closest, most massive, and most luminous star cluster in the Milky Way, located about 13,000 light years away from us.
Westerlund 1 as a cosmic-ray accelerator
Besides being stellar nurseries, young massive star clusters are also known to produce highly energetic particles known as cosmic rays. Because these particles are electrically charged, they are deflected by omnipresent magnetic fields and cannot be traced back to their origin. To study cosmic-ray productions, astronomers therefore look for high-energy gamma-ray photons that are created by the cosmic rays close to their source and that, being electrically neutral, travel in straight lines.
Previously, using the H.E.S.S. telescope system, scientists have established the presence of extremely energetic Tera-electronvolt (TeV; 1012 eV) gamma radiation from the vicinity of Westerlund 1, marking the cluster as a powerful particle accelerator. The TeV emission appears as a ring-like structure around Westerlund 1, which has been interpreted as cosmic rays being accelerated at a shock front (the “termination shock”) formed by the collective wind from the massive stars inside the cluster. This ring-like structure, however, exhibits a “tail” protruding in one direction that was hitherto unexplained.
Astronomers at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik (MPIK) in Heidelberg and their colleagues have now conducted a detailed study of data collected with the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope, aimed to detect gamma rays at Giga-electronvolt (GeV; 109 eV) energies. Their findings, published recently in the journal Nature Communications, offer unique insights into this feature, and connect it with an outflow of particles from the vicinity of Westerlund 1.
A new gamma ray source
The study reveals the existence of a new GeV gamma-ray source. Surprisingly, the new source is offset from the TeV gamma radiation found around the cluster – precisely into the direction of the tail-like structure but about 320 light years away. “However, because the GeV and TeV emission are connected smoothly in terms of their spatial appearance and their energy spectra, we believe that they share a common origin”, explains Prof. Marianne Lemoine-Goumard from the university of Bordeaux, first author of the study.
To learn more about the origin of the new source, the researchers went on to investigate the density of the interstellar medium in its vicinity. Using observations of the 21-cm emission line of hydrogen, they were able to identify a deficit in gas density that coincides with the position of the gamma-ray source. “This gave us the idea that we are dealing with an outflow – material driven by the star cluster away from the Galactic plane, creating a cavity in the interstellar medium in that direction” adds Dr. Lars Mohrmann, director of the H.E.S.S. collaboration and co-lead of the new study.
A nascent outflow from Westerlund 1
A modelling of the observed gamma-ray emission indicates that it is very likely originating from cosmic-ray electrons accelerated near Westerlund 1, via a process called inverse-Compton scattering. The consistent picture emerging from the observations is illustrated in Fig. 3: the superbubble surrounding Westerlund 1, due to the gradient in density of the surrounding medium, expands asymmetrically and begins to form a “nascent outflow”. The electrons are thought to be accelerated at the wind termination shock front. “Because high-energy electrons lose their energy quickly, the resulting high-energy gamma-ray emission measured with H.E.S.S. appears close to the star cluster, explains Lucia Härer, a doctoral student at the MPIK who developed the underlying theoretical model. “Lower-energy electrons, on the other hand, can travel much further and are transported along the outflow before they emit the gamma radiation detected with the Fermi telescope”.
While the measured gamma-ray emission is most likely due to cosmic-ray electrons, the researchers argue that these electrons are accompanied by other cosmic-ray particles, in particular protons and heavier atomic nuclei.
The scientists expect that the nascent outflow will eventually break out of the Galactic disk, thus opening a channel for the transport of cosmic rays into the surrounding Galactic halo. The new work presents the first observational indication for such a scenario and suggests that particle outflows might be a common occurrence around young massive star clusters. Because the transport of cosmic rays from the disk into the halo is a process that – although believed to be critical for galaxy evolution – is lacking direct observational confirmation, these results bear relevance in many branches of astronomy.
Future studies of gamma-ray emission from other young massive star clusters, for example with the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory, will be needed to answer the question if the observed outflow from Westerlund 1 is a special case or a blueprint for a common scenario.
Fig. 2: Sky map showing the new GeV gamma-ray source J1654–467, believed to arise from an outflow from the Westerlund 1 star cluster (location marked by the star symbol).
Credit
Mohrmann/MPIK
Fig. 3: Sketch depicting the interpretation of the measurements. Cosmic-ray electrons are accelerated at the cluster wind termination shock (pink). High-energy electrons lose their energy quickly and emit the TeV gamma-ray emission measured with H.E.S.S.. Lower-energy electrons are transported along the nascent outflow and generate the GeV gamma-ray emission detected with Fermi-LAT.
Credit
Mohrmann/MPIK
Mohrmann/MPIK
Journal
Nature Communications
Method of Research
Observational study
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
A cosmic-ray loaded nascent outflow driven by a massive star cluster
Article Publication Date
9-Dec-2025
Flaring black hole whips up ultra-fast winds
European Space Agency
image:
An international team of researchers used the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton and XRISM, a JAXA-led mission with ESA participation, to uncover and study a never-seen-before blast from a supermassive black hole. The gravitational monster whipped up powerful winds, flinging material out into space at eye-watering speeds of 60 000 km per second.
view moreCredit: European Space Agency (ESA)
Leading X-ray space telescopes XMM-Newton and XRISM have spotted a never-seen-before blast from a supermassive black hole. In a matter of hours, the gravitational monster whipped up powerful winds, flinging material out into space at eye-watering speeds of
60 000 km per second.
The gigantic black hole lurks within NGC 3783, a beautiful spiral galaxy imaged recently by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Astronomers spotted a bright X-ray flare erupt from the black hole before swiftly fading away. As it faded, fast winds emerged, raging at one-fifth of the speed of light.
“We’ve not watched a black hole create winds this speedily before,” says lead researcher Liyi Gu at Space Research Organisation Netherlands (SRON). “For the first time, we’ve seen how a rapid burst of X-ray light from a black hole immediately triggers ultra-fast winds, with these winds forming in just a single day.”
Devouring material
To study NGC 3783 and its black hole, Gu and colleagues simultaneously used the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton and the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM), a JAXA-led mission with ESA and NASA participation.
The black hole in question is as massive as 30 million Suns. As it feasts on nearby material, it powers an extremely bright and active region at the heart of the spiral galaxy. This region, known as an Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN), blazes in all kinds of light, and throws powerful jets and winds out into the cosmos.
“AGNs are really fascinating and intense regions, and key targets for both XMM-Newton and XRISM,” adds Matteo Guainazzi, ESA XRISM Project Scientist and co-author of the discovery.
“The winds around this black hole seem to have been created as the AGN’s tangled magnetic field suddenly ‘untwisted’ – similar to the flares that erupt from the Sun, but on a scale almost too big to imagine.”
A little less alien
The winds from the black hole resemble large solar eruptions of material known as coronal mass ejections, which form as the Sun hurls streams of superheated material into space. In this way, the study shows that supermassive black holes sometimes act like our own star, making these mysterious objects seem a little less alien.
In fact, a coronal mass ejection following an intense flare was spotted at the Sun as recently as 11 November, with the winds associated with this event thrown out at initial speeds of 1500 km per second.
“Windy AGNs also play a big role in how their host galaxies evolve over time, and how they form new stars,” adds Camille Diez, a team member and ESA Research Fellow.
“Because they’re so influential, knowing more about the magnetism of AGNs, and how they whip up winds such as these, is key to understanding the history of galaxies throughout the Universe.”
A joint discovery
XMM-Newton has been a pioneering explorer of the hot and extreme Universe for over 25 years, while XRISM has been working to answer key open questions about how matter and energy move through the cosmos since it launched in September 2023.
The two X-ray space telescopes worked together to uncover this unique event and understand the black hole’s flare and winds. XMM-Newton tracked the evolution of the initial flare with its Optical Monitor, and assessed the extent of the winds using its European Photon Imaging Camera (EPIC). XRISM spotted the flare and winds using its Resolve instrument, also studying the winds’ speed, structure, and figuring out how they were launched into space.
“Their discovery stems from successful collaboration, something that’s a core part of all ESA missions,” says ESA XMM-Newton Project Scientist Erik Kuulkers.
“By zeroing in on an active supermassive black hole, the two telescopes have found something we’ve not seen before: rapid, ultra-fast, flare-triggered winds reminiscent of those that form at the Sun. Excitingly, this suggests that solar and high-energy physics may work in surprisingly familiar ways throughout the Universe.”
Journal
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Method of Research
Observational study
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
Delving into the depths of NGC 3783 with XRISM III. Birth of an ultrafast outflow during a soft flare
Article Publication Date
9-Dec-2025
SwRI-led study provides insight into oscillations in solar flares
New SwRI-led paper links solar flare QPPs to oscillatory magnetic reconnection
image:
New SwRI-led research connects circular flare ribbons, as observed with by Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope during the M4.7-class solar flare on May 3, 2023, with energy released by repeated bursts of magnetic reconnection and quasi-periodic pulsations. The red and blue colors represent plasma flowing downward and upward, respectively. Downward flows pulsed in time across the entire ribbon suggest that magnetic field lines breaking and reforming release tremendous amounts of energy that drive the entire flare.
view moreCredit: Southwest Research Institute
SAN ANTONIO — December 9, 2025 — A new study led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) links quasi-periodic pulsations (QPPs) in solar flares to dynamic oscillations in magnetic reconnection, a phenomenon that can drive space weather and affect technology on Earth. This research could help refine traditional solar flare models and provide new insights into the mechanisms driving them.
Magnetic reconnection occurs when magnetic field lines in plasma break and reconnect, releasing immense energy into the surrounding atmosphere that can result in space weather. Solar flares are intense, transient bursts of energy on the Sun’s surface and are the most common and spectacular examples of solar weather. QPPs, oscillating signals emitted across the electromagnetic spectrum, are often associated with solar flares. However, their origins and the functions driving them have eluded explanation.
“Solar flares are the largest eruptive phenomena in our solar system, but the mechanisms behind quasi-periodic pulsations have remained a mystery,” said Dr. William Ashfield IV, postdoctoral researcher in SwRI’s Solar System Science and Exploration Division. He is lead author of a Nature Astronomy paper describing new findings about these phenomena. “While QPPs appear in around 50% of large solar flares, they are still poorly understood. We wanted to get a better sense of why they occur and figure out how they fit into the energy release process.”
To better understand the nature of QPPs, the researchers used high-resolution observations from the Swedish Solar Telescope in the Canary Islands and precise spectroscopic data from NASA’s IRIS telescope in Sun-synchronous orbit. The researchers observed a moderate-strength solar flare and conducted a pixel-by-pixel spectroscopic analysis to capture QPP evidence successfully.
“The complementary observations from ground-based and space-based telescopes allowed us to rule out competing theories and narrow down potential driving mechanisms behind QPPs,” Ashfield said. “Our findings suggest that repeated magnetic reconnection may be what leads directly to the QPPs observed in this solar flare.”
According to Ashfield, the study highlights the need to incorporate oscillatory behavior into magnetic reconnection theories, providing constraints to guide future research.
“Understanding QPPs isn’t just about understanding the solar flares themselves,” Ashfield said. “Our research lays a foundation for future studies to use larger datasets and advanced simulations to deepen our understanding of space weather events and other astrophysical phenomena associated with magnetic reconnection.”
The paper, “Spectroscopic observations of solar flare pulsations driven by oscillatory magnetic reconnection,” was published in the November 2025 issue of Nature Astronomy. Read it at DOI: 10.1038/s41550-025-02706-4.
For more information, visit https://www.swri.org/markets/earth-space/space-research-technology/space-science/heliophysics.
Journal
Nature Astronomy
Method of Research
Imaging analysis
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
Spectroscopic observations of solar flare pulsations driven by oscillatory magnetic reconnectio
Astronomers find first direct evidence of “Monster Stars” from the cosmic dawn
Using the James Webb Space Telescope, a team of international researchers have discovered chemical fingerprints of gigantic primordial stars that were among the first to form after the Big Bang
For two decades, astronomers have puzzled over how supermassive black holes – some of the brightest objects in the universe – could exist less than a billion years after the Big Bang. Normal stars simply couldn't create such massive black holes quickly enough.
Now, using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team has found the first compelling evidence that solves this cosmic mystery: “monster stars” weighing between 1,000 and 10,000 times the mass of our Sun existed in the early universe.
The breakthrough came from examining chemical signatures in a galaxy called GS 3073. A study led by the University of Portsmouth in England and the Center for Astrophysics (CfA), Harvard and Smithsonian in the US discovered an extreme imbalance of nitrogen to oxygen that cannot be explained by any known type of star.
In 2022, researchers published work in Nature predicting that supermassive stars naturally formed in rare, turbulent streams of cold gas in the early universe, explaining how quasars (extraordinarily bright black holes) could exist less than a billion years after the Big Bang.
“Our latest discovery helps solve a 20-year cosmic mystery,” said Dr Daniel Whalen from the University of Portsmouth's Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation. “With GS 3073, we have the first observational evidence that these monster stars existed.
“These cosmic giants would have burned brilliantly for a brief time before collapsing into massive black holes, leaving behind the chemical signatures we can detect billions of years later. A bit like dinosaurs on Earth - they were enormous and primitive. And they had short lives, living for just a quarter of a million years - a cosmic blink of an eye.”
The key to the discovery was measuring the ratio of nitrogen to oxygen in GS 3073. The galaxy contains a nitrogen-to-oxygen ratio of 0.46 - far higher than can be explained by any known type of star or stellar explosion.
Devesh Nandal from the CfA’s Institute for Theory and Computation explained: “Chemical abundances act like a cosmic fingerprint, and the pattern in GS3073 is unlike anything ordinary stars can produce. Its extreme nitrogen matches only one kind of source we know of - primordial stars thousands of times more massive than our sun. This tells us the first generation of stars included truly supermassive objects that helped shape the early galaxies and may have seeded today’s supermassive black holes.”
The researchers modelled how stars between 1,000 and 10,000 solar masses would evolve and what elements they would produce. They found a specific mechanism that creates massive amounts of nitrogen:
These enormous stars burn helium in their cores, producing carbon.
The carbon leaks into a surrounding shell where hydrogen is burning.
The carbon combines with hydrogen to create nitrogen through the carbon/nitrogen/oxygen (CNO) cycle.
Convection currents distribute the nitrogen throughout the star.
Eventually, this nitrogen-rich material is shed into space, enriching the surrounding gas.
The process continues for millions of years during the star's helium-burning phase, creating the nitrogen excess observed in GS 3073.
The models, published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, also predict what happens when these monster stars die. They don't explode, instead, they collapse directly into massive black holes weighing thousands of solar masses.
Interestingly, GS 3073 contains an actively feeding black hole at its centre - potentially the very remnant of one of these supermassive first stars. If confirmed, this would solve two mysteries at once - where the nitrogen came from and how the black hole formed.
The study also found that this nitrogen signature only appears in a specific mass range. Stars smaller than 1,000 solar masses or larger than 10,000 solar masses don't produce the right chemical pattern for the signature, suggesting a "sweet spot" for this type of enrichment.
These findings open a new window into the universe's first few hundred million years - a period astronomers call the "cosmic Dark Ages" when the first stars ignited and began transforming the simple chemistry of the early universe into the rich variety of elements we see today.
The researchers predict that JWST will find more galaxies with similar nitrogen excesses as it continues surveying the early universe. Each new discovery would strengthen the case for these ultra-massive first stars.
Journal
The Astrophysical Journal Letters
Method of Research
Data/statistical analysis
Article Title
1000–10,000 M⊙ Primordial Stars Created the Nitrogen Excess in GS 3073 at z = 5.55
New report outlines science priorities for human Mars exploration
The report, commissioned by NASA and steered by scientists at Penn State, is intended to guide government and industry decision-makers and the scientific community
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — As humanity prepares to take its first steps on Mars, a comprehensive report released today (Dec. 9) from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and steered by scientists at Penn State lays out a detailed science strategy to guide the initial human missions to the red planet.
The report, commissioned by NASA, identifies the highest priority scientific objectives for the missions as well as proposes four distinct mission campaigns designed to maximize the scientific return of the first three human landings on Mars. The report is intended to guide government and industry decision-makers, the scientific community and the general public.
Researchers at Penn State served on the report’s steering committee as well as contributed across multiple panels, influencing the report’s scientific priorities in atmospheric science, astrobiology, biological and physical sciences and human health.
“Penn State expertise helped shape the nation’s highest priority science objectives and recommendations for human exploration of Mars,” said Andrew Read, Penn State’s senior vice president for research. “This is a thrilling moment for us as scientists. We are setting the guideposts that will transform our knowledge of Mars and, on a deeper level, our place in the cosmos. It underscores Penn State’s research excellence and the caliber of our faculty, whose vision and expertise are influencing the future of space exploration.”
The 240-page report provides a science-driven roadmap for human Mars exploration, balancing scientific goals with existing NASA mission plans and technological capacity. It is essentially a scientific playbook for the first crewed missions to Mars, describing the “what” and “why” that will guide human exploration of the red planet, explained James Pawelczyk, associate professor of physiology and kinesiology at Penn State and member of the report’s steering committee. Pawelczyk’s research focuses on neural control of circulation and human physiology in spaceflight.
“This report is considering exploration in a very different way than we have conducted human spaceflight before,” said Pawelczyk, who flew aboard the NASA STS-90 Space Shuttle mission as a payload specialist and has logged over 381 hours in space. “We are considering the science of Mars itself, its geology, but there will also be the science of being on Mars. Mars is this novel environment that people will live in — and maybe the most profound part of it is you'll look up and somewhere among the star field will be a tiny, little bluish dot and that will be Earth. This will be the farthest and the most isolated that humans have ever been.”
The comprehensive report is an evolution of NASA’s Moon to Mars Objectives — a framework that uses lunar mission to develop and test what’s needed for human exploration beyond Earth — building on the science objectives in the current framework as well as identifying goals that may be missing. A separate report will determine the high priority science objectives for the in-space phases of the crewed missions to Mars.
"Getting humans to Mars and back is a doable goal for the next 20 years,” said James Kasting, an emeritus Atherton Professor of Geosciences at Penn State, who served on the report’s steering committee and whose expertise includes atmospheric evolution and planetary atmospheres. “We have to agree about how careful we should be about planetary protection, though, both forward and backwards. I'm for making reasonable assumptions about how best to do so, assumptions that allow us to push forward."
The report details the most crucial objectives across all relevant branches of science and prioritizes the objectives into campaigns to be undertaken on the surface of Mars during the first three landings. To meet its objectives, each campaign has a roadmap that outlines equipment and other capacity requirements; landing site criteria such as areas with accessible ice or reachable caves; and key samples and measurements that must be made before human arrival on Mars, while crews are on Mars or when back on Earth. The report also considers critical parameters, such as the size of the crew or duration of time spent on the surface of Mars, and how that might impact how the campaigns are prioritized.
The top-priority objectives identified in the report are:
- Determine if, in the exploration zone, evidence can be found for any of the following: habitability, indigenous extant or extinct life, and/or indigenous prebiotic chemistry
- Characterize past and present water and CO2 cycles and reservoirs within the exploration zone to understand their evolution
- Characterize and map the geologic record and potential niche habitats within the exploration zone to reveal Mars’s evolution and to provide geologic context to other investigations, including the study of bolide impacts, volcanic and intrusive igneous activity, the sedimentary record, landforms and volatiles, including liquids and ices
- Determine the longitudinal impact of the integrated Martian environment on crew physiological, cognitive and emotional health, including team dynamics and confirm effectiveness of countermeasures
- Determine what controls the onset and evolution of major dust storms, which dominate present-day atmospheric variability
- Characterize the Martian environment for in situ resource utilization (ISRU) and determine the applications associated with the ISRU processing, ultimately for the full range of materials supporting permanent habitation but with an early focus on water and propellants
- Determine whether the integrated Martian environment affects reproduction or the functional genome across multiple generations in at least one model plant species and one model animal species
- Determine throughout the mission whether microbial population dynamics and species distribution in biological systems and habitable volumes are stable and are not detrimental to astronaut health and performance
- Characterize the effects of Martian dust on human physiology and hardware lifetime
- Determine the longitudinal impact of the integrated Martian environment on plant and animal physiology and development across multiple generations where possible as part of an integrated ecosystem of plants, microbes and animals
- Characterize the primary and secondary radiation at key locations in the crew habitat and astrobiological sampling sites to contextualize sample collection and improve models of future mission risk
“This has been a dream and an honor to conduct this report for the nation,” said Pawelczyk, who explained that the team reached out to hundreds of subject matter experts to collect information for the report. “If we’re successful, humans will have set foot on another planetary body, on another planet, for the first time. And the message we’re sending with this report is that science comes with us.”
Other researchers affiliated with Penn State contributed to the report. Laura Rodriguez, staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute who earned her doctorate at Penn State, served as member of the Panel on Astrobiology. Bruce Link, chief science officer for Amentum, earned his doctorate at Penn State and served as a member of the Biological and Physical Sciences and Human Factors panel. Katherine Freeman, Evan Pugh University Professor of Geosciences at Penn State, served as a reviewer, providing an independent review of the report draft, evaluating quality and scientific rigor.
Method of Research
Meta-analysis
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
A Science Strategy for the Human Exploration of Mars
Article Publication Date
9-Dec-2025
K-DRIFT pathfinder: A compact telescope for observing faint galactic structures
Researchers have developed an off-axis freeform three-mirror telescope designed to reveal extremely faint, low-surface-brightness structures surrounding galaxies
image:
Image of the Galaxy NGC 5907 captured by the K-DRIFT Pathfinder. The yellow region marks an area 1.5 times brighter than the background noise level, while the red arrow points to a faint low-surface-brightness structure—remnant of a past gravitational interaction between galaxies.
view moreCredit: Lee, et al.
According to modern cosmology, most galaxies are surrounded by faint, extended halos of light called LSB structures. These subtle features are remnants of past galactic events—such as collisions, mergers, and tidal interactions—and hold important clues to galactic evolution.
However, LSB features are extremely faint, often dimmer than the night sky itself, making them difficult to capture. Traditional telescopes face challenges such as stray light, sky brightness gradients, and light scattering, which blur faint details. Deep LSB imaging therefore requires an optical design that provides a wide, unobscured field of view, fast light collection, and minimal stray light, combined with specialized observing and calibration techniques.
To overcome these challenges, a new study published in the Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems introduced a linear-astigmatism-free three-mirror system (LAF-TMS), known as the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) Deep Rolling Imaging Fast Telescope (K-DRIFT). “Unlike traditional on-axis optical designs, off-axis unobscured designs reduce light loss, stray light, and the effect of the extended wings of the point spread function. The K-DRIFT design also eliminates linear astigmatism, a major issue in typical off-axis systems, and minimizes higher-order aberrations with its three freeform mirrors,” said author Gayoung Lee of KASI.
The optical design of K-DRIFT pathfinder features a 300-millimeter aperture confocal off-axis system with three freeform mirrors. Specifically, a freeform elliptical convex secondary mirror, termed M2, shares its focal point with both a freeform elliptical concave primary mirror M1 and a freeform elliptical concave tertiary mirror, M3. This setup effectively reduces stray light and scattering, producing sharper images. The tilt angles of the three mirrors eliminate linear astigmatism, and the use of three freeform mirrors minimizes higher order aberrations. The telescope uses a CMOS camera for detection.
The mirrors were made from Zerodur, a glass-ceramic material resistant to thermal deformation, and mounted on an aluminum housing with invar flexures that reduce mechanical stress. This setup minimizes mirror surface distortion and light scattering. The mirrors were aligned and integrated step-by-step using a coordinate-measuring machine. To further reduce stray light, a secondary baffle was placed in front of the detector.
For performance evaluation, the K-DRIFT pathfinder was installed at the Bohyunsan Optical Astronomy Observatory (BOAO) for on-sky testing from June 2021 to April 2022. The telescope maintained consistent imaging performance across seasonal temperature changes but initially did not meet the required resolution target—measured as the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the point spread function (PSF).
Through a series of optical simulations, the researchers identified three main error sources: mirror fabrication errors, opto-mechanical mirror mounting errors, and optical misalignment errors. Based on this analysis, the researchers addressed the errors by replacing mirror M2 and refining the alignment process during the final assembly of the housing. As a result, K-DRIFT’s performance significantly improved, with PSF FWHM decreasing from 3.8 pixels to 1.8 pixels.
“The K-DRIFT pathfinder proves that compact, freeform mirror designs can achieve the precision needed to study the faintest structures in the universe like LSB structures. In future, this project will help trace the hidden history of how galaxies formed and evolved,” Lee said.
Overall, the K-DRIFT pathfinder marks a significant step forward in deep LSB imaging, paving the way for uncovering the faintest structures in the universe.
For details, see the Gold Open Access article by Lee et al., “Assessment of the on-sky performance of an off-axis freeform three-mirror telescope,” J. Astron. Telesc. Instrum. Syst. 11(4) 048002 2025, doi: 10.1117/1.JATIS.11.4.048002
Journal
Journal of Astronomical Telescopes Instruments and Systems
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
Assessment of the on-sky performance of an off-axis freeform three-mirror telescope
IMPERIALISM IN SPACE
NRL’s satellite operations service is ready for the Space Force enterprise
image:
U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Computer Engineer and TREx Product Owner Brian Cassidy (left), and Lt. Col. Brian Kester (right) from Space Systems Command (SSC) complete the transfer of the Transmit/Receive Enterprise (TREx) service from NRL to SSC in El Segundo, California, August 7, 2025. TREx was developed at NRL and will now support the broader U.S. Space Force enterprise. (U.S. Navy photo)
view moreCredit: U.S. Navy Photo
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Spacecraft Engineering Department recently developed the Transmit/Receive Enterprise (TREx) service with sponsorship from the Space Development Agency, Space Rapid Capabilities Office, and Space Systems Command to provide software development and mission operations for sponsoring organizations across the space community.
The TREx service provides secure access to various government and commercial antenna networks, which dramatically increases the amount of time satellites can be in contact with ground stations. This enables the satellite missions to operate more effectively by downlinking more data from space, and to recover faster if the satellite experiences an anomaly.
“Every satellite operations team we work with wishes they had more contact time with their space vehicles. We knew there were underutilized government and commercial antennas available, but we needed to build a service to broker access in a secure way for DoW missions.” said Keith Akins, NRL aerospace engineer and government technical lead on TREx “We have already seen a huge impact to satellite missions operating at NRL, and now missions across the USSF can onboard to the service.”
In 2022, TREx was the first cloud-native information system to receive an Authority to Operate (ATO) from the U.S. Space Force. Since then, TREx has been serving dozens of satellites on orbit with 24/7 “lights out” automated operations and has brokered over 90,000 antenna reservations and 700,000 minutes of satellite contacts from antennas all over the globe. The TREx design enables satellite missions to quickly and easily access new ground stations as they are added to the service.
The U.S. Space Force Space Systems Command’s (SSC) new Space Domain Awareness and Battle Management System Delta 85 (SYD 85) drives enterprise integration and modernization of tactical level Command, Control, and Communications (C3) capabilities to transform satellite operations and create a resilient C3 enterprise for the warfighter. SYD 85 and NRL have partnered for over a year coordinating a smooth transition of TREx from being managed at NRL to the acquisition office of the Space Force.
“This is exactly the type of lab-to-operations success we strive for,” said Col. Patrick Little, SYD 85 Space Access & Networked Services System Program Director. “The TREx system brings enhanced flexibility and efficiency to our antenna services, directly supporting our mission to deliver integrated, resilient capabilities to the field.”
The NRL TREx project included participation from a variety of industry partners, including Space/Ground System Solutions (SGSS), Artic Slope Regional Corporation (ASRC) Federal, Sphinx Defense, Systems Security Engineering Group (SS3G), RBC Signals, Amazon Web Services, ViaSat, and Swedish Space Corp.
“We are fortunate at NRL to be able to use our own satellites and antennas at the Blossom Point Tracking Facility to test and mature TREx,” said Brian Cassidy, NRL computer engineer and TREx product owner. “We started with a napkin sketch and recruited a one-of-a-kind team to deliver a production service supporting daily satellite operations. It’s a win for the DOW space community to transition TREx from a research lab directly into operations.”
As of August 2025, NRL has transitioned TREx to SYD 85, where TREx will onboard additional satellite missions and serve the broader U.S. Space Force enterprise as part of the Joint Antenna Marketplace (JAM). JAM is a secure, cloud-based marketplace that connects satellite operations centers with commercial and government antennas worldwide.
The NRL Spacecraft Engineering Division designs, builds, and operates pioneering and innovative spacecraft and space systems. The division functions as a prototype laboratory for new and operationally relevant space-based capabilities. From cradle to grave, the division provides expertise in mission design, systems design and engineering, and hardware expertise for every aspect of a space system.
The division has a history of transitioning advanced technologies into operations and industry, applying expertise in systems integration, design and verification, dynamics and control systems, electronics and software, and mission operations to develop advanced space technologies.
About the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
NRL is a scientific and engineering command dedicated to research that drives innovative advances for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps from the seafloor to space and in the information domain. NRL is located in Washington, D.C. with major field sites in Stennis Space Center, Mississippi; Key West, Florida; Monterey, California, and employs approximately 3,000 civilian scientists, engineers and support personnel.
For more information, contact NRL Corporate Communications at (202) 480-3746 or nrlpao@us.navy.mil. Please reference package number at top of press release.
The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory recently developed the Transmit/Receive Enterprise (TREx) service with sponsorship from the Space Development Agency, Space Rapid Capabilities Office, and Space Systems Command. The TREx service provides secure access to various government and commercial antenna networks, which dramatically increases the amount of time satellites can be in contact with ground stations. This enables the satellite missions to operate more effectively by downlinking more data from space, and to recover faster if the satellite experiences an anomaly. (Provided by U.S. Naval Research Laboratory)
Credit
Provided by U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
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