Space

Jun 23rd, 2025 - Nowadays, the dark of night is interspersed with the light of stars. But before the stars were born, did light shine at the beginning of the universe? The short answer is "no." But the long answer reveals light's extraordinary journey. At first, the early universe's light was "trapped," and it took several hundred thousand years for it to escape. Then, it took about 100 million years for stars to form. By examining the speed and direction in which galaxies were moving, astronomer Edwin Hubble ... [Read More]

Jun 23rd, 2025 - Astronomers have been trying to detect atmospheres on planets orbiting TRAPPIST-1, but bursts of radiation from the star make this challenging The search for atmospheres around the TRAPPIST-1 star system , one of the most promising locations for life elsewhere in the galaxy, might be even more difficult than astronomers first thought because of short-lived radiation blasts from the star. TRAPPIST-1, first discovered in 2016 , is a small red dwarf star about 40 light years from Earth with at ... [Read More]

Jun 23rd, 2025 - The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has unveiled a "sneak peek" of the first images taken with its powerful astronomy camera — and the results are stunning. The exceptionally detailed images are peppered with multicolored stars and spiraling galaxies. In one photo, the observatory has captured two nebulae, filled with bright pink clouds of gas and dust. The Rubin Observatory is a next-generation telescope equipped with the world's largest digital camera. These first preview images are a major ... [Read More]

Jun 23rd, 2025 - Astronomers unveil the most detailed portrait yet of a nearby spiral galaxy's complex inner life Astronomers have created the most detailed view yet of the Sculptor Galaxy, a nearby active spiral galaxy characterized by intense star formation and intricate structures. Using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile, a team of researchers has assembled a massive map of the galaxy by collecting light across thousands of colors. The result is a detailed record of the gas, ... [Read More]

Jun 23rd, 2025 - Astronomy has a major data problem – simulating realistic images of the sky can help train algorithms Professional astronomers don't make discoveries by looking through an eyepiece like you might with a backyard telescope. Instead, they collect digital images in massive cameras attached to large telescopes . Just as you might have an endless library of digital photos stored in your cellphone, many astronomers collect more photos than they would ever have the time to look at. Instead, ... [Read More]

Jun 22nd, 2025 - QUICK FACTS What it is: The Chamaeleon I star-forming cloud Where it is: 522 light-years away, in the constellations Chamaeleon, Apus, Musca, Carina and Octans When it was shared: June 10, 2025 Stars form within dark molecular clouds of gas and dust called nebulae, but it's rare to capture these stellar nurseries clearly. A dramatic new image from the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) in Chile unveils the Chamaeleon I dark cloud — the closest such place to the solar system — in ... [Read More]

Jun 21st, 2025 - Venus has long carried the nickname "Earth's twin," yet most people picture it as a static, oven‑hot wasteland with a geologically dead surface. A fresh look at radar and gravity records from NASA's Magellan orbiter now shows the planet is still shifting and rumbling in real time, rewriting that bleak image. Study lead Gael Cascioli of the University of Maryland in Baltimore County and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center says his team's work has provided a new and important insight ... [Read More]

Jun 21st, 2025 - W hat do the clouds on Jupiter, dust storms on Mars and rainstorms on Titan all have in common? They look like they belong on Earth. As we venture through the universe, scientists are finding uncanny - and sometimes unexpected - hints of Earth on other planets and moons. Clouds on Jupiter swirl like ocean eddies on Earth, and dust storms that act like hurricanes can inundate Mars. Even though these celestial bodies can be hundreds of million miles away from us, the same laws of physics apply, ... [Read More]

Jun 21st, 2025 - Total solar eclipses are rare, but exactly how rare is now up for debate after the European Space Agency debuted the first images today (June 16) from two new satellites that together operate as an "eclipse machine." Total solar eclipses currently occur 14 times every 18 years and 11 days somewhere on Earth, which is one every 16 months, on average. According to NASA , they occur once every 366 years in any specific place. Requiring neither lucky geography nor patience, the European Space ... [Read More]

Jun 21st, 2025 - Engineers switched to a backup fuel line less than a quarter of the way through Psyche's mission. A NASA spacecraft bound for an unexplored metal-rich asteroid has reignited its plasma thrusters, continuing its cruise deeper into the Solar System after switching to a backup fuel line. The $1.4 billion Psyche mission, built to explore an asteroid with the same name, has four electric thrusters fueled by xenon gas. Psyche's solar electric propulsion system is more fuel efficient than conventional ... [Read More]

Jun 20th, 2025 - Cosmic rays hit Earth's atmosphere all the time, but most are too weak to detect. A few, however, carry extreme energy: more than a million times what particle accelerators on Earth can produce. A new study suggests that those monsters are born in the churning magnetic fields of pairs of neutron stars that are on the brink of collapse. The high-energy rays are thought to arise moments before a black hole flickers into existence. Glennys Farrar , a theoretical physicist at New York University , ... [Read More]

Jun 20th, 2025 - Sky This Week is brought to you in part by Celestron. Friday, June 20 The summer solstice occurs at this evening at 10:42 P.M. EDT. For those in the Northern Hemisphere, this marks the official beginning of the summer season. (For those south of the equator, of course, this is the winter solstice and marks the official beginning of winter.)  On this date, the Sun appears to sit directly above Earth's Tropic of Cancer, which marks 23.5° latitude north. Also on the summer solstice, our ... [Read More]

Jun 20th, 2025 - NASA's Mars Odyssey captures a surreal new image of Arsia Mons at sunrise Just before dawn on May 2, a camera 240 million kilometers from Earth caught a moment that seemed almost Earth-like: clouds hugging the flanks of a great mountain, and a summit poking defiantly above them. But this had nothing to do with Earth. The mountain was Arsia Mons—one of the tallest volcanoes in the solar system—seen from orbit around Mars. The image, captured by NASA 's Mars Odyssey orbiter, is the ... [Read More]

Jun 20th, 2025 - You can't see it, yet it tugs on every star in the sky. Astronomers call this hidden glue dark matter, and for nearly a century they have struggled to learn what it is and how it shapes the Milky Way. The newest clue comes from a Hollywood‑scale digital stunt double of our own galaxy called the COZMIC suite. Led by USC cosmologist Vera Gluscevic , the project runs on a supercomputer that rewinds cosmic history and plays it back under different laws of physics. COZMIC clones of the Milky ... [Read More]

Jun 19th, 2025 - By This observatory has probably been the most transformative astronomy project of the 21st century, but there's a good chance you've never heard of it. Just last week, for instance, the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City debuted a new "space show" called Encounters in the Milky Way —and this often overlooked spacecraft is its scientific superstar. But you're more likely to know about actor Pedro Pascal's narration in the show than you are ... [Read More]

Jun 19th, 2025 - NASA's Perseverance rover has rolled across a bright carpet of dust and bedrock for more than four years, but few sights have stopped the team in its tracks quite like a charcoal‑colored boulder perched on Witch Hazel Hill. The oddity , dubbed "Skull Hill," sits alone against tan sandstone, pocked with shallow pits and angled facets. The rover first photographed the stone on April 11 while crossing a contact where light and dark units meet along the rim of Jezero Crater. ... [Read More]