Wildfires in British Columbia and Canada, driven by Climate Change, established new records this year.

Saturn's moon Enceladus is one of the most promising places to look for life in the Solar System. It has an ocean of liquid water venting into space, and evidence from Cassini suggested that it's filled with organic molecules and nutrients for bacteria. A new mission that could continue the search, the Astrobiology eXploration at Enceladus (AXE), has been proposed. This would be a New Frontiers-class mission with a modest budget and a suite of instruments specifically chosen to maximize the science at Enceladus.

The ESA's Ariane 5 rocket just conducted its last launch to space.

A new machine learning technique could make it much easier to estimate the age of stellar populations.

It's been a year since JWST began its operations, so the people behind the telescope released a stunning new image to celebrate. The Rho Ophiuchi complex is already a famous target for astrophotographers because of its many-colored splendor. Under JWST's infrared gaze reveals the closest star-forming region to Earth in all its glory. Jets are blasting out of newly forming stars, impacting the surrounding interstellar gas and lighting up molecular hydrogen. Some of the stars even have the shadows of circumstellar disks.

ESA's Cheops mission has been studying an ultra-hot exoplanet around a nearby star and discovered its metallic clouds reflect about 80% of the light shining on it from its host star. The planet is about the size of Neptune, and its high-temperature clouds are filled with silicate mixed with metals like titanium. The planet takes only 19 hours to orbit its star, and astronomers are puzzled why it hasn't had its atmosphere blown away, leaving only bare rock behind. The metal clouds might actually be the solution, reflecting the heat away and preventing the atmospheric stripping.

China's Zhurong rover landed in the Utopia Planitia region of Mars, a vast plain in the northern hemisphere. Dunes surround the landing site, piled up by winds over eons. Images from the rover show that the landing area went through two main climatic stages, where the predominant wind changed direction by 70 degrees. Scientists think this change happened around 400,000 years ago and could have been due to a change in the planet's rotation axis, causing a global climate change that affected wind patterns.

A new study describes how astronomers discovered a supermassive black hole that suddenly "switched on" and became

Astronomers have found a bizarre binary star system where a neutron star orbits with another star. Its companion used to be more massive, but the neutron star has torn away and consumed its outer layers, leaving only three solar masses of material. The neutron star has increased its rotation speed due to all the material stolen from its companion. Although the stripped star looks similar to regular main sequence stars, this is only because it still has a thin shell of hydrogen around its largely helium core. It should explode as a supernova about a million years from now, becoming a neutron star. Eventually, they'll collide, creating a kilonova.

Astronomers have observed dozens of newly forming stars surrounded by protoplanetary disks. Some look like grooved vinyl records, while others have developed bizarre spiral galaxy-like arms. These spiral arms account for about a third of the disks. Astronomers have finally directly observed a giant exoplanet that appears to be responsible for a set of protoplanetary arms. The planet has twice the mass of Jupiter and is unexpectedly red, the reddest planet ever seen because of all the dust surrounding it.

The VERITAS Collaboration and Breakthrough Listen just released the results of the first year of their survey for optical technosignatures.