The Astronomical Journal (often abbreviated AJ in scientific papers and references) is a peer-reviewed monthly scientific journal owned by the American Astronomical Society and currently published by Institute of Physics Publishing. It is one of the premier journals for astronomy in the world. Until 2008, the journal was published by the University of Chicago Press on behalf of the American Astronomical Society. The reason for the change were given by the society as the desire of the University of Chicago Press to revise its financial arrangement and their plans to change from the particular software that had been developed in-house. The other two publications of the society, the Astrophysical Journal and its supplement series, followed in January 2009. The journal was established in 1849 by Benjamin A. Gould. It ceased publication in 1861 due to the American Civil War, but resumed in 1885. Between 1909 and 1941 the journal was edited in Albany, New York. In 1941, editor Benjamin Boss arranged to transfer responsibility for the journal to the American Astronomical Society. The first electronic edition of The Astronomical Journal was published in January, 1998. With the July, 2006
With a sun more than 4.5 billion years old, our solar system is considered "middle-aged," and the pictures of what it might have looked like in its infancy are lost to time. Taking advantage of a sophisticated adaptive optics ...
Astronomy
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We all know that asteroids are out there, that some of them come dangerously close to Earth, and that they've struck Earth before with catastrophic consequences. The recent discovery of asteroid 2024 YR4 reminds us of the ...
Astronomy
Feb 17, 2025
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Canadian astronomers have taken an extraordinary step in understanding how planets are born, using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). JWST was used to study PDS 70, a young star with two growing planets in its orbit. ...
Astrobiology
Feb 12, 2025
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How would detecting methane help astronomers identify if exoplanets, or even exomoons, have life as we know it, or even as we don't know it? This is what a recent study published in The Astronomical Journal hopes to address ...
Astrobiology
Feb 10, 2025
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Astronomers may have discovered a scrawny star bolting through the middle of our galaxy with a planet in tow. If confirmed, the pair sets a new record for the fastest-moving exoplanet system, nearly double our solar system's ...
Planetary Sciences
Feb 10, 2025
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With an assist from the NEID spectrograph, a team of astronomers have confirmed the existence of exoplanet Gaia-4b—one of the most massive planets known to orbit a low-mass star. Gaia-4b is also the first planet detected ...
Astronomy
Feb 4, 2025
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We can't help ourselves but wonder about life elsewhere in the universe. Any hint of a biosignature or even a faint, technosignature-like event wrests our attention away from our tumultuous daily affairs. In 1984, our wistful ...
Astronomy
Feb 4, 2025
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A research team led by Dr. Sofia Sheikh of the SETI Institute, in collaboration with the Characterizing Atmospheric Technosignatures project and the Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center, set out to answer a simple ...
Astrobiology
Feb 3, 2025
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Nearly one third of known exoplanets are enormous gas giants, similar to Jupiter or Saturn. But whereas our solar system developed with gas giants far from our sun, some planetary systems consist of so-called 'hot—or even ...
Planetary Sciences
Jan 31, 2025
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Tucked away in a star-forming region in the Taurus constellation, a pair of circling stars are displaying some unexpected differences in the circumstellar disks of dust and gas that surround them. A new study led by researchers ...
Planetary Sciences
Jan 16, 2025
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