Why the Search for Life in Space Starts With Ancient Earth
[ad_1] Next, they’ll use the spectrograph to try to find key molecules like oxygen or methane. How much they find of each determines what they’ll look for next, like carbon…
Astronomers May Have Just Spotted the Universe’s First Galaxies
[ad_1] Scientists just announced that they’ve detected what might be some of the earliest galaxies to form in the universe, a tantalizing discovery made thanks to NASA’s new flagship James Webb…
What’s the Winter Solstice, Anyway?
[ad_1] In 2022, the winter solstice for the northern hemisphere happens on December 21. While not as dramatic as 2020’s conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, the longest night of the year is a…
Antihelium Offers Hope in the Search for Dark Matter
[ad_1] In 2010, physicists at the Large Hadron Collider began producing an exotic form of antimatter known as antihelium. Antimatter is that elusive substance that annihilates upon meeting regular matter, and antihelium…
‘Solar Twins’ Reveal the Consistency of the Universe
[ad_1] Sometimes we must look to the heavens to understand our own planet. In the 17th century, Johannes Kepler’s insight that planets move in elliptical orbits around the sun led…
The Enigma of Dragonfly 44, the Galaxy That’s Almost Invisible
[ad_1] In 2016, astronomers led by Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University published a bombshell paper claiming the discovery of a galaxy so dim, yet so broad and heavy, that…
NASA Will Not Change the James Webb Telescope’s Name
[ad_1] James Webb led NASA in the 1950s and 60s, during the Cold War–era “Lavender Scare,” when government agencies often enforced policies that discriminated against gay and lesbian federal workers.…
The ‘Brightest of All Time’ Gamma-Ray Burst Sparks a Supernova Hunt
[ad_1] On the morning of October 9, astronomers’ inboxes pinged with a relatively modest alert: NASA’s Swift Observatory had just detected a fresh burst of energy, assumed to be coming…
Celestron StarSense Dobsonian Telescope: Navigate the Stars
[ad_1] We live in a time of abundance for the astronomy enthusiast. There are dozens of apps designed to help you navigate the skies and find good viewing locations and…
A New 3,200-Megapixel Camera Has Astronomers Salivating
[ad_1] The world’s biggest digital camera is finally coming into focus. While a very powerful personal camera might have megapixel resolution, astronomers have constructed a device that will image the…
What Drives Galaxies? The Milky Way’s Black Hole May Be the Key
[ad_1] On May 12, at nine simultaneous press conferences around the world, astrophysicists revealed the first image of the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way. At first,…
Success! NASA Says DART Really Clocked That Asteroid
[ad_1] Two weeks ago, the asteroid Dimorphos was minding its own business, quietly orbiting around its partner Didymos, when suddenly NASA’s DART spacecraft plowed into it at 14,000 miles per…
Sofia, the Historic Airplane-Borne Telescope, Lands for the Last Time
[ad_1] Over the past eight years, a modified Boeing 747 jetliner has flown hundreds of flights on a unique mission: carrying a 19-ton, 2.5-meter telescope known as Sofia, or the…
NASA’s DART Spacecraft Smashes Into an Asteroid—on Purpose
[ad_1] Dimorphos is on the small side, spanning 525 feet—which is about the size of the Great Pyramid. While it was never a threat to Earth, plenty more asteroids (and…
The Webb Space Telescope Snaps Its First Photo of an Exoplanet
[ad_1] The JWST’s size and sensitivity enabled it to collect more light from this planet than any previous observatory has obtained. (Its photo looks grainier than SPHERE’s only because the…
Could Climate Change Alter the Length of the Day?
[ad_1] Let’s consider an example with an imaginary planet. In this solar system, the planet completes one orbit around its sun in 8.6 solar days, instead of 365 days, as…
Where Do High-Energy Cosmic Rays Come From? A Star’s Last Gasp
[ad_1] Gamma rays from this supernova remnant have been seen by telescopes since 2007, but exceptionally energetic light wasn’t detected until 2020, when it was picked up by the HAWC…
What If You Tried to Swallow a Whole Cloud?
[ad_1] As the soup collapsed inward toward the center of the solar system, its molecules would be squeezed closer together and the pressure would rise. It would take a few…
At Long Last, Mathematical Proof That Black Holes Are Stable
[ad_1] In 1963, the mathematician Roy Kerr found a solution to Einstein’s equations that precisely described the spacetime outside what we now call a rotating black hole. (The term wouldn’t…
The Mini Missions Aboard the Artemis Rocket Pack a Big Punch
[ad_1] All eyes will be on the moon as the Artemis mission’s inaugural launch blasts toward our lunar neighbor in a couple of weeks, but the rocket won’t be the…
As Wildfires Get More Extreme, Observatories Are at Greater Risk
[ad_1] It was 4 am on June 17 when Michelle Edwards, associate director of Kitt Peak National Observatory, got the news: A wildfire had breached the road up to the…
NASA is Crowdsourcing Cloud Research—on Mars
[ad_1] At the end of 2020, planetary scientist Marek Slipski found himself glued to his computer, spending countless hours—more than he’d like to admit, he says—poring over image after image…
A New Film Challenges the James Webb Telescope’s Controversial Name
[ad_1] The documentary features at least 10 space experts who endorse a name change. Updating the telescope’s name “would help send the message that NASA in its current era does…