Good news for late bloomers: Planets may have millions of years more time to arise around most stars than previously thought. Planet-making disks around young stars typically last for 5…
Category: Space
For the first time, astronomers saw dust in space being pushed by starlight
A pair of stars in our galaxy is revealing how light pushes around matter. It’s the first time anyone has directly seen how the pressure of light from stars changes…
A 3-D model of the Cat’s Eye nebula shows rings sculpted by jets
Roughly 3,000 light-years from Earth sits one of the most complex and least understood nebulae, a whirling landscape of gas and dust left in the wake of a star’s death…
NASA’s DART mission successfully shoved an asteroid
It worked! Humanity has, for the first time, purposely moved a celestial object. As a test of a potential asteroid-deflection scheme, NASA’s DART spacecraft shortened the orbit of asteroid Dimorphos…
The James Webb Space Telescope spied the earliest born stars yet seen
Some of the earliest stars yet seen are now coming to light in one of the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope. Formed roughly 800 million years after…
Mars’ buried ‘lake’ might just be layers of ice and rock
“Follow the water” has long been the mantra of scientists searching for life beyond Earth. After all, the only known cradle of life in the cosmos is the watery planet…
Robin Wordsworth re-creates the atmosphere of ancient Mars
Visitors to the village of Drumnadrochit, on the western shore of Scotland’s murky Loch Ness, come to see the nearby ruins of Urquhart Castle or to chance a glimpse of…
NASA’s DART spacecraft just smashed into an asteroid — on purpose
Mission control rooms rarely celebrate crash landings. But the collision of NASA’s DART spacecraft with an asteroid was a smashing success. At about 7:15 p.m. EDT on September 26, the…
Here is the first direct look at Neptune’s rings in more than 30 years
Humankind is seeing Neptune’s rings in a whole new light thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope. In an infrared image released September 21, Neptune and its gossamer diadems of…
Saturn’s rings and tilt might have come from one missing moon
A single, doomed moon could clear up a couple of mysteries about Saturn. This hypothetical missing moon, dubbed Chrysalis, could have helped tilt Saturn over, researchers suggest September 15 in…
