Time-domain astronomy articles from across Nature Portfolio

JWST observations of GRB 221009A reveal the associated supernova, confirming that the GRB resulted from the collapse of a rapidly rotating massive star. The lack of r-process emission suggests that these extreme events are not key sources of the heaviest elements.

Relativistic jets observed from transient neutron stars throughout the Universe produce bright flares for minutes after each X-ray burst, helping to determine the role individual system properties have on the speed and revealing the dominant launching mechanism.

X-ray observations of two large glitches bracketing a fast radio burst in the active Galactic magnetar SGR 1935+2154 reveal a connection between rapid spin change and radiative behaviours of the magnetar.

By day 1,041 after explosion, SN Ia-CSM 2018evt had produced an estimated 0.01 solar masses of dust in the cold, dense shell behind the supernova ejecta–circumstellar medium interaction, ranking it as one of the most prolific dust-producing supernovae ever recorded.

A very uncommon detached binary system with a 20.5-min orbital period has been discovered to harbour a carbon–oxygen white dwarf star and a low-mass subdwarf B star with a seven-Earth radius that traces the theoretical limit of binary evolution predicted 20 years ago.

Multiwavelength observations of a galactic nucleus exhibit quasi-periodic X-ray eruptions (QPEs) that repeat every 22 days, a timescale intermediate between those of other QPEs and so-called repeating nuclear transients. The eruptions are likely to be driven by the interaction between an orbiting body and a central massive black hole.

Periodic sub-structure in radio emission from magnetars provides an observational link not only between magnetars and fast radio bursts, but across all classes of radio-emitting rotating neutron stars. The correlation between sub-structure periodicity and neutron-star rotational period can be used to determine an underlying period for fast radio bursts.

Theories predict that core asphericity must be involved in core-collapse supernova explosions; however, the shape of these explosions has not been directly observed. The distribution of the explosive burning ash has now been revealed using nebular spectroscopy, indicating that a collimated structure is common in many stellar explosions.

Fast radio bursts, arriving at Earth from distant galaxies, usually have durations of a few milliseconds or more. Now, data on a source of repeating fast radio bursts have been revisited, with much higher time resolution than before, and burst signals are seen that last only a few microseconds — showing that the properties of fast radio bursts are more diverse than previously thought.

A brief but bright flash of optical radiation has been captured only 30 seconds after the onset of a gamma-ray burst. Produced in the interior of the shocked relativistic jet that powered the burst, the optical flash reveals the jet to be narrow and magnetized.

Preliminary observations from the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer of a well-studied X-ray pulsar are discordant with theoretical expectations, prompting a reassessment of our understanding of the accretion process.

Machine-learning methods are used to provide a more unified picture of mathematical degeneracies in light curves of planetary microlensing events.