Astronomy.com • September 13th, 2022

Blue Origin's booster failed, but the escape system prevailed

While the booster was not recovered, the capsule successfully blasted away from the danger before landing safely. According to tweets from Blue Origin hours after the attempt, there were no reported injuries and all personnel are accounted for. A representative from Blue Origin declined Astronomy's request for additional comment on what caused the booster failure. In response to the incident, the FAA has grounded all New Shepard flights while it oversees an investigation into the mishap. The dr

Astronomy.com • September 1st, 2022

JWST detects carbon dioxide in atmosphere of exoplanet for first time

The detection marks a new level of detail previously unmatched by other observatories. The James Webb Space Telescope wowed the world with its first science images release on July 12, which included data on the chemical composition of an exoplanet’s atmosphere. But that was just a glimpse at what JWST has to offer. Now JWST has taken its first peer-reviewed spectrum of an extrasolar planet atmosphere. This time, scientists looked at WASP-39 b, a Saturn-like world orbiting extremely close to its

Astronomy.com • August 23rd, 2022

Fact or fiction: Could the Saturn V melt concrete with sound?

An uncrewed version of the rocket was tested during Apollo 4 and Apollo 6 in 1967 and 1968, respectively. And later in 1968, Saturn V ferried its first crew of astronauts around the Moon (without landing). The next year, Saturn V helped carry the lunar lander to the Moon as part of the Apollo 10 mission. And finally, on July 16, 1969, this impressive rocket brought humanity to the surface of another world for the very first time. Six more crewed mission ventured to Luna via the Saturn V, and the

Astronomy.com • July 26th, 2022

Russia will quit the ISS after 2024

The first piece of the International Space Station (ISS) was launched back in 1998. That initial segment, called the Zarya Control Module (meaning “Sunrise” in English), was funded by the U.S. but built and launched by Russia. Coming just seven years after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the historical launch marked the beginning of a multi-decade partnership between the two previously bitter Cold War rivals. However, it appears that after nearly three decades of cooperation, Russia is keen to

Astronomy.com • July 21st, 2022

Black hole debunkers discover a sleeping giant

For six years, astronomers scoured the Tarantula Nebula searching for the most elusive prey: a dormant black hole. Despite being massive objects, stellar-mass black holes can be incredibly difficult to spot because — as their name suggests — they don’t radiate light. Instead, scientists must rely on indirect observations, looking for how nearby matter behaves to infer their presence. The easiest method is to look for the high levels of X-ray radiation produced by the material the black hole is

Astronomy.com • July 13th, 2022

Curiosity rover quantifies key ingredient for life on Mars

NASA’s rover recently measured the ratio of organic carbon in martian rocks. First, let’s get the most important question out of the way: No, life has not been found on Mars. That being said, Curiosity has measured the total organic carbon present in rocks on the Red Planet for the first time. Before we delve into the results themselves, let’s answer the obvious question: What is organic carbon? As its name suggests, organic carbon is a key molecular component for all known forms of life. “Tota

Astronomy.com • June 23rd, 2022

The Voyager probes aren’t fully powering down

NASA plans for the missions to continue into the 2030s. The Voyager spacecraft have been flying through space for nearly 45 years, so seeing recent headlines that these interstellar pioneers are powering down understandably caused some waves. But are the Voyager spacecraft really about to be shut down? To clarify the situation, Astronomy reached out to the mission press officer Calla Cofield who was quick to correct the impression, saying, “nothing new is starting now.” She went on to explain t

Astronomy.com • June 15th, 2022

This powerful pulsar is so young it might still be a teenager

Astronomers think they may have found the most powerful pulsar to date in a distant galaxy. The fast-spinning neutron star — the dense remains of a once massive star — is just beginning to emerge from the supernova remnant that birthed it. The object, called VT 1137-0337, was first seen in 2018 by the VLA Sky Survey, a project imaging about 80 percent of the night sky over seven years. The pulsar did not appear in an earlier image taken by the Very Large Array (VLA) in 1998, suggesting that the

Astronomy.com • June 1st, 2022

Why are Uranus and Neptune different colors

To the untrained eye, it might be difficult to immediately differentiate between Uranus and Neptune. Yes, the color of Uranus is often described as cyan, while the color of Neptune is frequently cited as azure. But no matter your nomenclature, it's hard to deny the ice giants look quite similar at a quick glance. And that's not entirely surprisingly when you consider that similar components make up both worlds. For years, researchers have struggled to develop a model that accurately explains th

Astronomy.com • May 5th, 2022

Astronomers find first triple black widow system

In the case of ZTF J1406+1222, the cluster may have fallen to the center of the Milky Way. There, gravity from Sagittarius A* — the supermassive black hole at the heart of our galaxy — ripped the globular apart. However, the triple black widow system managed to survive the onslaught. “It’s a complicated birth scenario,” lead author Kevin Burdge said in a press release. “This system has probably been floating around in the Milky Way for longer than the Sun has been around.” Normally, scientists

Astronomy.com • April 28th, 2022

Micronovae Astronomers find 3 white dwarfs exploding at their poles

Don’t let their name fool you, these new stellar explosions are still extremely powerful. Even at just one millionth of the strength of a novae, micronovae release about 40 million trillion pounds (20 million trillion kilograms) of material. That’s 3.5 billion Great Pyramids of Gizas worth of material. So why haven’t astronomers caught a micronova before? “It just goes to show how dynamic the Universe is,” said Simone Scaringi, who led the study published in Nature, in a press release. “These

Astronomy.com • April 14th, 2022

Astronomers find 'missing link' black hole in the early universe

Black holes, while prevalent in the spacefaring adventures of sci-fi, are a relatively new find for astronomers. Einstein first predicted them when he published his theory of general relativity in 1916. But these so-called “frozen stars” weren’t coined black holes until 1967. It took another five years for astronomers to actually discover the first black hole. And then another 48 years before scientists managed to capture the first image of a black hole. It's no wonder so much about these allur

Astronomy.com • April 7th, 2022

Astronomers discover the most distant galaxy known in the universe

Unusually bright in ultraviolet light, HD1 may also set another cosmic record. A galaxy named HD1 has been crowned the new farthest object in the cosmos. Located some 13.5 billion light-years away, HD1 existed only about 330 million years after the Big Bang. And the far-flung galaxy may be harboring another surprise, too — either Population III stars, the first stars born in the cosmos, or the earliest supermassive black hole ever found. The findings are presented in two papers, released today

Astronomy.com • March 30th, 2022

Astronomy’s exoplanet boom crests 5,000 confirmed worlds

NASA confirmed the cosmic milestone in its exoplanet archive. Over 400 years ago, Galileo shattered humanity’s understanding of the cosmos when he realized that Earth wasn’t the center of the universe, and that our world orbited the Sun, proving Nicolaus Copernicus’ theory from the 1500s correct. A mere century ago, astronomers believed the Milky Way comprised the entire universe. It wasn’t until 1925, when Edwin Hubble was able to measure the distance to a star in what became the Andromeda gal

Astronomy.com • March 7th, 2022

The alien weather of WASP-121 b

Some 855 light-years away resides an exoplanet with a water cycle vastly different than our own. The exoplanet, WASP-121 b, belongs to a class of planets known as hot Jupiters. These gas giants circle their stars with much tighter orbits than our own Jupiter orbits the Sun. Where Jupiter takes 12 Earth years to complete one trip around the Sun, WASP-121 b’s year takes just 30 hours. WASP-121 b is also tidally locked to its host star, meaning only one side of the world faces its star, while the

Astronomy.com • January 21st, 2022

Charting the universe in 3D

A new instrument called DESI is now mapping more galaxies than every other survey of its kind before it — combined. The universe is filled with galaxies — more than a trillion by some estimates — and we’ve only mapped a fraction of them. But answering some of the most pressing mysteries plaguing astronomers today, such as galaxy formation, dark energy, and the fate of the universe, requires a detailed 3D picture of how those galaxies are scattered through space. Enter the Dark Energy Spectrosco

Astronomy.com • December 9th, 2021

How DART will help NASA combat doomsday asteroids

As if 2021 wasn’t chaotic enough, an asteroid is currently careening its way into our neighborhood this week. But despite what doomsdayers and internet memes suggest, we don’t have much to worry about concerning 4660 Nereus. NASA classifies asteroids or comets that come within 1.3 astronomical units (AU; where 1 AU is the average Earth-Sun distance) of our planet as near-Earth objects (NEOs). A potentially hazardous object (PHO) is one that gets even closer at 0.5 AU, or about 47 million miles

Astronomy.com • November 17th, 2021

White dwarfs devouring exoplanets reveal exotic types of rock

Bodies orbiting other stars may be stranger than imagined.

Astronomy.com • October 29th, 2021

Found: The first exoplanet outside of our Milky Way

In a galaxy far, far away lies an exoplanet circling a binary system that contains a neutron star or black hole.

Astronomy.com • October 12th, 2021

Henson Crater: Lunar impact site named for Arctic explorer

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) recently honored Matthew Henson, co-discoverer of the North Pole, by naming a crater on the Moon after him.

Astronomy magazine • October 1st, 2021

Neutron stars: A cosmic gold mine

These exotic stars may hold the key to solving some of physics’ greatest mysteries.

Astronomy.com • August 9th, 2022

Snapshot: James Webb enters the time stream

For Whovians, this James Webb Space Telescope image of NGC 628 posted on Judy Schmidt’s Flickr account might remind you of the opening credits. But where the TARDIS is flying through the time vortex, JWST is simply doing what it does best: looking at the night sky in infrared. Schmidt works on the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) Survey, which is one of the Treasury programs NASA has selected for JWST. These programs include observations that are immediately availa

Astronomy.com • August 5th, 2022

Snapshot: Rover caught littering

NASA's newest mission to the Red Planet has stumbled upon an abundance of debris left over from its landing. Perseverance spotted something unexpected while traversing Mars on July 11 (sol 495): a bundle of string. According to NASA, the stringlike material is most likely a remnant of the rover’s entry, descent, and landing (EDL) hardware, which the mission discarded on the surface. Specifically, the team believes it to be a piece of Dacron netting that was shredded off the rover’s thermal blan

Astronomy.com • July 7th, 2022

Snapshot: Sagittarius A* twinkles

Earlier this year, scientists released the first image of the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way, called Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A* for short. The image doesn’t actually show the black hole, however, but rather its shadow on the glowing material that surrounds it. Light cannot escape a black hole once it’s been pulled beyond its event horizon, the point of no return and what most people picture when they think of a black hole. But perhaps counter intuitively, some black holes,

Astronomy.com • July 5th, 2022

Rocket impact created double crater on Moon

Last year, astronomers discovered that a rogue rocket body was on a collision course with the Moon. The impact occurred March 4, 2022. Now, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has spotted the resulting crater — or rather craters. The fact that the collision produced two craters is odd; no previously witnessed rocket-body impacts on the Moon have created such a double crater. This suggests something about the identity of the rocket that slammed into the lunar surface.

Astronomy.com • June 13th, 2022

Perseverance sees martian ‘dust devils’

Once it was rare to get a glimpse of the surface of another planet in our solar system. Now, thanks to NASA’s Perseverance rover, we not only get near daily images from Mars, but we even get to see its weather. Perseverance caught the first ever video of gusts lifting a massive martian dust cloud last year. And now, the rover has captured the swirling whirlwinds of dust devils on the Red Planet. According to a NASA press release “at least four whirlwinds pass Perseverance on a typical Martian d

Astronomy.com • May 27th, 2022

Snapshot: NASA's InSight lander takes a final dusty selfie on Mars

The region in which InSight is positioned, Elysium Planitia, is about to experience seasonal changes over the next few months. In the past, the dust-carrying winds that accompany these weather changes have actually removed dust from other missions, such as Spirit and Opportunity. However, it would take very powerful, lucky gusts to save InSight. Rather than hold out hope, the mission team is focused on collecting as much data as possible with the limited time they may have left with the lander.

Astronomy.com • March 23rd, 2022

Pulsar found leaking antimatter

Antimatter isn’t just science fiction. These particles are like ordinary matter, but with opposite charges. A positron, for instance, is an antielectron. A positron has the same spin and mass as a negatively charged electron, but it has a positive charge. One curious feature about antimatter particles is that when they comes into contact with particles of regular matter, they annihilate each other, releasing all their mass as energy. Most of the universe consists of matter particles, but scient

Astronomy.com • February 15th, 2022

Snapshot: A study in stellar objects

Scientists often combine telescope data to examine objects across the electromagnetic spectrum. Visible light — the rainbow of colors that human eyes can detect — is only one kind of light. The electromagnetic spectrum ranges from short, highly energetic gamma rays to long, low-energy radio waves. In order to get a full picture of a cosmic object, researchers need telescopes that can investigate it across this spectrum. X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/R. Montez et al.; Optical: Data: NASA/ESA/STScI, Enhan

Astronomy.com • January 27th, 2022

Hubble catches a black hole creating new stars

As it turns out, black holes aren't always monsters. Normally, the giant black holes lurking at the center of galaxies are known for quenching star formation – cutting off their host's ability to birth new stars. But the black hole at the heart of dwarf galaxy Henize 2-10 is doing the opposite: It's feeding gas into a nearby stellar nursery, according to new research published in Nature January 19. "From the beginning I knew something unusual and special was happening in Henize 2-10, said Amy

Astronomy.com • January 7th, 2022

Snapshot: Sagittarius A* gives its compliments to the chef

Such evidence of a blowtorchlike jet released just a few thousand years ago was outlined in a paper published Dec. 6 in the Astrophysical Journal. Though the jet wasn’t spotted directly, the Hubble Space Telescope instead saw indirect evidence of the jet’s material pushing on a nearby hydrogen cloud. Another lingering jet was previously spotted in 2013 by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array. Both jets clearly indicate that the 4.1-million-solar-mass Sgr A* i

Astronomy.com • December 21st, 2021

Snapshot: M87’s twisted jet

The subject of the first ever image of a black hole, M87’s supermassive black hole (SMBH) has drawn scientists’ attention once more thanks to its jet. Emanating from the heart of the galaxy, the jet stretches nearly 3,300 light-years in length and, thanks to research published Dec. 7 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, is evidently directed by the SMBH’s helix-shaped magnetic field. SMBH’s are known to produce relativistic jets as they gobble down nearby material. As particles are driven fast

Astronomy.com • December 20th, 2021

Snapshot: Milky Way stars photobomb distant galaxy

But starbursts aren’t the only example of imaging artifacts caused by the sometimes strange acrobatics of light in astrophotographs. Light is often bent (left), both by the gravity of massive objects it passes and by instruments it passes through. If an object is too bright for the sensitive detectors on an instrument, that object can also appear to bleed, or streak, out to either side (middle). And sometimes energetic particles leave traces of their paths themselves in photographs (right), prod

Astronomy.com • November 23rd, 2021

Snapshot: Hubble’s catch of the day

The Prawn Nebula floats in the cosmic deep.

Astronomy.com • November 15th, 2021

Snapshot: Hubble spots a mysterious superbubble

N44 has a strange hole at its heart.

Astronomy.com • October 4th, 2021

Martian string of craters

ESA captures a trio of impact craters.

Astronomy.com • July 22nd, 2021

Snapshot: Juno sails by Jupiter and Ganymede

Ride along as the probe passes the gas giant and its icy moon.

Astronomy.com • May 24th, 2021

Snapshot: Evidence of recent explosive volcanism on Mars

New research suggests Mars’ Elysium Planitia region may have been volcanically active only 50,000 years ago.

Astronomy.com • May 3rd, 2021

Snapshot: Live fast, die young

Hubble celebrates its 31st anniversary by capturing a star’s ancient outburst.

Astronomy.com • March 22nd, 2021

Strands of the cosmic web revealed

Astronomers have directly imaged for the first time the filaments of gas crisscrossing the universe.

Astronomy.com • February 22nd, 2021

Snapshot: Black holes sprinkled in a globular star cluster

A spattering of smaller stellar-mass black holes — not an intermediate-mass black hole — make up the invisible mass at the core of a nearby star cluster, new research suggests.