2025 was another big year for astronomical discoveries. We have a new Interstellar Comet that’s caused a stir. A study of a pair of objects in the Kuiper Belt is interesting. Next, we’ll cover a number of nearby nebulas such as Cat’s Paw, Flame, and the Crystal Ball. We’ll examine the dust around a Wolf-Rayet star system. We’ll cover a spectacular star cluster and an update on the Eagle Nebula. We’ll take a close look at Cassiopeia A Light Echoes followed by a close look at our Galaxy’s Center Regions. We then move out of our galaxy, starting with an examination of Andromeda’s Satellites. Beyond the Local Group we’ll see the Bullseye Galaxy and update Dark Matter in the Bullet Galaxy. Next, we’ll cover Little Red Dots and a galaxy from the early universe. We’ll end with a review of the amazing contributions made by the European Space Agency’s GAIA satellite that was retired in 2025. I trust you’ll find it interesting and informative.
We covered the Kyper belt in the comets
and the heliosphere chapter of the How
Far Away Is It video book. It is much
further away, much larger, and far less
dense than the asteroid belt. It starts
at 30 astronomical units from the sun
and is around 20 astronomical units
wide.
Scientists have gathered a 17-year
observational baseline of data from
Hubble and the KEK Observatory watching
the orbit of an object named the Aljira
system in the Kyper Belt. It is likely a
stable trio of icy space rocks.
Hubble images show two objects located
about 7,600 km or 4,700 m apart.
In addition, researchers say that
repeated observations of the object's
unique co-orbital motion indicate that
the inner object is actually two bodies
that are so close together they can't be
distinguished at such a great distance.
The finding is crucial support for a
Kyper belt object formation theory in
which three small rocky bodies would not
be the result of collisions in a busy
Kyper belt, but instead form as a trio
directly from the gravitational collapse
of matter in the dis of material
surrounding the newly formed sun. It's
well known that stars form by
gravitational collapse of gas, commonly
as pairs or triples. But the idea that
cosmic objects like those in the Kyper
belt form in a similar way is still
under investigation.
