Indian astronomers using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have discovered a stunning grand-design spiral galaxy that remarkably resembles our Milky Way, yet it existed when the Universe was just 1.5 billion years old, roughly a tenth of its present age. Named Alaknanda after a Himalayan river that shares its origins with the Mandakini (also the Hindi name for the Milky Way), the galaxy displays two symmetric spiral arms, a bright central bulge, and is forming stars at roughly 20 times the Milky Way's current rate. The discovery, made by Rashi Jain and Yogesh Wadadekar at the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (NCRA-TIFR) in Pune, India, challenges the long-held view that such well-ordered galaxies took billions of years to assemble. Early galaxies were expected to look chaotic and clumpy; Alaknanda proves some could mature far faster than theories predicted. A massive galaxy cluster acted as a natural magnifying glass, bending and amplifying the distant galaxy's light so JWST could capture it in striking detail. The finding, published in the leading European journal, Astronomy & Astrophysics, compels astronomers to rethink the cosmic timeline—suggesting the early Universe was a far more dynamic place than previously imagined, and that the seeds of worlds like ours may have been planted earlier than anyone thought.

Rocks that stood out as light-colored dots on the reddish-orange surface of Mars now are the latest evidence that areas of the small planet may have once supported wet oases with humid climates and heavy rainfall comparable to tropical climates on Earth.

Building on the University of Arizona's leadership in interferometry, a Steward Observatory-led team of astronomers probe mysterious "hot dust" around stars that has vexed astronomers for decades. The observed amounts are large enough to lead the team to believe the dust is being rapidly replaced, or some sort of mechanism extends its lifetime. 

A new study published in PNAS from researchers at The University of Texas at Austin is the first to define large river drainage systems on Mars. They outlined 16 large-scale river basins where life would have been most likely to thrive on the neighboring planet.