Astronomy

Atmosphere detected on celestial body in solar system's far reaches

Astronomers have identified another object from this realm, with a diameter of roughly 310 miles (500 km), that has an atmosphere - albeit a thin one.

An artist's concept of a dwarf planet.
The Nebra dky disc

TV murder series rekindles interest in the mysteries of the Nebra sky disc

 Life beyond Earth may exist in far stranger places than scientists once thought, a new study suggests. January, 22.

Habitable worlds may be far more common than thought, Israeli study says

The central square image, taken with the MUSE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope, shows shock waves around the dead star RXJ0528+2838.

Astronomers spot white dwarf star creating a colorful shockwave


Most energetic gamma-ray burst confirms Israeli researchers' predictions

Gamma-ray bursts are a phenomenon in which a massive amount of X-rays and gamma rays are emitted within seconds in a single pulse or in multiple subsequent pulses.

The GRB221009A burst as recorded about an hour after the first one was documented by the SWIFT telescope

South Africa's new ground station to help NASA track space flights

Close to key communication and transport infrastructure, the remote site was chosen due to its geographic location with clear skies and low radio interference.

 NASA's next-generation moon rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS) with the Orion crew capsule perched on top, stands on launch complex 39B as rain clouds move into the area before its rescheduled debut test launch for the Artemis 1 mission at Cape Canaveral, Florida, US September 2, 2022.

Behavior of star clusters challenge Newton's laws of gravity

Data from open star clusters seems to fit better with an alternate theory of gravity.

The Pleiades, an open cluster consisting of approximately 3,000 stars at a distance of 400 light-years (120 parsecs) from Earth.

Scholars find a piece of first ever star map in medieval scroll in Egypt

The piece of the Star Catalog is believed to have been written by Hipparchus with surprising accuracy.

 Stars in the night sky.

Webb reveals a galaxy sparkling with the universe’s oldest star clusters

The Milky Way, our galaxy, has about 150 globular clusters. Their history is not yet well understood by astronomers, and measuring their age can be extremely difficult. 

 Webb’s First Deep Field. Thousands of galaxies flood this near-infrared, high-resolution image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723.

Fuel leak could delay first launch of NASA's Artemis moon rocket until October

The previous launch bid on Monday was halted by engineering snags. NASA says technicians have since remedied the issues.

 NASA's next-generation moon rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS) with the Orion crew capsule perched on top, stands on launch complex 39B as rain clouds move into the area before its rescheduled debut test launch for the Artemis 1 mission at Cape Canaveral, Florida, US September 2, 2022.

NASA James Webb Telescope captures stunning photos of Jupiter

The two images were taken by the observatory's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), which uses three infrared filters to capture hidden details of the planet.

Webb NIRCam composite image from two filters – F212N (orange) and F335M (cyan) – of Jupiter system, labeled.

Scientists find the most massive neutron star close to the black hole limit - study

PSR J0952–0607 is a neutron star 2.3 times as massive as the Sun but around just 20 kilometers wide. It is the closest pulsar known to the limit to forming a black hole.

 An example of a pulsar, a neutron star emitting beams of electromagnetic radiation (Illustrative).

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin's Apollo 11 flight jacket fetches $2.8 million

Neil Armstrong and Aldrin were the first humans to walk on the moon. Aldrin, who is now 92, is the only surviving member of the mission's three-man crew.

 A view of a detail of Buzz Aldrin's flown inflight coverall jacket, worn by him on his mission to the Moon and back during Apollo 11, that was sold for $2,772,500 at Sotheby's, in New York City, U.S. July 21, 2022 in this screengrab from a video.

Black hole debunker team finds dormant black hole near Milky Way

A dormant black hole is a black hole that doesn't emit the X-ray radiation that makes other black holes easy to spot.

A simulated image of a black hole.