Very Large Telescope

The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope has released an image of Arp 16, also known as M66, a face-on spiral galaxy with a weak central bar visible in yellow. The image shows loosely wound arms rich in young, blue star clusters. It is credited to ESO and astronomer P. Barthel.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is holding the ngVLA High-resolution Frontier Workshop, a scientific meeting focused on the high-resolution science cases for the proposed next-generation Very Large Array. Researchers are discussing how the future telescope's long baselines could enable detailed imaging of protoplanetary disks, stellar surfaces and compact radio sources. The workshop brings together astronomers planning observations for the facility still in development.

Astronomers led by HyeongHan et al. have published deep XMM-Newton and Chandra observations of the X-ray emission from two well-known merging pairs of galaxy clusters that also host large-scale radio emission known as radio relics. The findings, shared in a paper on arXiv, offer new detail on how hot gas behaves during cluster collisions.

The Hubble Space Telescope is currently observing NGC 1866, a young star cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud, as part of a research program described as uncovering the origin of the rotational spread in young Magellanic Cloud clusters. The observation falls under the category of stellar populations and the interstellar medium, and space enthusiasts are following the telescope's live target feed.

The James Webb Space Telescope has revealed a massive cosmic structure that scientists say challenges current understanding of the Universe. Details remain limited, but the discovery adds to a series of Webb observations finding unexpectedly large and mature objects in the early cosmos, prompting debate among astronomers about whether existing models of cosmic formation need revision.

The James Webb Space Telescope has observed extreme debris disks around young stars, where collisions between rocky bodies produce large amounts of dust. Astronomers say these systems offer a window into how our own solar system looked during its early formation, when planets were still assembling from debris.

Astronomy trackers report the latest figures for periodic comet 2P/Encke as of 11 October 2026. The comet is travelling at a barycentric speed of 21.60 km per second, slightly up on the previous day, with perihelion due in 122 days. It currently sits at magnitude 17.24 in the constellation Pisces, visible from both hemispheres but only through large telescopes under dark skies.