Thursday’s launch was called off just minutes before countdown due to bad weather in Kourou. The European Space Agency’s JUICE mission to explore Jupiter’s icy, ocean-bearing moons will again try…
Category: Space
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,…
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover gets a major software upgrade
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover will drive faster and reduce wear on its wheels thanks to two of the new capabilities included with a major software update that was completed on…
Astronomers peer inside the ‘Dragon Cloud’
arXiv (2023). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2303.15499″> The inner core of the “dragon cloud” complex. Credit: Barnes et al, arXiv (2023). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2303.15499 How did the most massive stars form? Astronomers have debated…
The first black hole portrait got sharper thanks to machine learning
If the first image of a black hole looked like a fuzzy doughnut, this one is a thin onion ring. Using a machine learning technique, scientists have sharpened the portrait…
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…
The Smithsonian’s ‘Lights Out’ inspires visitors to save the fading night sky
Bright, artificial lights are drowning out the night sky’s natural glow. Now, an exhibition is highlighting some of the consequences of a fading starry night — and how people can…
