Tiny Space Probes Using “Laser Sails” Could Speed to Outer Planets and Beyond
Space travel can be agonizingly slow: For example, the New Horizons probe took almost 10 years to reach Pluto. Traveling to Proxima Centauri b, the…
Space travel can be agonizingly slow: For example, the New Horizons probe took almost 10 years to reach Pluto. Traveling to Proxima Centauri b, the…
A black hole at the center of a galaxy plays a role in the galaxy’s death, eating up their surrounding dust and gas and not…
Rochester astrophysicist Adam Frank discusses why cognitive activity operating on a planetary scale is necessary to tackle global issues such as climate change. The collective…
A U.S. cargo craft is being unpacked today following its robotic capture and installation at the International Space Station early Monday morning. The Expedition 66…
Interactions Between These Two Galaxies Is Creating a Tsunami of Starbirth If you like looking at weirdly shaped galaxies, there’s no better place than the…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), launched last December, has been slowly powering up its instruments and unfurling its sunshield, and is now in the…
Planets aren’t the only celestial objects with moons – asteroids can have them too. They are usually other, smaller asteroids in orbit around a larger…
The planet’s night side likely hosts iron clouds, titanium rain, and winds that dwarf Earth’s jetstream. MIT astronomers have obtained the clearest view yet of…
Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft installation on the International Space Station is now complete. Cygnus launched atop an Antares rocket at 12:40 p.m. EST Saturday, February…
An international team of astronomers led by Violeta Gámez Rosas (Leiden University) has observed a supermassive black hole hidden in a ring of dust. This…
Astronomers have been waiting decades for the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, which promises to peer farther into space than ever before. But…
A century ago two prominent astronomers held a debate at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. The topic concerned the nature of the faint spiral…
Ancient dwarf galaxy reconstructed with MilkyWay@home volunteer computer. Astrophysicists for the first time have calculated the original mass and size of a dwarf galaxy that…
By a stroke of luck, a team led by Dutch PhD student Martijn Oei has discovered a radio galaxy of at least 16 million lightyears…
In February 1962, the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union was in full swing. Both nations had developed spacecraft to send…
This striking image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope showcases Arp 298, a stunning pair of interacting galaxies. Arp 298 — which comprises the two…
What Is “Redshift?” ‘Redshift’ is a key concept for astronomers. The term can be understood literally — the wavelength of the light is stretched, so…
It’s first light for one of the newest space observatories! The Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer team has released their first image, taken after a month-long…