The object, thought to be a magnetar, was found to emit radio waves every 22 minutes, much slower than other magnetars which pulse around once per second.

NASA's Kepler mission ended in 2018 after more than nine years of fruitful planet-hunting.

A nearby exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone of a star just 4.2 light-years from Earth may be home to a vast ocean, boosting its chances of supporting life. Since its discovery, questions about the conditions at the surface of Proxima b have been swirling; the planet's mass is just about 1.3 times that of Earth's, and the red dwarf star it circles is similar in age to our sun.

Astronomers have created a 3D map of a cosmic structure so gigantic that it's almost impossible to even comprehend. The "South Pole Wall" is a flabbergasting 1.4 billion light years across and contains hundreds of thousands of galaxies, Live Science reports.

Astronomers have for the first time discovered water in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting within the habitable zone of a distant star. The finding makes the world - which is called K2-18b - a plausible candidate in the search for alien life.