Is there evidence of a planet ever existing between Mars and Jupiter? MarkSmithtown, New York This splendid question gives us an opportunity to distinguish between what we know and what we believe might be true. First, we know that myriad small bodies orbit the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. These objects are the asteroids that comprise the mainContinue reading "Was there ever a planet between Mars and Jupiter? "

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The new Hestia telescope by Vaonis is the third of the company’s innovative instruments I have reviewed, and once again, I’m impressed. Vaonis named their creation for the Greek goddess of the hearth and home, and released it after a successful 2023 Kickstarter campaign which raised $4.1 million in just a month. The Hestia isContinue reading "Review: Astronomy tests Vaonis’ Hestia telescope for your smartphone"

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Sixty years ago, a fleet of sleek little spaceships paved the way for America to land a man on the Moon. Project Gemini was a series of two-man, Earth-orbital missions that pioneered rendezvous, docking, and maneuvering in-space, as well as spacewalking — all of which had to be perfected before there was any chance ofContinue reading "How Project Gemini changed spaceflight"

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Author(s): Katherine Wright

Elena Pinetti searches for dark matter using JWST calibration images that other researchers discard.

[Physics 18, 73] Published Fri Apr 04, 2025

Fabrizio Melandri from Voltana, Italy The partial solar eclipse of March 29, 2025, gave viewers along the U.S. Eastern Seaboard a view of “devil’s horns” — the horns of a partially eclipsed Sun emerging from the horizon at sunrise. This photographer captured this phenomenon from Monticello, Maine, with a 4-inch f/7 refractor and Nikon DSLR.

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The first astronaut crew to fly directly over Earth’s poles splashed down safely on Friday after nearly four days on orbit. Civilian astronauts Chun Wang, Jannicke Mikkelsen, Rabea Rogge, and Eric Phillips — the international crew of SpaceX’s private Fram2 mission — landed around 12:19 p.m. EDT and exited their SpaceX Dragon capsule without assistance, allowing researchers to study how theContinue reading "Fram2 astronauts splash down after historic polar spaceflight"

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The Mars Curiosity rover has found the largest organic molecules yet on the Red Planet. Organic molecules are the building blocks of life, although they can also be produced by geological processes. While there’s currently no way to prove whether these particular molecules were formed from processes associated with life, their very discovery shows thatContinue reading "Curiosity discovers largest organic molecules yet on Mars"

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Sky This Week is brought to you in part by Celestron. Friday, April 4This evening, the roughly half-illuminated face of the Moon hangs in Gemini, high in the south an hour after sunset. First Quarter Moon occurs at 10:15 P.M. EDT. The two brightest stars in Gemini are Castor (magnitude 1.6) and Pollux (magnitude 1.2).Continue reading "The Sky This Week from April 4 to 11: Catch your last views of Uranus"

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Author(s): Katherine Wright

Researchers have demonstrated a method for suppressing unwanted electrons in bright electron beam sources.

[Physics 18, s40] Published Thu Apr 03, 2025

As World War II drew to a close, the Allies were eager to get their hands on one of the most technologically amazing yet terrifying weapons in Nazi Germany’s armamentarium: the V-2 rocket. A long-range, liquid-fueled supersonic guided missile, the V-2 could carry a 2,000-pound (910 kilograms) warhead a staggering 200 miles (320 kilometers) fromContinue reading "Megaroc: The British manned space program that almost was"

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Andrei Pleskatsevich, taken from Minsk, Belarus The Seagull Nebula is a region of nebulosity lying on the border between constellations Monoceros and Canis Major; the emission nebula forming the bird’s “head” carries the catalog designation IC 2177. The imager used a 3-inch f/4.5 scope and one-shot color camera to take 10 hours of exposure.

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Gitanjali Rao was honored as the inaugural recipient of the Stephen Hawking Medal Junior, an award created to inspire young innovators.

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Sky watchers The University of Arizona PressTucson, AZ Star Gazers: Finding Joy in the Night Sky, by prolific astronomy writer David H. Levy, is a collection of personal essays celebrating amateur and professional astronomy. Bringing together his decades of sky-watching experience, this 172-page book gives readers insight into Levy’s thoughts on James Webb Space Telescope,Continue reading "Spring for new astronomy products this month"

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Author(s): Katherine Wright

Transforming an MRI brain scan into a hyperbolic network of nodes allows researchers to detect brain connectivity disruption caused by Alzheimer’s disease.

[Physics 18, 70] Published Wed Apr 02, 2025

Author(s): Ryan Wilkinson

A new theory unveils the exotic low-energy excitations of quasicrystals formed of quantum particles.

[Physics 18, s39] Published Wed Apr 02, 2025

The Federal Aviation Administration has completed its investigations looking into “mishaps” that occurred during Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket launch and SpaceX’s Starship Flight 7 in January. On Jan. 16, Blue Origin’s New Glenn-1 reached orbit on its debut flight. While the launch was successful, the rocket lost its lower stage during its descent. Later thatContinue reading "FAA concludes Blue Origin, SpaceX January ‘mishap’ investigations"

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he first commercially built rocket to lift off from continental Europe came tumbling back to Earth within seconds. But its manufacturer considers the mission a success. The test flight, “Going Full Spectrum,” was the debut launch of Norwegian company Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum, a two-stage orbital launch vehicle designed to compete with SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9Continue reading "Debut flight of Isar Aerospace Spectrum rocket ends in explosion"

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From the editor: As the extraordinary pace of astronomical discovery carries on, we increasingly see that the stuff of life is spread throughout the cosmos. Life, even complex life, must be common out there. We know of several hundred billion stars in our galaxy, at least 100 billion galaxies, and planets around most of theContinue reading "Earth as a planet"

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My childhood fascination with the night sky led me to study astronomy and physics at university. By my second year, I was operating the telescope atop the physics building, tracking celestial objects — just like astronomy student Kate Dibiasky in the disaster movie Don’t Look Up.I never imagined I’d also soon find myself alerting othersContinue reading "Solving the climate equation"

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In many ways, Tony Fadell built the digital world we live in. At the turn of the millennium, his efforts to build a pocket-sized, hard-disk-based device that could hold 1,000 songs in MP3 format caught the attention of Apple. Within months, he had been hired by the firm, and less than a year after hisContinue reading "How to build climate solutions: An interview with Tony Fadell"

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Author(s): Charles Day

Observations by the JWST observatory of a star-free super-Jupiter reveal large-scale inhomogeneities in its atmosphere.

[Physics 18, 69] Published Tue Apr 01, 2025

Author(s): Philip Ball

The messy breakup of a liquid droplet that occurs when it hits a surface can be suppressed by giving the droplet an electrical charge.

[Physics 18, 74] Published Tue Apr 01, 2025

Author(s): Rachel Berkowitz

The fidelity of a complex system’s representation as a network model depends on the diversity of its interconnections.

[Physics 18, s43] Published Tue Apr 01, 2025

Author(s): Daniele Marinazzo

A new study of complex systems supports a growing trend that focuses more on analyzing a system’s collective behavior rather than on trying to uncover the underlying interaction mechanisms.

[Physics 18, 71] Published Mon Mar 31, 2025

Author(s): David Ehrenstein

Measurements of millions of galaxies suggest that dark energy changes over time and is more complicated than previously thought.

[Physics 18, 72] Published Fri Mar 28, 2025

Author(s): Susan Curtis

Language models such as ChatGPT could help university educators provide more consistent and transparent grades for introductory-level physics exams.

[Physics 18, 67] Published Thu Mar 27, 2025

Author(s): Charles Day

An intense x-ray pulse from a free-electron laser sends a protein’s atoms flying off in directions that reveal the protein’s structure.

[Physics 18, s37] Published Thu Mar 27, 2025

Next week, a crew of private astronauts is expected to go where no one has gone before. Chun Wang, the crypto entrepreneur who purchased the Fram2 mission from SpaceX in August, announced Friday that the three-to-five-day sojourn — the first human spaceflight to fly directly over the Earth’s poles — is scheduled to launch fromContinue reading "SpaceX’s Fram2 mission will aim for the poles"

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Author(s): Michael Schirber

Experiments with erbium ions show that they can be used to create entangled photons in the telecom band—an important step in building quantum repeaters.

[Physics 18, s41] Published Wed Mar 26, 2025

After a scrubbed test flight on Monday, a German spaceflight company has determined its next opportunity to launch the first commercial orbital launch vehicle from mainland Europe. Munich-based Isar Aerospace postponed the debut launch of its Spectrum rocket, citing unfavorable winds at Norway’s Andøya Spaceport. On Tuesday, Isar said it will now target Thursday atContinue reading "German firm eyes Thursday for Europe’s first commercial orbital launch"

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Astronomers have finally identified the source of mysterious radio waves from deep space, tracing the signals back to an unusual stellar pair locked in a swift orbit, flashing out their location for the universe to hear. In research published March 12 in Nature Astronomy, a team of astrophysicists finally found the source of strange, minute-longContinue reading "This dead star is still sending us radio signals"

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The quest to send humans to Mars is on: US President Donald Trump talked about it in his inauguration speech this year. Such an epic endeavor could help to answer fundamental questions about the Red Planet, including the biggest question of all: Did Mars once host life — and does it still? Central to thoseContinue reading "Ghost rivers, hidden lakes: The long search for water on Mars"

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Author(s): Katherine Wright

New experiments with virtual reality suggest that locusts do not follow traditional rules of collective behavior.

[Physics 18, 66] Published Tue Mar 25, 2025

Greg Polanski from Kanata, Ontario, Canada The ever-popular Rosette Nebula (NGC 2237–9/46) lies 10° east of Betelgeuse and is an impressive telescopic sight. Deep imaging reveals the line of dark Bok globules — small dense clouds where baby stars are forming — that appear to lie suspended within the nebula. The imager took 12⅓ hoursContinue reading "Bathed in blue"

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To detect neutrinos, scientists use vast observatories located underground, shielded from cosmic ray interference. These detectors rely on Cherenkov radiation, a bluish light produced when high-speed muons, created by rare neutrino collisions, travel faster than light through water or ice. Photomultiplier tubes amplify this light, allowing astronomers to trace the neutrino’s path and energy.

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Author(s): Katrin Erath-Dulitz

The heating effect of microwaves has long been used to accelerate reactions. A new experiment shows that microwaves can also excite molecules into a less reactive state.

[Physics 18, 63] Published Mon Mar 24, 2025

Astronomers have discovered more than 300 exoplanetary systems that have three or more known planets. Most of these planets are about the same size and spaced close together, earning them the moniker “peas in a pod.” They also orbit near their stars, in many cases closer than Mercury is to the Sun.  Our solar system,Continue reading "Our solar system is not as unusual as we thought"

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Could the nearby star Sirius B explode as a type Ia supernova, like some other white dwarf stars in binary star systems have? Bruce MasonEncinitas, California A type Ia supernova occurs when a white dwarf — the cooling remnant of an aging star — draws hydrogen from a companion sun. When the dwarf reaches 1.4Continue reading "Will Sirius B explode as a type Ia supernova?"

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In this episode, Astronomy magazine Editor Dave Eicher invites you to view an unusual event: a partial eclipse of the Sun. Depending on where you are, you might see the Moon cover up to 90 percent of the bright solar disk. Remember, however, even 10 percent of the Sun is dangerous to look at, so wear approvedContinue reading "This Week in Astronomy with Dave Eicher: A Solar Eclipse"

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Greg Meyer from Phoenix, Arizona This dusty figure of the Baby Eagle Nebula (LBN 777) is part of the larger Taurus Molecular Cloud. The dust is dimly lit by young stars within the cloud; the brownish color gives away the presence of larger dust grains. This image comprises nearly 24 hours of LRGB exposure withContinue reading "Cosmic fledgling"

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Author(s): Mark Buchanan

Experiments suggest that cells pack in more ordered patterns as the relative sizes of their nuclei grow.

[Physics 18, 65] Published Fri Mar 21, 2025

Author(s): Matteo Rini

Microsoft’s announcement of achieving a milestone in a potentially transformative approach to quantum computing is met with skepticism by researchers attending the APS Global Summit.

[Physics 18, 68] Published Fri Mar 21, 2025

The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is one of the Milky Way’s closest neighbors. It’s a small, irregular galaxy that orbits the Milky Way, and is an easy naked-eye object from the Southern Hemisphere. As one of the only galaxies outside our own where telescopes can resolve individual stars and small scale structures, astronomers love toContinue reading "Our near galactic neighbor might have a supermassive black hole"

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