The stars stretch endlessly across the cosmos. Are we the only ones watching... or just the only ones who know? 👁️

5 stars of pain

Since launching in 1977, Voyager 1 has traveled farther than any human-made object, crossing into interstellar space in 2012. Now, over 15 billion miles from Earth, it’s detecting something remarkable: a low-frequency “cosmic hum”. This eerie sound isn’t audible to human ears—it's a series of plasma waves picked up by Voyager’s instruments. These waves are generated when the solar wind—charged particles from the Sun—collides with the interstellar medium, the thin soup of gas and dust between stars. 📡 What’s causing the hum? Solar Wind Interactions: Collisions between solar particles and interstellar gas create ripples in space plasma. Cosmic Clues: The hum reveals key info about the density, composition, and magnetic fields of the space between stars. Thanks to Voyager 1’s Plasma Wave Science instrument, scientists now have a new way to explore the unseen structure of our galaxy. ✨ In a region no spacecraft has ever reached, Voyager is still sending whispers from the void—and we're listening.

Astronomers may have just found one of the youngest neutron stars ever—possibly only 14 years old. Discovered in a dwarf galaxy 400 million light-years away, the object—VT 1137–0337—was spotted during the Very Large Array Sky Survey. It wasn’t visible in 1998 data but lit up with strong radio signals by 2018, suggesting it formed sometime in between. What makes this find special? Its radio signal is 10,000 times brighter than the famous Crab Nebula. Scientists think it’s a newborn pulsar wind nebula—powered by a rapidly spinning neutron star—and it may even be evolving into a magnetar, one of the universe’s most magnetic and mysterious objects. This rare discovery gives us a glimpse into how neutron stars and magnetars form—and how they might be connected to fast radio bursts. Source: Dong & Hallinan, The Astrophysical Journal (2023)

A Shadow in the Stars — Captured at Last. This is the first real image of a black hole. And it’s beautiful.