Enlarge / Astronomers mapped out the stars (shown here in blue) and gas (green) of the strange galaxy known as AGC 114905. (credit: Javier Román and Pavel Mancera Piña) Three years ago, Filippo Fraternali and his colleagues spotted a half dozen mysteriously diffuse galaxies, which looked like sprawling cities of stars and gas. But unlike […]
Enlarge / Astronomers mapped out the stars (shown here in blue) and gas (green) of the strange galaxy known as AGC 114905. (credit: Javier Román and Pavel Mancera Piña) Three years ago, Filippo Fraternali and his colleagues spotted a half dozen mysteriously diffuse galaxies, which looked like sprawling cities of stars and gas. But unlike […]
Enlarge / Scientists have used the data from Gaia to track the location and motion of stars in our galaxy. (credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC) Galaxies like the Milky Way are thought to have been built through a series of mergers, drawing in smaller galaxies and clusters of stars and making these foreign stars their own. In some […]
Enlarge (credit: Pete Starman / Getty Images ) There’s been a steady stream of worries that artificial lights are steadily eroding our ability to see the stars. And a recent essay published in Science describes how artificial light affects the timing of events such as greening associated with plants in spring and autumn leaf-coloring. This […]
Enlarge / The multi-layer sun shield is in the process of unfolding this week. Right now the portion extending forward from the telescope body is extended; the sides will come later this week. (credit: NASA ) When fully operational, the James Webb Space Telescope will be enormous, with a sun shield measuring 12 x 22 […]
Enlarge / Away it goes. Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD — Today, the James Webb Space Telescope started its journey to a location over a million kilometers from Earth, where it will start its science mission in roughly six months. “This is a day for the ages, ” said Ken Sembach, director of the […]
Enlarge / Most of what you see here will be unfolded in the weeks to months after launch. (credit: Northrop Grumman ) There have been years of delays in construction and a few late slips in the launch schedule , with the particular latest being a short delay due to bad weather at the South […]
Enlarge / Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence co-star as low-level astronomers in Don’t Look Up (credit: Netflix ) Two low-level astronomers discover a “planet killer” comet hurtling toward Earth but struggle to get anyone to pay attention in Don’t Look Up , a new satirical sci-fi from Netflix. Directed by Adam McKay ( The Big […]
Enlarge / The TESS planet-finding observatory. (credit: NASA) For centuries, scientists only had a limited number of examples to look at when it came to understanding the formation of planets. As we’ve discovered ever-increasing numbers of worlds, however, we’ve found many that look like nothing what we have in our Solar System: hot gas giants, […]
Enlarge / Itokawa, the original source of the dust grains examined in a new study. (credit: ISAS, JAXA) About a decade ago, we were surprised to discover that there’s a fair amount of water on the surface of the Moon. Given that the Moon has no atmosphere and receives enough solar radiation to boil any […]