A glowing molecular cloud shines today because of a 200-year-old flare let out by our galaxy’s supermassive black hole, scientists say.
Space News & Blog Articles
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Mars, Venus and Neptune put on a summer skywatching show tonight. Here's how to see it.
Mars and Venus will be close together in the night sky on June 30, while Neptune will reverse course through the constellations in the early morning of July 1.
Happy Asteroid Day! You can celebrate with this free webcast
Asteroid Day is an annual celebration of asteroid science, and a reminder of how important it is to study these potentially dangerous objects. Here's how you can celebrate this year.
Hera Propulsion Module leak test – time-lapse
Video: 00:02:23
ESA’s Hera mission for planetary defence will perform a close-up survey of the Dimorphos asteroid in deep space. But first Hera needs to cross millions of kilometres of space to get there. That is the task of Hera’s Propulsion Module, forming around half of the overall spacecraft, which has been prepared by Italy’s Avio company. Formed of a central tube plus a supporting structure, the Module has been fitted with propellant tanks, piping and thrusters (inside the red protective covers). But before it can be joined to Hera’s other element, the Core Module, this Propulsion Module had to undergo its crucial ‘global leak test’ – as seen here. The Module has been filled with gaseous nitrogen, then placed inside its container. Sensors added to the interior can detect any pressure change inside the container over the course of the night. Success means Hera is ready to travel to OHB in Germany to be mated with the Core Module. At this point the Hera spacecraft will be complete, and the mission will come a major step nearer to space. Next rendezvous for Hera is the Environmental Test campaign at ESTEC, to make sure Hera survives in the harsh launch and space environment…
This Week's Sky at a Glance, June 30 – July 9
Full Moon in the Teapot. Are the colors of brights easier to discern in moonlight? Twilight? Mars closes in on Regulus as Venus watches. And the supernova in the Pinwheel Galaxy is still 12th magnitude.
Euclid: preparing for launch
ESA’s mission Euclid is getting ready for lift-off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral in Florida, USA, with a target launch date of 1 July 2023.
Imagine walking on Hera’s asteroid
The team working on ESA’s Hera asteroid mission have glimpsed its destination. Last September NASA’s DART mission returned images of the boulder-strewn Dimorphos moonlet just before it impacted it, in an audacious and ultimately successful attempt to shift its orbit around its parent asteroid Didymos.
Gravity goes lunar: putting LESA to the test
Image: Testing the Lunar Equipment Support Assembly (LESA) investigation during a partial gravity parabolic flight.
Earth from Space: Southwest Netherlands
Image: Rotterdam and part of the Zeeland province in southwest Netherlands are featured in this radar image acquired by Copernicus Sentinel-1.
NASA’s HiRISE Camera Recently Imaged a Martian Dust Devil. But Why Study Them?
NASA recently used its powerful High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to take a breathtaking image of a dust devil traversing Syria Planum on Mars. One unique aspect of dust devils is their shadows can be used to estimate their height, which have been estimated to reach 20 km (12 miles) kilometers into the Martian sky. Studying dust devils on Mars is a regular occurrence for the scientific community and can help scientists better understand surface processes on other planets. But with the atmospheric pressure on Mars being only a fraction of Earth’s, what processes are responsible for producing them?
A Direct Image of a Planet That’s Just Like Jupiter, Only Younger
In a recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, a team of astronomers used the W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawai?i Island to identify exoplanet, AF Lep b, which is three times the mass of Jupiter orbiting a Sun-sized star located approximately 87.5 light-years from Earth. What makes this discovery unique is AF Lep b is the first exoplanet discovered using a method called astrometry, which involves measuring unexpected, miniscule changes in the position of a star relative to nearby stars, which could indicate another object, an exoplanet, is causing gravitational tugs on its parent star.
Light Pollution is Out of Control
Concern over global light pollution is growing. Astronomers are noticing its growing effect on astronomical observations, just as predicted in prior decades. Our artificial light, much of which is not strictly necessary, is interfering with our science.
Smoke from Canadian wildfires chokes US midwest, reaches Europe (satellite photos)
Smoke from raging Canadian wildfires can be seen from space as it gathers over the U.S. Midwest and darkens skies in Europe over Spain, Portugal and the U.K.
Virgin Galactic Flies Italians to Edge of Space for Its First Commercial Trip
After almost two decades of ups and downs, Virgin Galactic sent its first customers to the edge of space aboard its VSS Unity rocket plane.
Scientists find high-energy neutrinos spewing from our Milky Way galaxy in landmark discovery (video)
Astronomers have detected high-energy neutrinos coming from within our Milky Way galaxy, potentially opening up an exciting new window of research.
Nancy Grace Roman and Vera Rubin Will be the Perfect Astronomical Partnership
Two of the most important telescopes being constructed at the moment are Vera C. Rubin and Nancy Grace Roman. Each has the capability of transforming our understanding of the universe, but as a recent paper on the arxiv shows, they will be even more transformative when they work together.
Virgin Galactic launches it’s first commercial flight to space
VSS Unity ignites its engine after being released from its carrier aircraft. Image: Virgin Galactic.
Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic launched its first commercial space flight Thursday, sending three Italian researchers, two company pilots and an astronaut trainer on a high-speed thrill ride to the edge of space aboard a winged rocketplane.
James Webb Space Telescope will help Euclid spacecraft investigate dark energy and dark matter
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is expected to complement a part of the Euclid spacecraft's mission to unveil the nature of dark energy.
860 Million-Year-Old Quasar Had Already Amassed 1.4 Billion Times the Mass of the Sun
It wasn’t long after the Big Bang that early galaxies began changing the Universe. Less than a billion years later, they had already put on a lot of weight. In particular, their central supermassive black holes were behemoths. New images from JWST show two massive galaxies as they appeared less than a billion years after the universe began.
A 'captured' alien planet may be hiding at the edge of our solar system — and it's not 'Planet X'
The cold and mysterious Oort cloud at the edge of our solar system may be hiding a rogue exoplanet, new research suggests.
