One of the strangest things in the cosmos might be us. Among the thousands of planets known to be orbiting around other stars, a planet with Earth’s same size and similar distance from its star has yet to be found. This is likely due to the technical difficulty of finding such a sister planet, since … Read more
The Hubble Space Telescope has produced a image of Sirius A and its faint companion Sirius B, two stars in our night sky. At the center of the image is the brightest star in the night sky, Sirius A.To the bottom left we can see the tiny dot of Sirius B, which would’ve gone … Read more
Gazing up at the night sky, it is easy to be struck by a sense of awe and wonder. We can see galaxies trillions of miles away, the closest of which is our own Milky Way. But what about galaxies that lie beyond our own? One such galaxy is ESO 300-16, a ghostly assemblage … Read more
The Hubble Space Telescope has in 2019 provided data that significantly reduces the chance that the current expansion rate of the Universe, as measured by Hubble, does not match the expected rate based on conditions from shortly after the Big Bang over 13 billion years ago.The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has revolutionized the way … Read more
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team has begun the important process of integrating and testing the spacecraft’s electrical cabling, or harness. This harness plays a crucial role in connecting the various components of the observatory, since it enables different parts of the observatory to communicate with one , while alsoanother providing power and helping … Read more
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe zoomed past Venus on Aug. 21, using the planet’s gravity to aim toward a record-setting series of flights around the Sun that start next month. The spacecraft was moving at a speed of 15 miles per second, and passed 2,487 miles above the Venusian surface as it curved around the … Read more
Where we dive deep into the incredible discovery of Barnard’s Star b,the second-closest known exoplanet to Earth.This icy, dimly-lit world was discovered through data collected by a world-wide array of telescopes, including the European Southern Observatory’s planet-hunting HARPS instrument. Astronomers were able to measure the star’s wobble—the effect of the planet’s orbit on the … Read more
Whether the Milky Way is made up of different ‘province’ or regions that each have their own unique families of planets? It turns out the answer is yes! A new study has found that stars on the fringes of the Milky Way possess fewer of the most common planet types. This finding suggests that … Read more
The images of the Ring Nebula obtained by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have been a source of great excitement for astronomers and stargazers alike. This spectacular planetary nebula is one of the best-known examples of a star’s final stage of life, and Webb’s observation of it has revealed intricate structures that have given us … Read more
As someone who is interested in astronomy, I am awestruck by image captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of the distant galaxy, ESO 300-16. This stunning celestial object is located 28.7 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Eridanus and looks like a sparkling cloud due to its assemblage of stars. When I … Read more
The two galaxies, NGC 5394 and 5395, are an example of how interactions on the galactic scale take place over millions of years. This image released by the Gemini Observatory shows the two galaxies in a slow and intimate dance, as they have already “collided” at least once, though their shape has only been deformed … Read more
Luna 25 was a Russian lunar lander mission by Roscosmos in August 2023 that was slated to land near the lunar south pole at the crater Boguslawsky. It was Russia’s first moon mission since the Soviet Union’s Luna-24 returned with samples from the moon in 1976. A Soyuz 2.1 rocket carrying the Luna-25 craft blasted off from the Vostochny cosmodrome, 3,450 miles … Read more
In 2008,a massive cluster of yellowish galaxies appears to have been caught in a spider web of eerily distorted background galaxies, in an image taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The gravity of the cluster’s trillion stars functions as a cosmic “zoom lens,” bending and magnifying the … Read more
Have you ever wondered what lies beyond our galaxy and our solar system? Well, one of the most fascinating discoveries made by the Hubble Space Telescope is massive cluster Abell 3322, a massive galaxy cluster located in the constellation Pictor, around 2.6 billion light-years away, in which the galaxy 2MASX J05101744-4519179 basks in the … Read more
Astronomers have made a remarkable discovery – a connection between Neptune’s shifting cloud abundance and the 11-year solar cycle. This cycle, which is marked by the waxing and waning of the Sun’s magnetic fields, drives solar activity.The link between Neptune and solar activity is especially interesting because Neptune is in the distant reaches of our … Read more
