Space

Dec 12th, 2025 - Sky This Week is brought to you in part by Celestron. Friday, December 12 Ganymede reappears from occultation behind Jupiter overnight tonight, late on the 12th in the western U.S. and early on the 13th for those in the eastern half of the country.  Jupiter rises around 7 P.M. local time, located in eastern Gemini. Shining at magnitude –2.7, it's the brightest object in the eastern sky, just to the lower right of Castor and Pollux, the heads of the Twins. Let the giant planet rise ... [Read More]

Dec 12th, 2025 - 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. Astronomers have spotted a supermassive black hole whipping up cosmic winds at record speeds. The black hole, located 135 million light-years from Earth in the center of the NGC 3783 spiral galaxy, caught researchers' attention after emitting a huge X-ray flare. As the burst died down, it left ... [Read More]

Dec 12th, 2025 - Reading time 3 minutes The supernova SN 2025wny is hopelessly far, lying approximately 10 billion light-years from Earth. Normally, this would make it impossible for astronomers to detect. But one team got lucky. While scanning the sky for cosmic transients, an international team of astronomers noticed two galaxies in the foreground of a giant blob of light. Further analysis with other telescopes revealed that the blur was a supernova—a superluminous one at that. Remarkably, the two ... [Read More]

Dec 12th, 2025 - A rocky exoplanet outside the Earth's solar system may have an atmosphere, according to new evidence gathered by NASA researchers.  The exoplanet, known as super-Earth TOI-561b, was discovered in 2020, according to NASA . Scientists have determined that the planet is ultra-hot, with a low density. It is about 1.4 times wider than Earth and orbits the sun in about 11 hours. Its host star is similar to Earth's sun in size and temperature, but the exoplanet is 40 times closer to that star ... [Read More]

Dec 12th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Hints of methane around exoplanet TRAPPIST-1e briefly ignited excitement about air – and maybe even habitability – on one of the most scrutinized Earth-sized worlds beyond our solar system. But the closer scientists look, the clearer one message becomes: proceed with caution. A new analysis led by Sukrit Ranjan of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory pairs James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) data with detailed atmospheric modeling. The ... [Read More]

Dec 12th, 2025 - When NASA scientists opened the sample return canister from the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample mission in late 2023, they found something astonishing. Dust and rock collected from the asteroid Bennu contained many of life's building blocks , including all five nucleobases used in DNA and RNA, 14 of the 20 amino acids found in proteins, and a rich collection of other organic molecules . These are built primarily from carbon and hydrogen, and they often form the backbone of life's chemistry. For ... [Read More]

Dec 12th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Astronomers have captured some of the sharpest early views ever taken of stellar eruptions, and the results overturn the long-held idea that novae erupt in a single, simple blast. Using Georgia State University's CHARA Array in California, a team resolved structures that no single telescope could see – revealing outflows that twist, collide, and sometimes wait weeks before finally breaking free. One eruption held onto its outer layers for more than 50 days before ... [Read More]

Dec 12th, 2025 - Fresh simulations show there is a chance Uranus and Neptune might actually be rock-rich worlds wrapped in thinner icy layers. For generations, school posters have sorted the Solar System into tidy boxes: four small rocky planets near the Sun, two huge gas planets farther out, and, at the edge, a pair of "ice giants" – Uranus and Neptune – packed with water, ammonia, and methane. A new Swiss study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics pokes a hole in that latter classification. Using ... [Read More]

Dec 11th, 2025 - Reading time 3 minutes Earlier this year, a powerful gamma-ray burst traveled through space from a very distant source in the cosmos. The explosion was traced back to the early universe, just millions of years after the Big Bang, but its origin remained unknown. By pointing the Webb telescope toward the ancient mystery, astronomers were able to identify the earliest known aftermath of a star's tragic death. The Webb space telescope observed a supernova that took place when the universe was 730 ... [Read More]

Dec 11th, 2025 - and look to the eastern sky. You'll see a single, dazzling point of light rising into the night — so bright it outshines every star around it. Is it the legendary "Star of Bethlehem"? The explanation is simpler, more predictable and, in many ways, just as impressive. That brilliant "star" is the planet Jupiter, which is now reaching its biggest, brightest and best of the year. Jupiter As The 'Christmas Star' The idea of a "Christmas Star" comes from the Gospel of Matthew, where it's ... [Read More]

Dec 11th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Stars have long raised big questions for astronomers, especially when they look at some of the brightest objects in space and wonder how they formed so fast. These objects are quasars, powered by supermassive black holes that already existed less than a billion years after the Big Bang. Normal stars growing and merging cannot build black holes that heavy in such a short amount of time. The puzzle pushed scientists to look for a more dramatic origin story. One idea was ... [Read More]

Dec 11th, 2025 - Back in the summer this year, scientists were studying unusual objects hovering around Earth. ATLAS, one of the telescopes in NASA's planetary defense network, displayed something that left them scratching their heads. When they first spotted it, the  mysterious interstellar comet was travelling at about 137,000 miles per hour. After getting pulled by Sun's gravity, in October, it sped up at 153,000 miles per hour. Eventually, they realized that the comet, named 3I/ATLAS , was too fast to ... [Read More]

Dec 11th, 2025 - Regular, alternating layers in Gale Crater may have been deposited as the result of tides raised by a moon at least 18 times the mass of Phobos, a study says. Thin layers of sedimentary rock in Mars's Gale Crater suggest that the planet once had a moon much larger than the two that orbit it today,  according to work  to be presented at AGU's Annual Meeting 2025 on 17 December. Unlike the current Martian moons  Phobos  and  Deimos , the gravitational pull of the ... [Read More]

Dec 11th, 2025 - Astronomers have mapped the turbulent edge of the Sun where solar matter manages to escape the Sun's fierce magnetic grip. Reading time 2 minutes Stars are lively, often unpredictable parts of the universe, and many aspects of their physics remain poorly understood. That includes our own Sun, whose fickle weather patterns regularly tamper with Earth's magnetic fields. But a new, first-of-its-kind map of the solar boundary may hint at some answers to the Sun's many mysteries. Astronomers led by ... [Read More]

Dec 10th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Astronomers are now using the first generations of stars and galaxies to understand what really fills most of space. These systems formed when the universe was only a few hundred million years old and they carry clues in their light. The new work looks at galaxies seen by the James Webb Space Telescope and compares them with detailed computer models. By matching real galaxies to simulated ones, scientists find that both cold and relatively heavy warm dark matter ( WDM ) ... [Read More]

Dec 10th, 2025 - NASA has lost contact with a spacecraft that has orbited Mars for more than a decade. Maven, an acronym for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, abruptly stopped communicating with ground stations on Dec. 6. NASA said this week that it was working fine before it went behind the red planet. When it reappeared, there was only silence. Launched in 2013 and having entered Mars' orbit in September 2014, Maven began studying the upper Martian atmosphere and its interaction with the solar wind. ... [Read More]