That’s good news. I think spectroscopy of exoplanet atmospheres is the most likely thing to yield a mind blowing discovery.
Ridiculously impressive:
New pix of Uranus:
Brian
Let’s just call it Urectum to avoid the obvious jokes.
Urectum is what you see through the rings of Uranus
Jokes like this is exactly why astronomers call it YER-anus.
HAL-ees (not HAY-lees) comet is the other shibboleth.
But that pronunciation starts off with “urine”. An improvement, perhaps, but not much of one (and, I think, the inspiration for the Futurama “Urectum” joke).
Personally, I just stick with the Latin pronunciation, which doesn’t involve a Y sound at all, and just starts with the vowel. Something like “Ooranoos”.
But Uranus is a Greek word, not Latin, and the Greek pronunciation is ˈjʊərənəs, yoor-ə-nəs, or jʊˈreɪnəs, yoo-ray-nəs.
My kingdom for the day when a really cool story about Uranus can be mentioned without it instantly being hijacked by anus jokes that were old back in Milton Berle’s day.
I see that the headline says “adds another ringed world” while the body notes this was already known (or did I get that confused somehow?).
Does anybody else remember that stellar occultation data during the late 1970s demonstrated there must be rings around Uranus? I think I remember hearing it in astronomy classes.
Wait, just answered my own question. By 1977 nine distinct rings were known. There’s a good Wikipedia article, “Rings of Uranus”.
I was about to “correct” by pointing out the god’s name in Greek was actually “Ouranos,” and the Latin name was “Uranus”. It turns out I was wrong1. His Roman name is Caelus.
1 - Shocking, I know.2
2 - Correcting the correction: “Uranus” turns out to be the Latin spelling of “Ouranos”, so the leading vowel still turns out to be “oo”.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2023/webb-captures-the-spectacular-galactic-merger-arp-220
two spiral galaxies in the process of merging
Yawn. Let me know when they’re finished merging. I’ll come back and have a look then.
Come back around 2000000000 AD, more or less. Mark you calendar! The merger will be mostly done by then. 
I think I’ll be busy that day.
Interesting news story from the Daily Mail (yes, I know, sorry). The JWST discovered some relatively large & massive galaxies that were formed when our universe was less than 1 billion years old, which doesn’t fit with our current models.
In February, scientists at the Swinburne University of Technology in Australia analysed the data it had collected on six galaxies.
They estimated the age of the first one they looked at to be about 13.8 billion years old, but the light JWST had detected had taken 13 billion years to reach it.
This meant that what they were observing was a picture of how it looked when the universe was just 700 million years old - barely 5 per cent of its current age.
However, this picture also showed it was made up of 100 billion stars - the same amount as the present-day Milky Way, which had 13 billion more years to grow.
It was a similar story for the five other galaxies, where they contained way more stars than would be predicted for a cluster of their age.
Hold onto your hat, then. The predicted collision between the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies has already started.
That’s too close for comfort for me 
. Before our stars start ricocheting off each other like billiard balls, I’m packing up and moving to the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy, where it’s more relaxed.
Too close. I recommend M33 Triangulum which in this NASA-generated simulation, seems to survive intact.
Why do you think I’m wearing this seat belt?