Items tagged with astronomy
A bright fireball streaked across the daytime sky, astonishing onlookers and generating a sonic boom that rattled homes from Georgia to the Carolinas. The brilliant phenomenon, confirmed by NASA as a meteor, ultimately broke into fragments, some of which impacted at least one residence in Henry County, Georgia.
An...
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This week NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) provided the first direct image of a planet with a mass similar to Saturn's, orbiting the young star TWA 7. This landmark observation, detailed in the Nature journal, not only marks Webb's inaugural planet discovery but also unveils the lightest exoplanet ever...
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Perched atop Cerro Pachón in Chile, the newly-commissioned Vera C. Rubin Observatory has released some highly exciting first images that offer a stunning preview of its unprecedented capabilities. These initial glimpses showcase the telescope's enormous field of view, speed, and ultra-high-resolution imaging of the...
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This week, astronomers have unveiled the most intricate and vibrant image ever captured of the Sculptor Galaxy (NGC 253) in a stunning thousand-color spectrum. This unprecedented view, thanks to the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) and its Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE)...
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The European Space Agency's (ESA) Solar Orbiter spacecraft has delivered the first-ever close-up images of the Sun's enigmatic polar regions. Released this week, these historic images offer a never-before-seen view at areas of the Sun previously hidden from Earth-bound telescopes that always point at the equatorial...
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June's full moon, affectionately known as the Strawberry Moon, is set to illuminate the night sky this week, reaching its peak illumination on Wednesday, June 11, at 3:44 a.m. EST. While the exact moment of fullness may occur in the pre-dawn hours for those on the East Coast, the moon will appear full and bright for...
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A rather new adaptive optics system dubbed Cona has just opened a new window into the mysterious world of the Sun's corona, delivering images of unprecedented clarity. This groundbreaking technology, installed at the Goode Solar Telescope (GST) in California and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), was...
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A recent study has cast a concerning spotlight on a previously underestimated celestial threat: asteroids co-orbiting Venus. While NASA and other space agencies have diligently tracked near-Earth asteroids for decades, a growing body of evidence suggests that a significant number of undetected space rocks in Venus's...
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Astronomers have for the first time observed a violent cosmic collision dubbed the "cosmic joust." This dramatic encounter involving two galaxies 11 billion light years away, reveals how one galaxy effectively "spears" its opponent with a beam of radiation from a powerful quasar, severely hindering the latter's...
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In a discovery that has astronomers both captivated and perplexed, a mysterious perfectly-spherical object, dubbed "Teleios," has been detected in the vast expanse of deep space. Discovered and observed exclusively through its radio emissions by the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope...
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It's now or never, dear readers—the final so-called "micro" full Moon this year will be culminating tonight. The Moon will technically be furthest away from Earth today at 251,939 miles, but when viewed this evening near the horizon, our little planetary satellite will still appear larger than usual due to a human perception phenomenon called
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Billions of years ago, Mars had beautiful golden beaches skirting oceans that covered almost half the entire planet. A Chinese-American research team, with the help of data from China's Zhurong martian rover, have found pretty conclusive proof of vast, ancient oceans, although it's probably safe to say that they...
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Almost by accident, a researcher stumbled upon a unique galactic event 50 million years in the making. Apparently NASA's Hubble Space Telescope had captured a ringed galaxy (LEDA 1313424) that not only heavily resembles a bullseye, but with nine (perhaps more) rings now holds the record for the most rings observed in...
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Stargazers are in for a rare planetary treat from now until the end of February. If you look up into the night sky tonight (under the right conditions, of course), six planets—Jupiter, Mars, Neptune, Saturn, Uranus, and Venus—will be visible. Even better is that on February 28, Mercury will join the rather special...
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A new research has revealed that sun-like stars in our galaxy experience one violent "superflare" approximately once every hundred years—far more often that scientists previously thought. With that, many believe that the Sun in our solar system is overdue for such a superflare, especially since the last one was back...
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Grab a warm blanket, lawn chair, some hot cocoa, and get ready for one of the most dazzling meteor showers of the year. The colorful Geminid meteor light show is expected to peak tonight as well as tomorrow night with up to 160 meteors per hour (with the right conditions, of course). Bonus: the Geminids usually occur...
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Jupiter is well-known for its Great Red Spot, but astronomers have recently discovered equally large spots at the giant gas planet’s north and south poles that appear and disappear at random. The dark UV ovals were first spotted by NASA’s Hubble spacecraft in the late 1990s, but have only recently been studied in...
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NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft captured the moment when a headless Halloween comet flew too close to the Sun and vaporized. Comet 2024 S1 ATLAS reached its perihelion, or closest approach to the Sun on Sunday around 7:30am ET.
Comet 2024 S1 was first discovered on September 27, 2024, in...
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Researchers from Japan’s National Astronomical Observatory (NAOJ) are throwing shade at the now iconic image of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). The image in question, constructed by another group of researchers from data collected by the EHT...
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NASA says a bus-sized asteroid is about to make a close approach, coming within 148,000 miles of Earth. According to the space agency, the asteroid, named 2024 UQ1, measures approximately 32-feet across.
Astronomers and scientists are constantly on the lookout for large space rocks that could pose a threat to...
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A supernova event recorded by Chinese and Japanese astronomers in 1181 is at the heart of a first-of-its-kind 3D animated map, unveiling new secrets of a flowering “zombie star.” Supernova Sn 1181 is one of the few to be documented before the invention of telescopes.
The zombie star in question was first discovered...
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The month of September is chock full of celestial goodness, with a partial lunar eclipse highlighting the festivities. September’s full moon, also called the Harvest moon, will also be a Supermoon, meaning it will appear ever so slightly bigger and brighter than the average full moon.
As NASA and the US government...
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