Space

Jul 13th, 2025 - A model built using data from the Curiosity rover suggests wet periods were rare. The Curiosity rover was sent up the Mount Sharp, the biggest sediments stack on Mars. On the way, it collected samples that indicated a portion of carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere might have been sequestered in the sedimentary rocks, just as it happens with limestone on Earth. This would have drawn carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, reducing the greenhouse effect that warmed the planet. Based on these ... [Read More]

Jul 13th, 2025 - QUICK FACTS What it is: The open star clusters NGC 460 and NGC 456 Where it is: 200,000 light-years away, in the Small Magellanic Cloud dwarf galaxy When it was shared: July 7, 2025 NASA 's Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) joined forces to capture a striking new view of two open star clusters within the Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf satellite galaxy orbiting the Milky Way. The spectacular 527-megapixel image is the result of 12 overlapping observations in visible ... [Read More]

Jul 13th, 2025 - The powerful merger, designated GW231123, produced an extremely large black hole about 225 times the mass of our Sun. Gravitational waves —ripples in space-time caused by violent cosmic events—travel at the speed of light in every direction, eventually fading out like ripples in water. But some events are so destructive and extreme that they create disturbances in spacetime more like powerful waves than small ripples, with enough energy to reach our own detectors here on ... [Read More]

Jul 13th, 2025 - Astronomers have found a fresh way to look for planets, and it starts by searching for binary stars – stars that come in pairs and keep their orbits tidily aligned. A new study shows that, when two sibling suns wheel around each other edge‑on from Earth's viewpoint, they may indicate the presence of planets that are far easier to spot than usual. "This could be an unprecedented avenue for examining how deterministic, or orderly, the process of planet formation is," said Malena Rice ... [Read More]

Jul 13th, 2025 - The probe captured images and other data from within the sun's corona during a record-breaking approach last year. NASA's Parker Solar Probe made history with the closest-ever approach to the sun last December , and we're finally getting a look at some of the images it captured. The space agency released a timelapse of observations made using Parker's Wide-Field Imager for Solar Probe (WISPR) while it passed through the sun's corona (the outer atmosphere) on December 25, 2024, revealing up ... [Read More]

Jul 12th, 2025 - Our galaxy may be wrapped in a richer swarm of tiny companions than astronomers have ever seen. New calculations predict that there are dozens of ultra-faint satellite galaxies circling close to the Milky Way. They are too dim for current surveys to spot, but real enough to tip the cosmic balance sheet in favor of standard cosmology. The forecast comes from cosmologists at Durham University . By combining the sharpest supercomputer simulations available with new mathematical modeling, the team ... [Read More]

Jul 12th, 2025 - Through Artemis, NASA will address high priority science questions, focusing on those that are best accomplished by on-site human explorers on and around the Moon by using robotic surface and orbiting systems. Back to the Moon. NASA is gearing up for a new chapter in lunar exploration by sending a trio of high-tech instruments to the Moon. Two of the devices will be attached to a new lunar rover capable of carrying astronauts or operating remotely, while the third will gather data from orbit. ... [Read More]

Jul 11th, 2025 - The amount of data that will be collected by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which released its fabulous first-light images this week, will far outweigh what any telescope before it managed to deliver. This has led astronomers to take a step into cloud computing — as well as enlist the help of seven brokers and a data butler. Once it is fully up and running, the Rubin Observatory (funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation–Department of Energy) will be collecting 20 terabytes of ... [Read More]

Jul 11th, 2025 - For decades, Pluto remained one of the most mysterious objects in our solar system, until July 14, 2015, when NASA's New Horizons spacecraft became the first mission to visit it up close, capturing breathtaking images of the distant world. It took over nine years for New Horizons to reach Pluto after blasting off atop an Atlas 5 rocket on Jan. 19, 2006. After traveling billions of miles through the solar system, New Horizons sent home stunning images of Pluto and its moons, making headlines ... [Read More]

Jul 11th, 2025 - The astronomical community is abuzz over a newly discovered "interstellar object," only the third of its kind ever seen, which is currently shooting toward us on a one-way trip through the solar system . The race is now on to study the alien interloper, named 3I/ATLAS , before it leaves forever. "We only have one shot at this object and then it's gone forever," Darryl Seligman , an astronomer at Michigan State University and the lead author of a new paper about the object, told Live Science. ... [Read More]

Jul 11th, 2025 - The burgeoning space industry and the technologies society increasingly relies on – electric grids, aviation and telecommunications – are all vulnerable to the same threat: space weather. Space weather encompasses any variations in the space environment between the Sun and Earth. One common type of space weather event is called an interplanetary coronal mass ejection . These ejections are bundles of magnetic fields and particles that originate from the Sun. They can travel at speeds ... [Read More]

Jul 11th, 2025 - Sky This Week is brought to you in part by Celestron. Friday, July 11 The Moon passes just 0.02° north of the dim, distant dwarf planet Pluto at 7 P.M. EDT. However, the bright light from our satellite will make Pluto — already a challenging object requiring the largest amateur instruments — even more difficult to spot. Chances will be better later in the month, however, so stay tuned for a shot at viewing this faraway world. High in the north late tonight is Draco the Dragon, ... [Read More]

Jul 10th, 2025 - In 2076, Sedna will make a once-in-11,400-year close pass near the Sun. It moves through the darkness on a path so long that humans had only begun to farm the first grains when it last came close to the Sun. Sedna, a distant dwarf planet three-quarters the size of Pluto, is inching toward the brightest star in our sky — and in 2076, it will reach its closest point in more than 11,000 years. Astronomers say that if we want to study this mysterious body on the outer edge of the Solar ... [Read More]

Jul 10th, 2025 - Tremendous tilts of Mars' rotational axis during the past 20 million years may have dried out the planet, according to a new study. The findings may help solve the mystery of how Mars, which once contained lakes, rivers and possibly oceans , lost its water. Dry, dust-filled deserts cover much of Mars' surface today. Astronomers think most of the planet's scant water reserves are frozen within fine-grained surface dirt, with above-surface ice confined to the polar regions. But the Red Planet ... [Read More]

Jul 10th, 2025 - Quasars were a mystery when first discovered in the early 1960s . They are extremely distant, starlike objects that emit enormous amounts of energy. Years later, astronomers understood that quasars are the extremely energetic centers of young galaxies, powered by supermassive black holes. The fact that they are mostly young (the black holes generally quiet down later in time) means that most quasars are very distant, and therefore faint and really hard to observe.  They're also hard to ... [Read More]

Jul 10th, 2025 - For nearly a decade, cosmologists have wrestled with a nagging mismatch called the Hubble tension. When astronomers measure the expansion of space in the nearby universe, they find a noticeably faster rate than calculations based on the early cosmos predict. A new analysis presented this week at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting ( NAM 2025 ) proposes an eye-catching fix. Earth, the Sun, and the entire Milky Way may sit inside an enormous under-dense region – a ... [Read More]