For millions of years following the Big Bang, after the universe’s roiling soup of particles had cooled, the cosmos was a dark and boring place. There were no stars to make light. No familiar swirls of galaxies. Certainly no planets. And the entire universe was shrouded in neutral hydrogen gas. Then, perhaps 100 million yearsContinue reading "When everything in the universe changed"

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Sixty-five years ago, the USSR shocked the world by sending the first robotic emissary from Earth to the Moon. The September 1959 impact of Luna 2 on northeastern Mare Imbrium was a stunning achievement, reaching the Moon less than two years after the launch of Sputnik 1 ushered in the Space Age. The event helpedContinue reading "How Artemis will land humans on the Moon"

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Summer nights mean late sunsets and lingering twilight, hardly a recipe for great night-sky observing. But this January exceeds expectations with fine views of four bright planets. Venus punches through the deepening twilight first. The brilliant planet brightens from magnitude –4.4 to magnitude –4.7 during January, far surpassing any other planet or star. Venus reachesContinue reading "January 2025: What’s in the Southern Hemisphere sky this month?"

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All the major planets are on view this month. Venus has a fine evening conjunction with Saturn and Jupiter is high in Taurus. Uranus and Neptune are binocular targets, while Mars reaches opposition. Early morning reveals Mercury. Additionally, on the 9th the Moon crosses the Pleiades (M45), and on the 13th it hides Mars inContinue reading "January 2025: What’s in the sky this month? The Moon occults Mars and the Pleiades, plus Mars reaches opposition"

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In 2024, space exploration dazzled the world. NASA’s Europa Clipper began its journey to study Jupiter’s moon Europa. SpaceX’s Starship achieved its first successful landing, a critical milestone for future deep space missions. China made headlines with the Chang’e 6 mission, which successfully returned samples from the far side of the Moon. Meanwhile, the InternationalContinue reading "Coming in 2025: From new commercial Moon landers to asteroid investigations, expect a slate of exciting space missions"

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As part of its extensive slate of observations, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) recently took a closer look at Pluto’s moon Charon, where it helped scientists to make a surprising discovery.  Charon, the largest and most well-studied of Pluto’s five moons, was first visited in 2015 as part of the groundbreaking New Horizons mission,Continue reading "JWST reveals surprising surface chemistry is occurring on Pluto’s moon Charon"

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Gravitational lensing (an effect that causes distant objects to be magnified or stretched by the gravity of a large object along their line of sight) is one of astronomers’ most useful observing tools. In work published earlier this month, a group of astronomers and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) used this technique to theirContinue reading "Newfound galaxy gives glimpse into the Milky Way’s past"

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Andrea Arbizzi, taken from Modena, Italy The constellation Auriga the Charioteer is home to a close trio of iconic nebulae (from left to right): IC 417 (the Spider Nebula), IC 410 (home of the “Tadpoles”), and IC 405 (the Flaming Star Nebula). The imager used a 3.5-inch scope to obtain 29⅓ hours of exposure, theContinue reading "A trio in Auriga"

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The water that makes up the oceans acted as a key ingredient for the development of life on Earth. However, scientists still do not know where the water here on Earth came from in the first place. One leading idea is that space rocks such as comets and asteroids delivered water to the Earth throughContinue reading "‘Dark comets’ could reveal how Earth got its oceans"

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Emmanuel Delgadillo from Jalisco, Mexico The Angel Nebula (NGC 2170) lies in Monoceros and features hydrogen gas glowing red, as well as reflected blue light from young, hot stars. The imager took nearly 7 hours of exposure with a one-shot color camera on a 6-inch scope.

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Friday, December 27By 8 P.M. local time, Gemini is well above the eastern horizon, rising to the left of the widely recognizable constellation Orion. The Twins’ two standout stars are Castor and Pollux in the northeastern reaches of the constellation, but tonight, look toward the opposite end of this star pattern: southwestern Gemini, near Orion’sContinue reading "The Sky This Week from December 27 to January 3: The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks"

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Although these frosty fields look like a picturesque winter wonderland blanketed in snow, this ice is actually composed of frozen carbon dioxide over the southern Australe Scopuli region of Mars. The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express spotted this scene using its High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) during its 23,324th orbit of the Red Planet.Continue reading "Mars Express captures the beauty of a martian frostscape"

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How do spacecraft avoid collisions when passing through the asteroid belt? Val-David SmithsonPleasant Grove, Utah Let’s begin by reviewing some astronomical “history”: Han Solo and his rebel cohorts Leia Organa, Chewbacca, and C-3PO are nestled uncomfortably together in the Millennium Falcon’s cockpit while their ship is pursued by a battalion of Imperial fighters. Unable toContinue reading "How do spacecraft avoid collisions in the asteroid belt?"

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Over the past 200 years, astronomers have cataloged over a million asteroids in the solar system’s main belt, down to the size of around a kilometer in diameter. But smaller asteroids were elusive — until recently, when a team of scientists utilized data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to spot some tiny asteroidsContinue reading "Smallest main-belt asteroids ever detected found hiding in JWST data"

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Find meteorites, scale models, flown-in-space artifacts, and more at The Space Store.

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SpaceX has the FAA’s green light to launch more test missions of its colossal Starship spacecraft, the largest and most powerful rocket to ever fly. The aviation regulator last week issued SpaceX a modified Part 450 launch license, allowing the firm to conduct multiple missions of Starship and the Super Heavy booster under the configurationContinue reading "FAA approves SpaceX for more Starship test missions"

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John Quach 2024 was a banner year for aurora chasers, as the Sun reached solar maximum. This shot of the aurorae dancing above Mount Stuart in the Central Cascades of Washington was taken on Oct. 10 at 7:30 p.m. local time. The photographer used a Canon DSLR and 11mm f/2.8 lens to take a singleContinue reading "All lit up"

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While black holes are perplexing at any size, some of the most mysterious are hypothetical primordial black holes, those that sprung into existence in the first second after the Big Bang and some of which are featherweights on the black hole scale.  Because black holes collapse matter down to nothing, a black hole with theContinue reading "Want to find a black hole? Pick up a rock"

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The recent furor over drones, planes, helicopters, aliens, or whatever centered on aerial sightings in New Jersey is causing a flap. Given the huge number of sightings and the tenor of alarm from many, the Federal Aviation Administration has issued 22 temporary flight restrictions along the approach paths to Newark International Airport and a fewContinue reading "You’re almost certainly not being visited by aliens"

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Plenty of worlds in our solar system have oceans — and not all of them are made of water. Io, Jupiter’s innermost moon, was purported to have one made of basalt and bits of sulfur just under its surface, powering its volcanic eruptions. But according to a study published in Nature last week, a globalContinue reading "Io’s magma ocean may not exist after all"

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Anushtup Roychoudhury from Kolkata, India The crowded core of the Milky Way (at top) and the colorful Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex (at right) hang over the Drang-Drung Glacier in India’s Ladakh region. The imager captured the sky with a Sony mirrorless camera and a 50mm lens, taking 2-minute subframes at f/3.5 and ISO 2500 forContinue reading "Cosmic confluence"

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Friday, December 20Now that the evening sky is Moon-free, it’s time to aim for fainter targets, including 12th-magnitude Comet 333P/LINEAR. Located in far northern Cygnus, close to where that constellation’s border meets those of Cepheus and Draco, LINEAR sits some 8.4° northeast of magnitude 3.8 Kappa (κ) Cygni tonight. The comet is roughly halfway alongContinue reading "The Sky This Week from December 20 to 27: Welcome the winter solstice"

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Meet HD 65907, an imposter. It’s a star that appears far too young for its age. Astronomers have finally cracked the case of this mysterious object, which has not led a normal life. Instead, the star appears to be the result of the merger of two much older stars. Astronomers have a name for starsContinue reading "‘Blue straggler’ likely born from a collision of stars"

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Chris Schur from Payson, Arizona A magnificent arcade of coronal loops appeared on the Sun’s limb Sept. 1, 2024, captured here with a 3.2-inch refractor, CMOS camera, and a Calcium-K filter. These arcing features are caused by glowing plasma trapped in the Sun’s magnetic field. While often seen in Hα, they are less frequently visibleContinue reading "Calcium arcade"

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Earth and the Moon are forever locked in a gravitational embrace that has played a critical role in determining the fate of both worlds. Although they have grown more distant since their formative years, new research published today in Nature shows just how powerful their attraction was in their youth: According to the study, Earth’sContinue reading "Earth’s gravity gave the Moon an early facelift"

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Winter does not officially arrive until the solstice. The 2024 winter solstice — the precise moment when the Sun appears farthest south in the sky — is at 4:21 a.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST) on Saturday, Dec. 21, in the Northern Hemisphere, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory. Throughout the Northern Hemisphere, the day ofContinue reading "Why the winter solstice is the longest night every year, and when it happens in 2024"

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Veiled in gas and clouds, the Milky Way’s center does not easily give up secrets. The initial detection of its supermassive black hole (SMBH) decades ago posed as many riddles as it solved, including the puzzling absence of binary stars around it. The hot, massive stars that populate the region are almost always found asContinue reading "Binary star system finally discovered near Milky Way center"

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In this episode, Dave Eicher invites you to observe the nearly full Moon as it passes Mars on the evening of December 17. Both objects closely follow the Sun’s apparent path through the stars, called the ecliptic. This time, however, they’ll be quite close, only about 1 degree apart. That distance is twice the diameterContinue reading "The Moon passes Mars: This Week in Astronomy with Dave Eicher"

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Thirteen years before any other woman joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics – or the NACA, NASA’s predecessor – in a technical role, a young lab assistant named Pearl Young was making waves in the agency. Her legacy as an outspoken and persistent advocate for herself and her team would pave the way for women inContinue reading "Pearl Young, the first woman to work in a technical role at NASA, overcame barriers and ‘raised hell’"

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Massimo Tamajo from Syracuse, Sicily, Italy A Last Quarter Moon lies above an erupting Mount Etna in this shot taken in the early morning of July 28, 2024. The imager used a Nikon Z 6II camera and 150mm lens at f/8 to take a 2-second exposure at ISO 2000.

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What became of the discarded lunar modules from the Apollo missions? James JarvisSan Francisco, California All but one of the Apollo program’s used lunar modules either crashed into the Moon’s surface or burned up in Earth’s atmosphere. Apollo 10’s lunar module, Snoopy, is still out there, drifting aimlessly around the solar system, waiting for someContinue reading "What happened to the jettisoned Apollo lunar modules? "

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Citing environmental concerns, 120 astronomers and researchers implored the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in an Oct. 24 letter to halt launches of internet satellites like SpaceX’s Starlink. The letter, which was organized by the Public Interest Research Group, also urged FCC Space Bureau Chief Julie Kearney to investigate the potential negative environmental and health impactsContinue reading "Astronomers urge FCC to research impacts of space junk"

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In this episode, Dave Eicher invites you to observe the nearly full Moon as it passes Mars on the evening of December 17. Both objects closely follow the Sun’s apparent path through the stars, called the ecliptic. This time, however, they’ll be quite close, only about 1 degree apart. That distance is twice the diameterContinue reading "The Moon passes Mars: This Week in Astronomy with Dave Eicher"

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Although it’s visible all year round from mid- and high-northern latitudes, now is a great time of the year for newcomers to stargazing to look for and find the famous star pattern known as the Big Dipper or the Plough. Many people grow up believing the Big Dipper is a constellation, but it’s not. It’sContinue reading "Explore the Big Dipper this winter"

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Beginning in late November during the waning phases of the Moon, and then again in late December, you can investigate the possibility of a curious optical phenomenon. It involves a bright planet passing by a large and diffuse star cluster visible with the naked eye. On the evening of June 13, 2023, I went outContinue reading "The Red Planet lights up a famous star cluster this month"

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Abhijit Patil, taken from Alabama Hills, California The jewels of the northern Milky Way stand out above this rock formation — from the Pleiades (M45) and the California Nebula (NGC 1499) on the right up to the Heart and Soul Nebulae (IC 1805 and IC 1848). At top center lies the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), ourContinue reading "The winter Milky Way"

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Off the coast of Baja California in December 2022, sun sparkled over the rippling sea as waves sloshed around the USS Portland dock ship. Navy officials on the deck scrutinized the sky in search of a sign. The glow appeared suddenly. A tiny spot at first, it gradually grew to a round circle falling atContinue reading "OPINION: An aerospace expert on NASA’s Orion crew capsule heat shield issues during Artemis I"

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To find advanced civilizations, you don’t need to go hunting for megastructures or hypothetical space probes. You could find civilizations just a few centuries ahead of us by looking for a key element: hydrogen.  While hydrogen is everywhere, not all of it is of the same type. Several hydrogen isotopes exist, and deuterium is oneContinue reading "Could deuterium be the key to finding aliens? "

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At its current solar maximum, our Sun has been pretty busy of late, flinging parts of itself at Earth and raising concerns about effects on satellites and power grids while also gracing us with incredible aurorae. Solar and space-weather scientists have been busy too. They’ve just released a mammoth, nearly 800-page report to set prioritiesContinue reading "What’s in the National Academies’ Decadal Survey for Solar and Space Physics?"

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Friday, December 13The bright gibbous Moon passes 4° north of Uranus at 5 A.M. EST. At that time, the Moon sits in Aries the Ram, while Uranus is just over the border in far western Taurus the Bull. The two set together around 5 A.M. local time.  You might have better luck spotting the iceContinue reading "The Sky This Week from December 13 to 20: 2024’s last Full Moon"

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The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and FAA oversee investigations of aircraft accidents in U.S. airspace. But what happens when a crash occurs hundreds of millions of miles away in outer space? Engineers with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California and uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) manufacturer Aerovironment, a prominent aerospace and defense contractor, areContinue reading "NASA conducts first otherworldly aircraft accident investigation"

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Solar flares are bright flashes of light from the Sun that release large amounts of electromagnetic radiation. And while normal flares can release as much as 1025 joules of energy, so-called superflares, observed on other stars, are up to 10,000 times more powerful. Even normal solar flares and the charged particles that often accompany themContinue reading "Sun-like stars experience superflares roughly once per century"

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The constellation Taurus the Bull is an easy one to find in the Northern Hemisphere’s fall and winter skies. It stands opposite the Sun at the beginning of December. The head of the figure is a large V of stars, and standing out among them is the ruddy 1st-magnitude star Aldebaran (Alpha [α] Tauri) markingContinue reading "The best deep-sky targets in Taurus"

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Emanuele La Barbera, taken from Piano Battaglia, Sicily, Italy The Pleiades (M45) star cluster is one of the most famous naked-eye objects in the sky, but only deep photographic exposures reveal the complexity of the fine strands of dust surrounding the stars. This imager took 28 hours of exposure with a 3.4-inch scope with aContinue reading "Hair of the Pleiades"

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We have only one example of biology forming in the universe – life on Earth. But what if life can form in other ways? How do you look for alien life when you don’t know what alien life might look like? These questions are preoccupying astrobiologists, who are scientists who look for life beyond Earth. Astrobiologists haveContinue reading "How we might look for life in the universe — even if we can’t recognize it"

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PRESS RELEASEFor immediate release Contact:Erik Spangenberg(203)-550-3196erik@firecrown.com CHATTANOOGA, TN — The Space Store, an e-commerce retailer specializing in space-themed merchandise, has opened its first physical retail space in downtown Chattanooga. The Space Store got its start in 1996, as one of the first e-commerce businesses on the internet. For the past 28 years, The Space StoreContinue reading "The largest space merch retailer in the world opens its first brick-and-mortar retail store in downtown Chattanooga"

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A longtime amateur astronomer shares his favorite apps for enjoying time under the starry skies.

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It’s back: Astronomy magazine’s free downloadable Sky Guide, your preview of everything happening in the sky next year.  Mars opens 2025 by reaching opposition the night of Jan. 15/16, when it shines brighter and appears larger through a telescope than at any time since December 2022. You’ll find it in Gemini, near the heads ofContinue reading "A look ahead to the sky next year: Sky Guide 2025"

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Is it possible to view Pluto from a backyard telescope? Ethan SpykerWadsworth, Ohio If I’m being honest, Pluto is difficult for an amateur astronomer to see. A standard 8-inch telescope just won’t do the trick. That’s because Pluto hasn’t been brighter than 14th magnitude since the fall of 2004. It reached perihelion (its closest approach toContinue reading "Can you view Pluto in a backyard telescope?"

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In this episode, Dave Eicher invites you to observe the Geminid meteor shower, which will peak during the early morning hours of December 14. The best time to view them is after midnight, but you may see some in the evening hours as well. Get comfortable and look straight overhead for fast moving (and quicklyContinue reading "This Week in Astronomy with Dave Eicher: the Geminid meteor shower"

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In 1874, James Nasmyth and James Carpenter published a remarkable book: The Moon: Considered as a Planet, a World, and a Satellite. Lavishly illustrated with spectacular images of lunar features based on their own observations and exquisite plaster models, it served as a platform for the authors to advance their views on the nature andContinue reading "The Moon as it never was"

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Santiago Ramos Avila, taken from Moratalla, Spain The dust clouds in this field near the border of Libra and Ophiuchus take on the appearance of an eagle, with a bright star (HD 142269) as its eye. The brighter emission in this field is associated with LBN 10, and the darker clouds — especially around theContinue reading "A dusty eagle"

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The NASA project NEOWISE, which has given astronomers a detailed view of near-Earth objects – some of which could strike the Earth – ended its mission and burned on re-entering the atmosphere after over a decade. On a clear night, the sky is full of bright objects – from stars, large planets and galaxies toContinue reading "A look back at NEOWISE, the NASA mission that cataloged objects around Earth for over a decade"

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Although it completed its mission in July, NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) still has interesting archival data covering the solar system thanks to the team at the Infrared Processing & Analysis Center (IPAC) at Caltech. After the spacecraft burned up in the atmosphere in November, IPAC completed a final data release ofContinue reading "NASA releases new infrared images from retired NEOWISE mission"

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For the second time this year, NASA has pushed back its timeline to land the first Americans on the Moon since the Apollo era. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson on Thursday revealed that due to an issue with the heat shield on NASA’s Orion capsule discovered during the 2022 Artemis 1 test mission, the Artemis 3Continue reading "NASA pushes first Moon landing since Apollo era to 2027"

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Friday, December 6Asteroid 15 Eunomia is making its way through central Auriga this month, passing numerous deep-sky objects along the way.  By 9 P.M. local time this evening, the asteroid is nearly 50° high in the eastern sky. It’s skimming close to 5th-magnitude Phi (φ) Aurigae, just 1° east of the star tonight. Now magnitudeContinue reading "The Sky This Week from December 6 to 13: Jupiter reaches opposition"

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President-elect Donald Trump has picked private astronaut and billionaire tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman as the administrator of NASA. Trump confirmed the nomination on Wednesday in a post on X. “Jared will drive NASA’s mission of discovery and inspiration, paving the way for groundbreaking achievements in Space science, technology, and exploration,” Trump wrote in the post. “OverContinue reading "Trump chooses first private spacewalker Jared Isaacman as NASA head"

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In a study published today in Science, researchers say they have solved a climate enigma — the inexplicable surge in global temperature in 2023, rising faster than climate models predicted. By analyzing satellite data and weather records, a team of climatologists in Germany have found that the culprit is likely fewer clouds at low altitudesContinue reading "Low-level clouds play surprise role in global warming"

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After years of effort, astronomers at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) announced they managed to capture the first closeup image of a star beyond our galaxy. This remarkable achievement offers more than just stunning visuals — it provides a rare glimpse into the final moments of a star that will inevitably explode as a spectacularContinue reading "This distant star is about to die — and astronomers caught it in close-up"

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I’m in love. I don’t often begin a review by saying that a product has wooed me, but the Celestron Origin Home Observatory has done just that.Not that I’m surprised. Since it first introduced the venerable C8 Schmidt-Cassegrain in 1970, Celestron has established itself as a leading manufacturer of cutting-edge telescopes and accessories for amateurContinue reading "REVIEW: The Celestron Origin is the smartscope powerhouse we’ve been waiting for"

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UPDATE: Proba-3 launched successfully Thursday morning at 5:34 A.M. EST (10:34 GMT). You can watch a replay of the launch here. In a fabulous feat of formation flying, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Proba-3 mission, now set to launch Thursday morning, will fly two spacecraft 490 feet (150 meters, or one and a half footballContinue reading "Proba-3 launches, ready to eclipse the Sun"

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You don’t want to miss Jupiter this month. The giant planet reaches opposition and peak visibility December 7 against the stunning backdrop of Taurus the Bull. Shining at magnitude –2.8, Jupiter dominates the northeastern sky once darkness falls. Although the gas giant lies well north of the celestial equator — less than optimal for usContinue reading "December 2024: What’s in the Southern Hemisphere sky this month?"

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Most people associate the discovery that faraway galaxies are receding from us — and thus, that the universe is expanding — with Edwin Hubble, thanks to his landmark 1929 paper. It was one of the most fundamental discoveries in the history of science. But Hubble did not discover the expansion. In the 1910s, a LowellContinue reading "Is it time to rename the Hubble constant?"

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Vega, located in the constellation Lyra, is the fifth-brightest star in the night sky. It is known to be surrounded a disk of particle debris that’s almost 100 billion miles (160 billion kilometers) in diameter. The star and its orbiting disk have been photographed countless times by several observatories and satellites, although it was onlyContinue reading "What is Vega’s smooth-surface secret?"

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Hao Liu, taken in Nanjing, China The name Tsuchinshan was on world’s lips this year when Comet C/2023 A3 — otherwise known as Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS — burst into naked-eye view. The name refers to Tuschinshan Observatory (or Purple Mountain Observatory), whose facility in Xuyi was the first to discover the comet. In this image, theContinue reading "Tsuchinshan, take a bow"

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Why do we not see effects of dark matter in our solar system and other nearby star systems? Curran RodeAmmannsville, Texas Dark matter refers to material that does not absorb, reflect, or emit any electromagnetic radiation. Astronomers have ascertained the existence of dark matter through the gravitational influence it exerts over visible matter. In fact,Continue reading "Does dark matter affect our solar system?"

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The story of the inner early Solar System goes something like this: Billions of years ago, there were three rocky worlds with oceans of liquid water. Perhaps all three could have been primed for life. But as Mars lost its atmosphere and Venus’ atmosphere experienced a runaway greenhouse effect, only Earth could support life byContinue reading "Venus may never have had oceans"

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In this episode, Dave Eicher invites you to observe the Moon passing by Saturn on the evening of December 7. Both objects at the time will be in the constellation Aquarius the Water-bearer. The Moon will be 43 percent illuminated, or nearly at its First Quarter phase. The Ringed Planet will lie 4 degrees toContinue reading "The Moon passes Saturn: This Week in Astronomy with Dave Eicher"

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It may be cold this month, but now is a great time to get outside and explore Jupiter’s beauty and might. The fifth planet will not only reach opposition on Dec. 7, it will also be at perigee (closest to Earth) on Dec. 6, putting on its biggest and brightest show of the year. KnownContinue reading "Watch Jupiter’s moons in action this month"

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Universal manual Penguin Random HouseNew York, NY The beauty and science of space combine in the book Smithsonian Atlas of Space. This 400-page hardback, created by NASA’s Chief Historian Roger D. Launius, features illustrations, maps, and images detailing humanity’s understanding of the universe from ancient times to modern day. It also includes profiles of someContinue reading "Festive astronomy products for everyone on your list"

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Jupiter reaches its best apparition in a decade for northern observers and offers a wealth of detail. Joining in late evening is brilliant Mars, now a month from opposition. Saturn is visible in the early evening, along with Venus soon after sunset. Uranus and Neptune remain visible with binoculars, and Mercury makes a fine morningContinue reading "December 2024: What’s in the sky this month? Jupiter reaches its best Northern Hemisphere opposition in a decade"

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Behyar Bakhshandeh from Carlsbad, California Resembling an outstretched hand, the Helping Hand in Cassiopeia consists of the dark nebulae LDN 1355/7/8, which overlie a region of reflection nebulosity cataloged as LBN 643. This imager took 9 hours of exposure on a 4.2-inch scope in LRGB filters.

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If you have a telescope, or access to one, now’s the time to point it at Jupiter. The largest planet in our solar system reaches opposition December 7. That means it’s directly opposite the Sun from our viewpoint here on Earth. It rises at sunset, sets at sunrise, and is visible all night.  During theContinue reading "Jupiter reaches opposition this weekend: How to see it"

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Chattanooga, Tennessee, is a favorite city of mine. Not only is it an incredibly beautiful place, with Moccasin Bend in the Tennessee River tucked near the downtown area, but breathtaking views of the whole region await from the towering plateaus of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, arranged neatly around the city’s perimeter. Moreover, for aContinue reading "Firecrown opens revolutionary Space Store in Chattanooga"

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Friday, November 29Pegasus the Winged Horse might be the most well-known horse-themed star pattern in the sky, but he is not alone. Once you find Pegasus, slowly sinking in the west this evening after sunset, next locate Enif, the star that typically is drawn marking Pegasus’ nose or mouth. Just below (west of) this starContinue reading "The Sky This Week from November 29 to December 6: The Moon meets Venus"

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Through the ages, humans have tried to preserve their knowledge and treasures in various repositories, and some of those storehouses have been massive in scale. The library of Ashurbanipal, assembled 700 years before the life of Jesus of Nazareth, is the oldest known collection of human knowledge. Ashurbanipal located his collection of 30,000 cuneiform tabletsContinue reading "How the Moon can save Earth"

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Team ShaRA; data acquired via Chilescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile The latest collaborative processing effort from Team ShaRA targets the Small Magellanic Cloud, working with 13.7 hours of data captured with a cooled CCD camera and 200mm f/2 Nikon lens operated by the Chilescope service. Numerous star-forming emission nebulae are visible, as are details inContinue reading "No small task"

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Astronauts aboard the International Space Station may be far from family and friends this Thanksgiving, but will still enjoy a festive meal. The SpaceX CRS-31 supply mission that docked Nov. 5 carried some 2,119 pounds (961 kilograms) of crew supplies. Among those supplies are holiday treats for the eight astronauts currently manning the station, whichContinue reading "How astronauts celebrate Thanksgiving in space"

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The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) shows off its infrared capabilities once again in new imaging of the well-known Sombrero Galaxy, otherwise known as Messier 104. By resolving the thickly textured dust clouds in the outer disk and toning down the brilliant central star glow, JWST shows a whole new side of the famous galaxy.Continue reading "The Sombrero Galaxy doffs its cap to the power of JWST"

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NASA has picked SpaceX and Blue Origin to deliver a lunar rover and habitat to the moon within the next decade. The space agency last week announced it will assign two lunar cargo demonstration missions—one to each partner—under the companies’ contracts to build human landing systems (HLS) for the Artemis moon mission program. SpaceX and Blue Origin are working under multibillion-dollar dealsContinue reading "NASA picks SpaceX, Blue Origin to fly lunar rover and habitat to the Moon"

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For decades, astronomers have puzzled over how the supermassive black holes residing in the center of galaxies form. Now, researchers may have found the biggest clue yet to how these monstrous objects — weighing millions of solar masses — came to exist.  An international team used the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) high sensitivity toContinue reading "This black hole is gulping material 40 times faster than the theoretical limit"

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Michael Sussman/Warren Keller The Fish Head Nebula (IC 1795) lies at the corner of the Heart Nebula (Sharpless 2–190) in Cassiopeia, forming a large stellar nursery laced with dark dust lanes. The imagers collected 27.6 hours of data in SHO filters with a 5-inch scope.

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In 1986 and 1989, Voyager 2 made the final two stops on its grand tour of the outer solar system when it swept by Uranus and Neptune, respectively. Now, nearly 40 years later, the archive of data the craft collected is still returning unexpected results.  In a paper published today in PNAS, astronomer Burkhard MilitzerContinue reading "Uranus and Neptune have weird magnetic fields — this might be why"

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China’s lunar exploration program continues to rack up impressive scientific results. Their methodical progression of lunar orbiters, landers, and sample return missions display a consistent national effort to explore and understand the Moon in the 21st century. Unlike the early American and Russian lunar probes at the dawn of the Space Age that often endedContinue reading "Chang’e 6 shakes up our knowledge of the Moon’s farside"

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With the Moon’s terminator moving almost 10 mph (16 km/h) across its equator, how long would it take for an observer using binoculars to notice a change in lunar features? Gary GarcharSan Jose, California The lunar terminator, the sunset/sunrise line that sweeps across the Moon’s surface as the Moon orbits Earth, travels at a rateContinue reading "How long would it take for an observer using binoculars to notice the Moon’s terminator moving?"

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In the 1960s, celebrated radio astronomer Frank Drake proposed his eponymous equation, which attempted to wrangle with the probability of finding extraterrestrial life — at least, the kind that we could identify through radio broadcasts — somewhere out there in the universe. One of the key parameters of that formulation is the rate of starContinue reading "Dark energy sheds light on life in the cosmos"

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David Gluchowski, taken from Brooklyn, New York The Lion Nebula (Sharpless 2–132) is a faint emission nebula lit by young hot stars; their winds and radiation are expanding outward, forming shock waves that comprise many of the lion’s features. This shot also accentuates the play of light and shadow around the lion’s “head”. The imagerContinue reading "The Lion’s markings"

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Scientists seeking the secrets of the universe would like to make a model that shows how all of nature’s forces and particles fit together. It would be nice to do it with Legos. But perhaps a better bet would be connecting everything with strings. Not literal strings, of course — but tiny loops or snippetsContinue reading "String theory is not dead yet"

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The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is well-known for discovering young, bright galaxies in the very early universe. How such regions, bursting with stars, formed so quickly and survived is enticing researchers to rethink cosmic evolution.    A recent study published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters uses JWST data to probeContinue reading "JWST spots more light than expected in the early universe"

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Friday, November 22Last Quarter Moon occurs at 8:28 P.M. EST, leaving most of the evening dark for deep-sky observing.  About two hours after sunset, you’ll find the Great Square of Pegasus high in the southeastern sky. The Winged Horse is home to a fabulous globular cluster, M15, which just barely hits naked-eye magnitude at 6.2.Continue reading "The Sky This Week from November 22 to 29: Venus lingers long after sunset"

The post The Sky This Week from November 22 to 29: Venus lingers long after sunset appeared first on Astronomy Magazine.

In 1986, Voyager 2 flew by the ice giant Uranus. It was humanity’s first close-up view of the outer planet, and it remains the closest any spacecraft has ever come. On this trip, the spacecraft found 10 previously undiscovered moons, two rings, and a truly bizarre magnetic field that has baffled scientists ever since. MostContinue reading "Uranus may not have a weird magnetic field after all"

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When comet C/2024 S1 (ATLAS) was first discovered in late September, it was almost immediately identified as a member of the Kreutz family of Sun-grazing comets. But it was highly unusual for a Kreutz comet — virtually all of these are only discovered in their last hours or days of existence, as they plunge towardContinue reading "How Comet ATLAS fizzled out"

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While it did not recreate the historic Super Heavy booster catch it pulled off last time, SpaceX continued to push the envelope during the sixth test flight of its Starship spacecraft. The largest and most powerful rocket ever built lifted off from SpaceX’s Starbase launchpad in Texas on Tuesday evening, Super Heavy’s 33 Raptor engines creating aContinue reading "SpaceX Starship Flight 6: No booster catch, but still pushing the envelope"

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Not so far from Earth, an infant planet is just getting its start at life. And by peeking beneath the thick cocoon of material surrounding it, astronomers could be getting a rare chance to watch a world for which our solar system has no equivalent settle into its early life. The planet closely orbits theContinue reading "This young, shrouded super-Neptune could help teach us how such planets form"

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In October, The Wall Street Journal reported that Boeing may shed its space business to focus on commercial aircraft and defense systems. This could be due in part to this summer’s test flight of its Starliner crew transport to the International Space Station (ISS), which adversely reshaped public opinion of the beleaguered aerospace titan. ButContinue reading "The past, present, and future of Boeing in space"

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Jeff Schilling from Houston, Texas The dark nebulae LDN 935/6 contrast with billowing clouds of bright emission from the North America Nebula (NGC 7000). For this close-up study of light and dark in motion, the imager took 13¼ hours of exposure in Hubble-palette filters.

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The game is afoot! Astronomers may have found some of the universe’s missing matter, thanks to one team’s cosmic detective work. The case has been open for more than 20 years. In the 1990s and early 2000s, scientists sleuthed out the universe’s contents using observations from the cosmic microwave background radiation and Big Bang models.Continue reading "Scientists discover significant ‘missing matter’ in the gas between galaxy clusters"

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On Saturday, Nov. 16, in Flagstaff, Arizona, the astronomy world changed a bit.  Lowell Observatory has long been a beacon of history in the cosmic universe. Here, Boston Brahmin Percival Lowell founded an institution to study the heavens from the far west in 1894. Here he famously studied Mars, an early obsession, believing it toContinue reading "Lowell Observatory celebrates a monumental renewal"

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How big is the ellipse that our planet travels in a year around the Sun? J.J. MüdespacherMexico City, Mexico Earth’s orbit around the Sun is not circular, but an ellipse that is slightly elongated with an eccentricity of 0.017. (An eccentricity of 0 is a circle, while the dwarf planet Pluto has a relatively highContinue reading "How big is Earth’s orbit around the Sun?"

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SpaceX is targeting the sixth test flight of its Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy booster — which comprise the largest and most powerful rocket system ever built — as early as Monday. Both the rocket and booster were moved to the launch mount this week for stacking. The mission, which like previous Starship flights willContinue reading "SpaceX Starship Flight 6: What to watch for"

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Astronomer Francesco D’Eugenio wasn’t looking for a murdered galaxy.  His team set out to measure the motions of stars in a distant galaxy and to understand why they appeared so old. Similar massive galaxies in the early universe were typically bustling with new star formation, and D’Eugenio, a scientist at the Kavli Institute for CosmologyContinue reading "JWST just found a black hole starving its host galaxy to death"

The post JWST just found a black hole starving its host galaxy to death appeared first on Astronomy Magazine.

Kfir Simon, taken from Tivoli Farm, Namibia At a distance of 3,900 light-years in Norma the Square lies NGC 6164/5, also known as the Dragon’s Egg. Astronomers think the binary star at its center, HD 148937, was originally a triple system. The billowing outer shell was caused by stellar winds early in the system’s life;Continue reading "Draconic fratricide"

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Friday, November 15We’re starting out the week strong with the Moon on center stage. November’s Full Moon, also called the Beaver Moon, occurs at 4:29 P.M. EST. But there’s more to this Full Moon — it’s a Super Moon, which occurs when the Moon reaches Full near its closest point to Earth, called perigee. ItContinue reading "The Sky This Week from November 15 to 22: 2024’s last Super Moon occults the Pleiades"

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The European Space Agency’s Gaia emission has revealed two unexpected black holes orbiting stars like our own Sun. One minor problem: we’re not exactly sure how black holes like this should form. But a team of researchers might have an answer.  Astronomers can’t directly observe black holes. That’s because by definition they do not emitContinue reading "How some black holes maintain long-distance relationships"

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Researchers using the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) radio telescope in Europe have discovered the second generation of Starlink satellites emit higher levels of radio waves that could pose a serious risk to radio astronomy. This issue of radio-wave emission is in addition to the sunlight that Starlink and other satellites reflect, which can be visibleContinue reading "New Starlink satellites could be 32 times brighter in radio waves than before"

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Black holes are the universe’s shadowy figures, with many millions of them roaming unseen in our galaxy alone. These cosmic heavyweights famously destroy anything that wanders too close, tearing stars and other objects to shreds with their immense gravitational pull.  But that may not be the end of the story for those doomed objects. AContinue reading "Could black holes create dark energy? "

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Marco Meniero taken from Poggio Pinzuti, Italy The stars pirouette around Polaris above the hills of Tuscany near Pisa in this two-panel panorama taken with a Nikon Z9 mirrorless camera and a 70mm zoom lens. The imager captured 170 exposures of 15 seconds at f/4.5 and ISO 250.

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In a 1998 research breakthrough, Saul Perlmutter of the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues in the Supernova Cosmology Project found the expansion rate of the universe is accelerating. Perlmutter and his team made the discovery by observing distant type Ia supernovae, whose brightnesses are well known, at different distances. His team made observationsContinue reading "What is dark energy?"

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Inside the bright but unassumingly named nebula Gum 55 lies a dark nebula — a rift of dust grains that absorb visible light — creating a swatch of darkness against the glow of bright gas. Fittingly named for its shape, the Dark Wolf Nebula is no mere puppy — it spans an area some fourContinue reading "ESO captures Dark Wolf Nebula stalking across the Milky Way "

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Star struck Wisconsin Historical Society PressMadison, WI In Chasing the Stars, authors Kelly Tyrell and James Lattis discuss the astronomical achievements of Washburn Observatory at the University of Wisconsin. The book’s 256 pages feature many images and details the early days of stargazing in the region, as well as Washburn’s many modern discoveries in theContinue reading "New astronomy products to be thankful for"

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Lynn Hilborn from Grafton, Ontario The origin of the reflection nebula van den Bergh 9 in Cassiopeia is the Cepheid variable star SU Cas; its blue light is reflected by surrounding dust, which are themselves partially shrouded by thicker dust clouds. This image represents 5 hours of exposure on an 8-inch scope in RGB filters.

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In this episode, Dave Eicher invites you to observe the what happens when our planet, during its journey around the Sun, runs into a stream of particles in its orbit. Such an event is called a meteor shower, and because the streaks of light from these meteors seem to all come from a point in theContinue reading "The Leonid meteor shower: This Week in Astronomy with Dave Eicher"

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What is the universe expanding into? Euan TobinEdinburgh, Scotland This excellent question forces us to confront a region beyond the bounds of our intuition, so please bear with me. When you inflate a balloon, the balloon’s membrane moves outward, closer to the boundaries of whatever room encloses it. You can easily visualize this expansion becauseContinue reading "What is the universe expanding into?"

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Mars is tantalizingly similar to Earth in many ways, but especially in its surface features, which often resemble Earth deserts to an eerie degree. Both Earth and Mars share features such as valleys; canyons; fanlike washes of sand and rock; and long, winding gravel ridges called eskers. All are formed by flowing water, marking theContinue reading "How carbon dioxide glaciers gave Mars liquid water"

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Roughly every 15 years, Earth passes through the plane of Saturn’s rings, causing them to nearly disappear from view — not to mention generating a variety of other interesting phenomena. The next such edge-on appearance will be in March 2025, though Saturn will unfortunately be too close to the Sun (only 9.5° away) for usContinue reading "How to see a Saturn ring mirage"

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The sixth test flight of Starship — the largest and most powerful rocket to ever fly — will launch no earlier than 5 p.m. EST on Monday, November 18, SpaceX said Wednesday. The previous test flight of Starship, which SpaceX also refers to simply as “Ship,” and the Super Heavy booster resulted in the unprecedented catchContinue reading "SpaceX: Starship Flight 6 coming later this month"

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Friday, November 8Although the constellation Perseus is perhaps best known for housing the famous Double Cluster, it’s also home to another open star cluster: M34, one of the Hero’s two Messier objects.  M34 is some 180 million years old and sits 1,400 light-years from Earth. The cluster contains about 100 stars and takes up roughlyContinue reading "The Sky This Week from November 8 to 15: Catch the Leonids early"

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Many constellations are well-known for having one very special deep-sky object within their borders, something so famous that when you read or hear that constellation’s name, you instantly think of it, like an astronomical word association game. Orion? The Orion Nebula! Andromeda? The Andromeda Galaxy, of course! Lyra? Easy — the Ring Nebula. And Perseus?Continue reading "Five ‘shy,’ lesser-known deep-sky gems to observe"

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Astronomy is a science and a hobby that loves long words, acronyms, and abbreviations. At times, listening to someone talking about an event happening in the sky or an object faraway in space can feel like watching one of those episodes of Star Trek where the characters spend 10 minutes just speaking in “technobabble,” soContinue reading "Learn the difference between common astronomical terms"

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Xiaofeng Qu, taken at Xiaochaidan Lake, Qinghai Province, China The Perseid meteors streak across the sky from its radiant in the constellation Perseus appearing in this perspective to be lobbed across the sky. This panorama of 17 stitched 60-second frames was taken with a Nikon DSLR at 14mm lens at f/1.8. Sky frames were capturedContinue reading "A meteoric volley"

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The era of the International Space Station (ISS) is coming to a close. In the near future, NASA plans to bring down the station in a controlled deorbit. The end of the ISS will leave a large gap in human spaceflight, although the Chinese Tiangong space station is currently active. Still, to make a spaceContinue reading "We’re entering the era of private space stations"

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Today, at the World Travel Market in London, STARMUS and The Canary Islands proudly unveiled the line-up for the highly anticipated STARMUS La Palma festival. The announcement was made during a special presentation led by STARMUS co-founder and Director, Prof. Garik Israelian, featuring the President of the Cabildo de La Palma, Sergio Rodríguez. Under theContinue reading "Starmus La Palma: The Island of Stars lineup revealed "

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The second-largest moon in our solar system may have a secret ingredient that explains many of its mysteries — and maybe ups the chances for life there. In research published Sept. 30 in The Planetary Science Journal, a University of Hawaii-led team modeled the potential for methane clathrate (a kind of methane-infused water ice) inContinue reading "Could a methane crust be keeping Titan warm?"

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Despite their destructive forces, black holes are often seen in with a companion, such as a star, neutron star, white dwarf, or even another black hole. However, a study published Oct. 23 in Nature has found that the black hole binary system V404 Cygni, which contains a black hole and a small star, has anContinue reading "This famous black hole system is actually a triple"

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Rainbows don’t actually exist. You can’t find the end of a rainbow (or its attendant pot of gold). It’s not possible to walk across a rainbow as the Norse gods did on the Bifrost, the bridge for fallen warriors to reach Valhalla, or to travel over one like Dorothy to Oz. Rather, rainbows and otherContinue reading "Explore the science of rainbows"

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Stellar Stories Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS now a faint naked-eye object Moving across the constellation Ophiuchus in the evening sky, Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS continues to fade as it moves farther away from Earth and the Sun. The comet now glows at 6th magnitude, keeping it as a faint naked-eye object under a very dark sky. ButContinue reading "Universe, Discovered: Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS still a naked eye object — barely"

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Stellar Stories Hera spacecraft launched The European Space Agency’s Hxera spacecraft launched on October 7, initiating an exciting exploration of an unusual asteroid. The solar system contains many thousands of small asteroid bodies, but the target here — 65803 Didymos, is a binary object spanning some 850 meters (about half a mile). The accompanying imageContinue reading "Universe, Discovered: Hera launches to asteroid crash scene"

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In this episode, Dave Eicher invites you to observe the Moon as it closely passes the Ringed Planet on the evening of November 10. Our natural satellite will be just past its First Quarter phase, while Saturn will glow nicely at magnitude 0.8. If you have a telescope and point it at Saturn, you’ll seeContinue reading "The Moon meets Saturn: This Week in Astronomy with Dave Eicher"

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It has been 52 years since Apollo 17 lifted off from the Taurus-Littrow Valley on the Moon.  All the Apollo landing sites, starting with Tranquility Base on the Moon’s Sea of Tranquility, have been immortalized in print and film and are well known to space aficionados worldwide. But soon, another name will join the exclusiveContinue reading "Here are the nine sites where Artemis 3 might land on the Moon"

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Many astrophotos feature exposures of 12 hours or more. Since nighttime darkness is only about this long, this implies multiple exposures on different nights. How does one set things up to get the exact same location, and avoid parallax error due to Earth’s rotation and orbit? Jose G. RieraSt. Augustine, Florida You are correct, manyContinue reading "How are long-exposure astrophotos made? "

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Overall Photons: Andrea Iorio, Elisa Cuccu, Fernando Linsalata, Javier Caldera, Paul Montague, Carlos Uriarte Castillo, Darius Kopriva, Drew Evans, Bruno Rota Sargi, Blake Behrends, Manuel Alejandro Chavarría Silva, Phillip Hoppes, Jan Beranek, Roberto Volpini, Pier Mattia Basciano, Marco Finatti, Jeff Ratino, Vakhtang Khutsishvili, and Patrice Soom NGC 7293 — better known as the Helix NebulaContinue reading "Eye of the universe"

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By the dawn of the 20th century, not much had changed in the 400 years since Galileo’s discovery of the four jovian moons and his confirmation of Copernicus’ Sun-centered solar system.  Through the early 1900s, astronomers disagreed on whether the universe was home to a multitude of galaxies, so-called “island universes,” or contained entirely withinContinue reading "How Edwin Hubble won the Great Debate"

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Scientists breathed a collective sigh of relief last week when NASA announced that the Chandra X-ray Observatory had been spared the chopping block — at least for another year. It was an abrupt about-face from plans announced in March to decommission the space-based telescope by this December.  Much of the credit for the 11th-hour stayContinue reading "Chandra X-ray telescope, facing chopping block, gets reprieve from NASA"

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The next president of the United States could be the first in that office to accept a phone call from the Moon and hear a woman’s voice on the line. To do so, they’ll first need to make a series of strategic space policy decisions. They’ll also need a little luck. Enormous government investment supports outerContinue reading "Opinion: An international affairs expert breaks down Harris and Trump’s records on space policy"

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Bob Fera/Steve Mandel, taken from Sierra Remote Observatories, California The Sailboat Cluster (NGC 225) is an open star cluster in Cassiopeia; its common name was given to it by Astronomy contributor Rodney Pommier for the visual pattern of its stars. (If you can’t see the sailboat, try tilting your head slightly to the right.) TheContinue reading "Gales of November"

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Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) orbit the Earth hundreds of miles above American soil. But that doesn’t mean they can’t vote while they float. Indeed, Boeing Starliner astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams—who have been in the orbital laboratory since June after their test mission was extended due to safety concerns—said they intend to cast their ballots in theContinue reading "Here’s how ISS astronauts will vote in the 2024 election"

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For thousands of years, humans have worshipped the Sun. Our ancestors built monuments and temples to it, and used it to mark the annual cycle of seasons. For ancient Egyptians, their most important god, Re, was the personification of the Sun itself. Today, we are no less in thrall to the wonders and mysteries ofContinue reading "Bringing the Sun to light"

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November brings many sights to explore, including Mercury in the early evening, Mars brightening, and the giant planets Jupiter and Saturn adding to the spectacle. Jupiter in particular is reaching its best apparition in a decade for Northern Hemisphere observers. Let’s start soon after sunset. Mercury hugs the southwest horizon and remains easily visible throughoutContinue reading "November 2024: What’s in the sky this month? Mars and Jupiter are improving, while Uranus reaches opposition"

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Friday, November 1New Moon occurs this morning at 8:47 A.M. EDT.  The planet Mercury is now becoming visible, low in the evening sky. If you have a clear view southwest, you may catch the planet some 30 minutes after sunset, hanging just 2° above the horizon. Although bright at magnitude –0.3, it may be difficultContinue reading "The Sky This Week from November 1 to 8: Valles Marineris comes into view"

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Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory was felled by the combination of a hurricane, an equipment failure never before seen in the annals of engineering, and an “alarming” lack of concern from engineers and inspectors when crucial support cables were seen slipping out of their sockets years before the main platform of the famed radio telescope cameContinue reading "Arecibo telescope was doomed by hurricane damage and human failures, says report"

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Jeff Schilling from Houston, Texas The star Gamma (γ) Cassiopeia sets aglow the interstellar clouds of IC 63 and IC 59, which appear like a ghost and its tail, respectively. This imager used a 5-inch refractor to take exposures in HαRGB filters of 5.4, 2, 2, and 2 hours, respectively.

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For all of human history, the Sun has served as a great constant in daily life. As this brilliant orb blazes across the sky, it sustaind life, provides harmonious rhythms to our world, and marks the continuous passage of time. It is no wonder that curious minds have always sought to explain both the Sun’sContinue reading "Tales of the Sun: From myth to modern science"

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“Watch out for rambunctious stars. They are trouble,” says Astronomy Editor David Eicher. The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) just published a new photograph showing the stunning masterpiece that is R Aquarii, lying about 700 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius the Water-bearer. It is an uncommon type of binary star system displaying chaotic behavior andContinue reading "Watch a zombie star feed on its companion"

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The town of Williams Bay, Wisconsin is much like any other small city on a lake, with an offering of tourist shops and an active beach. But just a short drive past the activity brings you to Yerkes Observatory. Behind an opening of trees stands a sprawling, grand estate with a well-manicured lawn and aContinue reading "How Yerkes Observatory started over"

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Astronomers have discovered a lightweight black hole that’s a bit of a cosmic conundrum. Hypothetically, black hole masses can range all the way from far less than a paperclip to at least tens of billions of times more than the Sun. But observations have revealed a strange scarcity of black holes between about two andContinue reading "Astronomers find a mini black hole"

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Vikas Chander, taken from Observatorio El Sauce, Chile NGC 1291 (also cataloged as NGC 1269) lies 33 million light-years away in Eridanus. At 12 billion years old, the galaxy has lost most of its spiral structure and matured into a transitional state — yet it has an outer ring that still forming stars, appearing blue inContinue reading "Ring of fire"

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The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Boeing is getting out of the space business — or trying to. Part of a wider move to trim and improve business holdings and operations, the company is looking to offload its space program, assuming it can find a suitable buyer. Boeing has been one of NASA’sContinue reading "For sale: One Boeing space program, says report"

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In this episode, Dave Eicher invites you to observe one of the most famous deep-sky objects, the Andromeda Galaxy, also known as Messier 31 (M31). Named for its location in the constellation Andromeda the Princess, M31 lies some 2.5 million light-years from Earth. While sharp-eyed observers can see it without optical aid, binoculars and telescopes giveContinue reading "Observe the Andromeda Galaxy: This Week in Astronomy with Dave Eicher"

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In 1995, a parallel race was on in astronomy — one to find the first planet beyond our own solar system, and the other to find the first brown dwarf, a class of object too heavy to be a planet, but below the mass of a star.  Astronomers ended up publishing the discovery of theContinue reading "Astronomers find out the first known brown dwarf is actually twins"

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On July 26, 2000, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched the Salsa satellite, which joined its three companion satellites — Samba, Rumba, and Tango — on the Cluster II mission, scheduled to last two years. On Sep. 8, after more than 24 years of service, Salsa re-entered Earth’s atmosphere in a controlled de-orbit, where itContinue reading "How the Cluster II mission studied the Sun’s effects on Earth"

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Supernovae, the violent explosions that occur when stars die, normally happen sporadically within galaxies. However, by shifting the angle of the Hubble Space Telescope’s line of sight toward M87, astronomers recently spotted double the expected amount of supernovae along a massive 3,000-light-year-long jet blasting out of the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center. ResearchersContinue reading "Is this black hole jet making stars explode?"

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Moshen Chan from San Francisco, California The tail of Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS (C/2023 A3) fans out over the Pacific Ocean and the Point Reyes Lighthouse in California. The photographer used a Sony mirrorless camera and 20mm f/1.8 lens to take sixteen 10-second subframes.

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The bright red supergiant star Betelgeuse has long been a familiar sight for star watchers, winking with a ruddy glow from the shoulder of Orion the Hunter. But it’s also an increasingly popular target for professional astronomers thanks to its scientific peculiarities, ranging from pulsations to mysterious dimming events. Now, astronomers think they may haveContinue reading "Betelgeuse may have a Betelbuddy"

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Friday, October 25Venus passes 3° north of Antares at 3 P.M. EDT. The pair is very low in the southwest, but if you’ve got a clear horizon, both should be visible some 40 minutes after sunset. Venus stands out first, glowing a brilliant magnitude –4. Compare its light to dimmer, magnitude 1.1 Antares, to theContinue reading "The Sky This Week from October 25 to November 1: Callisto slips south of Jupiter"

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Four NASA astronauts are set to splash down Friday morning after spending more than 200 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The four-person crew of NASA’s Crew-8 mission — comprising NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, and Jeanette Epps, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin — will return to Earth around dawn on Friday, splashing downContinue reading "What to watch: NASA Crew-8 astronauts set for early Friday splashdown"

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The X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) isn’t the first of its kind, but the state-of-the-art spectroscopic instruments onboard have opened new doors for high-energy astrophysics.  Active galactic nuclei (AGN) —  supermassive black holes that actively gobble material and shine brightly in the resulting chaos — have always held mysteries for astrophysicists. Now, a yearContinue reading "XRISM’s data debut proves its extraordinary capabilities"

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Lucas Thibaud, taken near Cerro Pachon in Chile The Milky Way serves as a proscenium arch for the zodiacal light and Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) in this panorama taken Oct. 19 from the Chilean Andes. The photographer used a Canon 6Da DSLR and a 20mm f/1.4 lens to take twelve 8-second frames at ISO 1600.

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When SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule Endeavour returns to Earth this week, she will set a clutch of records for the most time spent in space by a crewed spacecraft. Launched for her fifth mission in March, Endeavour has notched 23 cumulative months in orbit, circled Earth 11,000 times and traveled 292 million miles (470 millionContinue reading "Crew-8 has returned from space on record-breaking SpaceX capsule"

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Comet C/2023 A3  — better known as Tsuchinshan-ATLAS — is fading in brightness as it speeds away from the Sun and Earth in the evening sky. It’s still visible to the naked eye in a dark sky, and it’s certainly an easy target for binoculars. But now’s your last chance to see it — soContinue reading "Can you still see Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS?"

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In this episode, Dave Eicher invites you to observe one of the major meteor showers of the year. It’s called the Orionids because all the meteors seem to come from a spot in the constellation Orion the Hunter. The meteor activity will peak in the early morning hours of October 21. If you can’t getContinue reading "The Orionid meteor shower: This Week in Astronomy with Dave Eicher"

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Aldo Rocco Vitale taken from Sicily, Italy This shot of Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS (C/2023 A3) was taken Oct. 14 from the southern flank of Mount Etna in Piano Vetore at an elevation of 5,700 feet (1750 m). The different hues come from the two tails — one of dust (orange-yellow in this shot) and one ofContinue reading "Blazing star"

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John Vermette, taken from Saguaro National Park near Tucson, Arizona Comet C/2023 A3 is pictured here Oct. 15. The image is a stack of twenty-six 3-second shots with a 50mm f/1.4 lens at ISO 3200.

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Getting started in astrophotography can be daunting. With so many different telescopes, cameras, and mounts and all their variations, where do you start? The first piece of equipment you should choose is a mount, the mechanical base that the telescope attaches to. For astrophotography, the mount must be motorized, and ideally computer-controllable. This might soundContinue reading "Finding your first astroimaging rig"

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Friday, October 18There’s still time to catch Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) in the west after sunset, even as it pulls away from the Sun and Earth on its way back toward the outer reaches of the solar system. Currently hovering between 1st and 2nd magnitude, the comet can be spotted with naked eyes from aContinue reading "The Sky This Week from October 18 to 25: The Orionid meteors peak"

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Comet C/2023 A3, also known as Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, has been in the evening sky for a week now. If you haven’t seen it, that’s understandable because there’s also been a bright Moon in the sky. But the Moon is Full tonight (Oct. 17) and will rise later tomorrow (Oct. 18) and each night thereafter. So, tryContinue reading "See Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS while you still can"

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The Milky Way galaxy has had a violent history. It did not grow though simple and calm accretion, but rather through the aggressive mergers of multiple smaller galaxies. Recently, a team of astronomers found the remnants of perhaps the oldest merger, right in our stellar neighborhood. The Milky Way’s stars have a wide variety ofContinue reading "A baby Milky Way may have swallowed a dwarf galaxy named Loki"

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A pair of papers published today in Nature look at the origins of many meteorites that have fallen to Earth. By examining the detailed makeup of the rocks, ascertaining the time that has passed since they broke off larger bodies, and comparing these to asteroids in space, researchers found evidence that a great majority ofContinue reading "Most meteorites come from just three sources"

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In a teleconference Oct. 15, representatives from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that the Sun has reached the peak level in its current cycle of activity, the 25th for which humans have kept detailed records. The 25th cycle has been far more active than the previous one, especially this year,Continue reading "The Sun has reached solar maximum, NASA and NOAA scientists say"

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Chris Schur, taken from Payson, Arizona Bright comets like Tsuchinshan-ATLAS (C/2023 A3) — captured here with an 6-minute exposure on an 8-inch RASA — sometimes develop an anti-tail. This secondary tail appears to protrude forward from the comet’s nucleus in the opposite direction of the “normal” tail. An anti-tail is a perspective effect created whenContinue reading "Tsuchinshan-ATLAS’ anti-tail"

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BENTONVILLE, Arkansas — The first private spacewalk, an on-orbit symphonic performance, and nearly 40 scientific research experiments. Those were just a few highlights of September’s Polaris Dawn mission: a five-day, four-person orbital spaceflight purchased from SpaceX and commanded by Jared Isaacman, the billionaire CEO of Shift4 Payments. But Isaacman — now a SpaceX “frequent flier”Continue reading "Polaris Dawn crew talks mission highlights, next steps"

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These fleeting beacons from the outer solar system make for fantastic shots.

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The Euclid space observatory launched in July 2023, tasked with creating a 3D map of more than a third of the sky, surveying billions of galaxies up to 10 billion light-years away. Today, scientists revealed the first page in its cosmic atlas, a mosaic comprising 208 gigapixels of data revealing billions of galaxies in awesomeContinue reading "Euclid releases stunning first map of the deep sky"

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Once again, we’ve scoured the astro-marketplace to find the finest, most practical, and most innovative products for Astronomy magazine’s Star Products, 2024 edition. This collection of 35 items, in no particular order, offers a diverse selection. From tools tailored for visual observing to those crafted for astrophotography, there’s something here for everyone, whether you’re aContinue reading "Astronomy’s 14th annual star products"

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SpaceX’s Starship program—responsible for developing the largest and most powerful rocket ever flown—continues to make history. On Sunday, Starship and the Super Heavy booster lifted off around 8:25 a.m. EST from SpaceX’s Starbase launch pad in Boca Chica, Texas, on the rocket’s fifth suborbital test flight. But rather than splash down in the Gulf ofContinue reading "SpaceX achieves historic booster catch during Starship test"

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In this episode, Dave Eicher invites you to observe a close meeting of the Moon and the ringed planet, Saturn. This celestial meet-up will take place on the evening of Oct. 14. You won’t need binoculars or a telescope to view it, although binoculars may give a more pleasing view. Head out an hour afterContinue reading "The Moon meets Saturn: This Week in Astronomy with Dave Eicher"

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Philippe Moussette The aurora dances above the Cap-Rouge trestle bridge in Quebec City the night of Oct. 10/11.

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How much color should I be able to see in sky objects through a 10-inch telescope?  Dennis HoltConcordia, Kansas Unfortunately, when you look at distant galaxies and nebulae, you won’t see much color through your telescope. That’s because you’re viewing objects that are too faint to trigger your eyes’ color receptors. This is the sameContinue reading "Will my telescope show color when viewing deep-sky objects?"

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The third brightest object in the sky after the Sun and Moon, Venus is known for its opalescent splendor at dawn or dusk. Humans have long been drawn to its exquisite beauty and tied it to goddesses of love — from Inanna of Mesopotamian myth to the Greek Aphrodite and Roman Venus. But Venus isContinue reading "30 years ago: Magellan Venus mission successfully concluded"

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Solar cycle 25 continues to deliver, with flares and coronal mass ejections delivering repeated auroral storms visible at latitudes much lower than normal. Last night’s geomagnetic storm reached G4 levels — the strongest since the historic G5 storm of May 10/11. This collection of photos includes the best of reader submissions, social media, and our ownContinue reading "The best images of the Oct. 10 auroral storm"

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NASA’s newest scientific flagship is on its way to the Jupiter system to explore the icy moon Europa, one of the most compelling worlds in our solar system. The mission lifted off Oct. 14 from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12:06 p.m. EDT aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.Continue reading "NASA’s Europa Clipper sets sail for Jupiter"

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In the pioneering days of long-exposure astrophotography in the late 19th century, the use of dry plates over wet collodion plates simplified the photographic process. The increased light sensitivity of the emulsion coatings on dry plates allowed for shorter exposure times and produced sharper images of the night sky. In 1881, the French inventors brothersContinue reading "How we found Morehouse’s Black Ring: A dark nebula hiding in plain sight"

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Friday, October 11Jupiter, now located in Taurus the Bull, appears in telescopes wreathed by its four largest moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. At times, those moons pass in front of or behind the planet from our point of view, and tonight you can catch the latter as Europa pops into view after crossing behindContinue reading "The Sky This Week from October 11 to 18: 2024’s third Super Moon rises"

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In this video, Astronomy magazine editor Dave Eicher invites you to observe a comet that’s becoming visible in the evening sky. Starting around October 14, look just to the south of west between 15 and 30 minutes after sunset. The comet will be low, but with each evening that passes, it will be a littleContinue reading "See a comet in the evening: This Week in Astronomy with Dave Eicher"

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After putting on a show in the predawn sky earlier this month, Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS (C/2023 A3) was eventually lost in the glare of the Sun. But now that it has crossed behind the Sun from our point of view, it is emerging in the early evening sky and becoming more visible every night as itContinue reading "Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS is rising higher in the evening sky. Here’s where to look"

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On Oct. 8, an X-class solar flare gave rise to a coronal mass ejection (CME) that erupted from the surface of the Sun, racing toward Earth at 1.5 million mph (2.4 million km/h). It arrived at Earth at 11:15 a.m. EDT today, Oct. 10. At 12:57 p.m. EDT, the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC)Continue reading "Earth sees strong aurorae Oct. 10 as solar storm hits ‘severe’ G4 level"

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NASA plans to send humans on a scientific round trip to Mars potentially as early as 2035. The trip will take about six to seven months each way and will cover up to 250 million miles (402 million kilometers) each way. The astronauts may spend as many as 500 days on the planet’s surface beforeContinue reading "NASA wants to send humans to Mars in the 2030s − a crewed mission could unlock some of the Red Planet’s geologic mysteries"

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Acquired by Mark McComsikey at Observatorio El Sauce, Chile; processed by Ron Brecher The Cosmic Bat Nebula is the 43rd object in Beverly Lynds’ landmark catalog of dark nebulae, which she published in 1962 — the greatest catalog of such objects since E.E. Barnard’s in 1919. Lynds died Oct. 5 at the age of 95.Continue reading "The hero we deserve"

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In this episode, Dave Eicher invites you to observe a close meeting of the Moon and the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius the Scorpion, Antares. This celestial meet-up will take place on the evening of October 7. You won’t need binoculars or a telescope to view it, although binoculars may give a more pleasingContinue reading "The Moon meets Antares: This Week in Astronomy with Dave Eicher"

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Although the day started out with a few clouds and rain, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hera mission successfully launched on Monday at 10:52 a.m. EDT from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Although advance forecasts gave only a 15 percent chance of favorable weather, fears of postponement quickly dissipated as each stage of theContinue reading "ESA’s Hera mission is headed to Dimorphos, the asteroid NASA crashed into"

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Many large survey experiments in astronomy are looking to understand what we still don’t know about dark energy. Yet, many are plagued with the same problem: too much data.    A tricky problem The Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) is looking to create one of the largest maps of the universe by creating aContinue reading "Dark Energy Explorers: How you can help unravel one of the universe’s biggest mysteries"

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Affordable fast Newtonian astrographs are game changers for astrophotographers. Most of these instruments have a focal ratio in the vicinity of f/4, allowing them to capture light from deep-sky objects more than six times faster than the f/10 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes that dominate the market. But with that faster speed comes a huge problem: a curvedContinue reading "Why Starizona’s Nexus coma corrector wows"