The Zone of Avoidance is a region of the sky that's obscured by the disk of the Milky Way. The gas and dust block our view in visible telescopes, but other wavelengths like radio and infrared can pierce it to see what's on the other side. Astronomers used the MeerKAT radio telescope to survey beyond the Zone, observing hundreds of galaxies, of which only 29% were already known. This is helping to map the Great Attractor galaxy cluster on the far side of the Milky Way.

There are good reasons to keep an eye on the Leonid meteors this year.

JWST's primary mirror consists of 18 individual segments, each of which can be moved on 6 different axes of freedom. This allows the telescope to maintain perfect focus, despite changing temperatures and micrometeorite strikes on its optics. The objective was 150 nanometers of wavefront error, but the current error is down to just 65 nanometers. In early October, engineers measured the telescope's jitter and refocused it again, bringing it to its perfect alignment