Happy 2026! This will be a big year for me. I'll be finishing up and turning in the manuscript for my first book -- which flows between cutting edge research, scientists' stories, and the societal impacts of fluid physics. It's a culmination of 15 years of FYFD, rendered into narrative. I'm so excited to share it with you when it's published in 2027. In the meantime, though, check out the top posts from FYFD in 2025! 

LDN 204 (left) and ζ Ophiuchi (top right) // Gary Seven

Bow Shock Around LL Orionis

Orion Nebula

"Astronomers using NASA Hubble Space Telescope have found a bow shock around a very young star in the nearby Orion nebula, an intense star-forming region of gas and dust."

The first one is just gibberish.

As a star travels through space, the energetic particles it emits crash into the gas between the stars, creating a type of cosmic shock wave. In other words, the solar wind produced by stars interacts with the interstellar medium, creating what is known as a bow shock; imagine the effect a speeding boat has on the water it is passing through. Many stars produce a bow shock, however, this effect is often not visible.

Zeta Oph: Runaway Star 

Like a ship plowing through cosmic seas, runaway star Zeta Ophiuchi produces the arcing interstellar bow wave or bow shock seen in this stunning infrared portrait. In the false-color view, bluish Zeta Oph, a star about 20 times more massive than the Sun, lies near the center of the frame, moving toward the left at 24 kilometers per second. Its strong stellar wind precedes it, compressing and heating the dusty interstellar material and shaping the curved shock front. What set this star in motion? Zeta Oph was likely once a member of a binary star system, its companion star was more massive and hence shorter lived. When the companion exploded as a supernova catastrophically losing mass, Zeta Oph was flung out of the system. About 460 light-years away, Zeta Oph is 65,000 times more luminous than the Sun and would be one of the brighter stars in the sky if it weren't surrounded by obscuring dust. The image spans about 1.5 degrees or 12 light-years at the estimated distance of Zeta Ophiuchi.