Credit: Space Telescope Science Institute In approximately 5 billion years, the sun will deplete its hydrogen fuel and collapse under its own gravity, becoming a white dwarf. Though Earth-sized, this…
Category: Planetary Science
Sentinel-4 offers first glimpses of air pollutants
First image of nitrogen dioxide from Sentinel-4, depicting tropospheric nitrogen dioxide with clear pollution hotspots visible along the Mediterranean coast and over Italy’s Po Valley. Credit: modified Copernicus Sentinel data…
What happened to those ‘little red dots’ Webb observed?
Images of little red dots seen in several deep-sky surveys of JWST. Credit: ASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Dale Kocevski (Colby College) When the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) began operations, one of its earliest…
How we sharpened the James Webb telescope’s vision from a million kilometers away
A ‘selfie’ taken during Webb’s testing on Earth. Credit: Ball Aerospace After Christmas dinner in 2021, our family was glued to the television, watching the nail-biting launch of NASA’s US$10…
Researchers’ autonomous system makes it easier to transport cargo on the moon
PhD student Alec Krawciw, left, and Professor Tim Barfoot stand beside the Canadian Space Agency’s Lunar Exploration Light Rover after a field trial in 2024. Credit: Tim Barfoot Autonomy algorithms…
Two green comets shine bright. How to spot them in the night sky
This image provided by Brennan Gilmore shows the bright green comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) on Saturday, Oct. 4, 2025, in Cismont, Va. Credit: Brennan Gilmore via AP Two bright green…
Foldable solar sails could help with aerobraking and atmospheric reentry
Artist’s concept of NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) in orbit. Credit: NASA Use cases for smart materials in space exploration keep cropping up everywhere. They are used in…
Can we hear gravitational-wave ‘beats’ in the rhythm of pulsars?
Credit: CC0 Public Domain Pulsars suggest that ultra–low-frequency gravitational waves are rippling through the cosmos. The signal seen by international pulsar timing array collaborations in 2023 could come from a…
