Space

Jan 4th, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Two small galaxies are caught in the middle of a cosmic exchange. About 24 million light-years away, a thin bridge of newborn stars links NGC 4490 and NGC 4485, tracing where gravity has stripped gas and triggered fresh star formation. With the sharp vision of the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers can now watch this process unfold in striking detail. Both galaxies are dwarfs – small, gas-rich systems that resemble the kinds of galaxies common in the early ... [Read More]

Jan 3rd, 2026 - CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The  moon sun  share top billing in 2026. Kicking off the year's cosmic wonders is the moon, drawing  the first astronauts to visit in more than 50 years  , as well as a caravan of robotic lunar landers, including Jeff Bezos' new supersized Blue Moon. A supermoon looms on Jan. 3, and an astronomical blue moon is on the books for May. The sun will also generate buzz with a ring-of-fire eclipse at the bottom of the world in February and a ... [Read More]

Jan 3rd, 2026 - The Spirit rover landed on Mars on Jan. 4, 2004. Like its twin, Opportunity , Spirit was assigned an initial mission of only 90 sols. It exceeded this mission lifetime by more than 20 times, delivering invaluable science as it explored the Red Planet. It made its home in Gusev Crater, an ancient impact site and likely a giant dried lakebed as well. Though Opportunity far outlasted it, Spirit still had a spectacular science mission lifetime. Highlights included the rover's 2005 investigation of ... [Read More]

Jan 3rd, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Astronomers recently pointed NASA's Hubble Space Telescope at a familiar target, the bright nearby star Fomalhaut, and saw something that looked like a new world. A compact, reflective speck glimmered just beyond the star's main dust belt – exactly where you might expect an exoplanet. Then the speck disappeared. Later, a different bright spot flared up nearby. That one, too, faded. What looked like planets turned out to be something much more dramatic: expanding ... [Read More]

Jan 3rd, 2026 - For nearly a month, NASA has been scrambling to make contact with a spacecraft in orbit around Mars that abruptly fell silent. The space agency lost communication with the MAVEN probe (short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) on Dec. 6, and efforts to re-establish a connection have been futile. Based on bits of data received that day, mission controllers think the probe was spinning unexpectedly. NASA now has to wait until Jan. 16 before it can again try to revive MAVEN, because Mars ... [Read More]

Jan 2nd, 2026 - Sky This Week is brought to you in part by Celestron. Friday, January 2 The Moon officially reaches the Full phase early tomorrow morning shortly before sunrise. However, our satellite will appear essentially Full in the evening sky tonight, as it is more than 99 percent lit late this evening. You may also notice that the Moon appears slightly brighter than average, as it is still nearer to Earth than average and shines as a Super Moon.  Given the bright moonlight, most fainter targets ... [Read More]

Jan 2nd, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Astronomers often find exoplanets that look strange, but few discoveries challenge science as deeply as PSR J2322-2650b. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope revealed a world with an atmosphere unlike any seen before. Carbon dominates the air, hydrogen almost disappears, and powerful winds race across the surface. Gravity stretches the planet into a lemon-like shape while intense radiation heats one side far more than the other. Every detail forces scientists to rethink how ... [Read More]

Jan 2nd, 2026 - As this interstellar object approached its closest point to Earth, a massive radio telescope attempted to sniff out a technosignature. Reading time 3 minutes From the moment astronomers discovered interstellar object 3I/ATLAS , they became fixated on one question: What is it? Months of research have led to overwhelming scientific consensus that it is a comet from beyond our solar system, yet some still speculate that this cosmic visitor isn't natural at all. In July, shortly after the ... [Read More]

Jan 2nd, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google A recent analysis of the Sapphire Canyon mudstone core, drilled by NASA's Perseverance rover in July 2024, adds new and convincing evidence to the ongoing search for life on Mars. The study describes minerals and textures that, on Earth, are often linked to microbial activity. At the same time, the authors stress that some unknown, nonbiological chemistry could also explain the signals. "This finding by Perseverance is the closest we have ever come to discovering life on ... [Read More]

Jan 2nd, 2026 - Astronomers were puzzled by a black hole around 50 million times the mass of the sun with no stars, spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope – now simulations suggest it could be a primordial black hole, something we have never seen before An unusually massive black hole in the very early universe may be a kind of exotic, star-less black hole first theorised by Stephen Hawking . In August, Boyuan Liu at the University of Cambridge and his colleagues spotted a strange galaxy from 13 ... [Read More]

Jan 2nd, 2026 - Rogue, free-floating planets appear to have two distinct origins. Most of the exoplanets we've discovered have been in relatively tight orbits around their host stars, allowing us to track them as they repeatedly loop around them. But we've also discovered a handful of planets through a phenomenon that's called microlensing. This occurs when a planet passes between the line of sight between Earth and another star, creating a gravitational lens that distorts the star, causing it to briefly ... [Read More]

Jan 2nd, 2026 - You also don't need much equipment. Warm clothes are your biggest asset. Your eyes are enough to get started. Binoculars help once you know where to look. And a small telescope can take things to the next level. If winter had a logo, this would be it. Look south or southeast in the evening for three bright stars in a short straight line. That's Orion's Belt. Once you see it, the rest of the figure snaps into place. Betelgeuse glows reddish above, Rigel shines blue-white below. With binoculars, ... [Read More]

Jan 1st, 2026 - New Horizons flew past 2014 MU69, now known as Arrokoth, on Jan. 1, 2019. This composite of high-res images with enhanced color shows approximately how the KBO would appear to the human eye. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/Roman Tkachenko At 12:33 A.M. EST on Jan. 1, 2019 New Horizons made its closest approach to 2014 MU69, now named Arrokoth (though at the time, it had been nicknamed Ultima Thule). It was the most pristine distant world ever explored — albeit remotely — by humans. The ... [Read More]

Jan 1st, 2026 - Reading time 2 minutes A new generation of rockets aims to unlock new business models in space, including the science fiction dream of extracting resources from asteroids. Researchers are taking a closer look at asteroids to figure out which of these objects makes sense as a target for future mining missions. A team from Spain's Institute of Space Sciences spent over a decade analyzing samples from carbon-rich asteroids, the most common type of space rocks found in the solar system, to ... [Read More]

Dec 31st, 2025 - Just in time for the arrival of 2026, NASA has shared a stunning image of a renowned galaxy cluster. The Champagne Cluster holds special significance this time of year because it was discovered on New Year's Eve in 2020. The occasion and the galaxy cluster's bubble-like appearance helped researchers appropriately nickname it the Champagne Cluster, a much catchier name than its official designation, RM J130558.9+263048.4. In a recent announcement,  NASA revealed that its Chandra X-ray ... [Read More]

Dec 31st, 2025 - Reading time 3 minutes Roughly 1,000 light-years away from Earth, a gigantic disk of gas and dust is swirling around a young star and giving rise to new planets. Not only is it the largest planet-forming disk astronomers have ever found, its behavior is different than any seen before. The disk spans nearly 400 billion miles (640 billion kilometers)—that's about 40 times wider than our entire solar system. While it was first identified in 2016, astronomers have now used NASA's Hubble Space ... [Read More]