Space

Mar 1st, 2026 - It's quick and easy to access Live Science Plus, simply enter your email below. We'll send you a confirmation and sign you up for our daily newsletter, keeping you up to date with the latest science news. Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Join the conversation Add us as a preferred source on Google Get the Live Science Newsletter Get the world's most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and ... [Read More]

Feb 28th, 2026 - It's quick and easy to access Live Science Plus, simply enter your email below. We'll send you a confirmation and sign you up for our daily newsletter, keeping you up to date with the latest science news. Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Join the conversation Add us as a preferred source on Google Get the Live Science Newsletter Get the world's most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and ... [Read More]

Feb 27th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Astronomers say that 3I/ATLAS, a comet that entered our solar system from interstellar space, is not sending out any radio signals that would suggest it is an alien spacecraft. That finding pushes back against speculation that the object could be artificial and sets a clear standard for how scientists will examine the next visitor from beyond our solar system. A comet under scrutiny On December 18, 2025, the Green Bank Telescope ( GBT ) tracked 3I/ATLAS for a directed ... [Read More]

Feb 27th, 2026 - Reading time 2 minutes Interstellar visitor comet 3I/Atlas may have bid farewell to Earth, but spacecraft traveling through the solar system kept a close watch on the mysterious traveler. The European Space Agency's (ESA) Jupiter mission caught a glimpse of the comet shortly after it whizzed past the Sun. JUpiter ICy moons Explorer, or JUICE for short, captured images of comet 3I/Atlas in spectacular detail, revealing hints of jets, rays, filaments, and streams. The spacecraft directed five of ... [Read More]

Feb 27th, 2026 - Sky This Week is brought to you in part by Celestron. Friday, February 27 Asteroid 7 Iris reaches opposition at 1 P.M. EST today. Now shining at 9th magnitude, you can best spot the main-belt world after dark, rising higher in the hours after sunset.  By 10 P.M. local time, Iris is 40° high in the southeast, located in the constellation Sextans. Even a small scope under suburban light pollution can pick it up, tonight less than a degree northwest of 5th-magnitude Beta (β) ... [Read More]

Feb 27th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google A dead star about 730 light-years from Earth has been sending a powerful wave of fast-moving gas into space for at least 1,000 years. That kind of long-lasting blast is not supposed to happen around a star like this, and it suggests there is a hidden source of energy that astronomers still cannot explain. Accidental stellar find Maps from Chile's Very Large Telescope traced a bright arc and long tail around the dead star. While hunting for short-lived stellar explosions, ... [Read More]

Feb 27th, 2026 - How far are we from finding exomoons and exorings? If you examine our solar system's giant planets, you'll notice right away that they've all got moons—a lot of moons. While Earth only has the one, Jupiter has about 100 that we know of (and likely hundreds more, depending on what you define as a "moon," that is ). Saturn has almost 275! Many of these moons are huge; Saturn's Titan and Jupiter's Ganymede are both about the size of Mercury, and if they orbited the sun on their own, we'd be ... [Read More]

Feb 26th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Uranus has always been the oddball of our solar system. It spins on its side. Its seasons last for decades. Its magnetic field refuses to line up neatly with its rotation. For years, much of what happens high above its blue-green clouds stayed out of reach. Now that has changed. For the first time, astronomers have mapped the vertical structure of Uranus's upper atmosphere. Teams tracked how temperature and charged particles shift with height, building a three-dimensional ... [Read More]

Feb 26th, 2026 - It's quick and easy to access Live Science Plus, simply enter your email below. We'll send you a confirmation and sign you up for our daily newsletter, keeping you up to date with the latest science news. Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Join the conversation Add us as a preferred source on Google Get the Live Science Newsletter Get the world's most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and ... [Read More]

Feb 26th, 2026 - NASA has released new images from the James Webb Space Telescope showcasing the Exposed Cranium Nebula, officially designated Nebula PMR 1. This cloud of space dust and debris may capture a moment in the final stages of a star's life. The images reveal distinct regions capturing different phases of the nebula's evolution. It features an outer shell of gas, blown off first, that consists mostly of hydrogen, and an inner cloud with more structure containing a mix of different gases. A dark ... [Read More]

Feb 26th, 2026 - Reading time 3 minutes The Vera C. Rubin Observatory spent the night staring at the dark cosmos, alerting astronomers of ongoing changes in the skies in real-time. The observatory fired off its first wave of notifications from its new alert system on Tuesday night, sending 800,000 alerts to astronomers' computers around the world. The Alert Production Pipeline, a software developed at the University of Washington, is designed to eventually produce up to 7 million alerts per night, documenting ... [Read More]

Feb 26th, 2026 - Largest ever image obtained by specialist telescope in Chile represents scientific and aesthetic breakthrough Scientists have captured a beautiful image in unprecedented detail of the vast Milky Way galaxy, of which our own solar system is a part. The stunning image is the largest ever obtained by the specialist telescope in Chile called the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (Alma) radio telescope, according to the group behind the project. The picture not only serves to stir the ... [Read More]

Feb 26th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Astronomers have observed a distant supernova, known as SN 2025wny or "SN Winny," whose light was bent by the gravity of two foreground galaxies, producing five visible images. Because each of the images brightens at a slightly different time, scientists can use the delays between them to measure how fast the universe is expanding today. In a high-resolution color image, SN 2025wny appears five times around a pair of foreground galaxies that bend its light into separate ... [Read More]

Feb 26th, 2026 - Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. . T he universe began with a bang, and for the first few hundred million years, there was nothing but hydrogen and some helium atoms moving through the void. Then something happened. Somehow, in the roiling soup of plasma and free electrons suffusing the Big Bang's embers, clouds of molecular hydrogen drew close enough together to ignite. The first stars were born. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Just to imagine such objects blinking ... [Read More]

Feb 25th, 2026 - It's quick and easy to access Live Science Plus, simply enter your email below. We'll send you a confirmation and sign you up for our daily newsletter, keeping you up to date with the latest science news. Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Join the conversation Add us as a preferred source on Google Get the Live Science Newsletter Get the world's most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and ... [Read More]

Feb 25th, 2026 - A recent story  in  The Planetary Science Journal  reported that scientists at the National Air and Space Museum's Center for Earth and Planetary Studies and colleagues have produced the first global map and analysis of small mare ridges (SMRs) on the Moon, a feature created by tectonic activity. The analysis showed that SMRs are geologically young and are widespread across the lunar maria — the vast, dark plains on the Moon's surface most people call seas. The team's ... [Read More]