With a constellation of five satellites, the international LIFE initiative led by ETH Zurich hopes to one day detect traces of life on exoplanets. A laboratory experiment in the Department…
Category: Astronomy
Watch SpaceX Dragon cargo ship depart space station today
A robotic SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule will return to Earth today (April 15), and you can watch the action live. The Dragon is scheduled to undock from the International Space…
Newborn Earth made its own water, study suggests
Contrary to a popular theory that icy comets or asteroids delivered water to a dry newborn Earth, the planet itself may have produced its earliest water supply, a new study…
How do we know how far away and early in the universe galaxies are?
Since it started delivering its first results in July 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been supplying stunning images of the universe that include observations of the most…
Relive launch of Europe’s JUICE Jupiter mission in stunning photos
The European Space Agency (ESA) launched its flagship Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) mission on Friday (April 14), producing some stunning images in the process. The Ariane 5 rocket carrying…
Webb Shows Areas of New Star Formation and Galactic Evolution
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope spent over 20 hours observing the long-studied Hubble Ultra Deep Field for the first time on Oct. 11, 2022. The general observer program (GO 1963) analyzed…
M87 in 3D: New view of galaxy helps pin down mass of the black hole at its core
Seen from Earth, the giant elliptical galaxy M87 is just a two-dimensional blob, though one that appears perfectly symmetrical and thus a favored target of amateur astronomers. Yet, a new,…
New findings that map the universe’s cosmic growth support Einstein’s theory of gravity
A new image reveals the most detailed map of dark matter distributed across a quarter of the entire sky, reaching deep into the cosmos. The findings, from the Atacama Cosmology…
Webb Reveals Never-Before-Seen Details in Cassiopeia A
The explosion of a star is a dramatic event, but the remains the star leaves behind can be even more dramatic. A new mid-infrared image from NASA’s James Webb Space…
Twinkling stars fuel interstellar dust
Of the many kinds of stars, asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars, usually slightly larger and older than our own sun, are known to produce interstellar dust. Dusty AGBs are particularly…
