Items tagged with space
Somewhere out in the cosmic deep—about 600 million light-years away—a wayward monster has been caught in the act. Using a combo of the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, Hubble, and the NRAO Very Large Array, NASA has identified a 'wandering' supermassive black hole snacking on an unlucky star. The scene unfolded in what...
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The world's most powerful solar telescope, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (Editor note: Try saying that one time fast!), is beginning to prove the potential of a new add-on with its first close-up image of the Sun. Located near the summit of Haleakalā in Maui, Hawai'i, the...
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With the aid of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scientists have found compelling evidence that biological life is present and active on a planet called K2-18b, located some 124 light years from Earth. The team was able to determine dimethyl sulfide and dimethyl disulfide—gases normally produced by biological...
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Most of us will never live long enough to see the kind of deep space travel depicted in shows like "Star Trek" become a reality, but in lieu of such sci-fi adventures, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) continues to snap incredible images from far, far away. The latest one is being described as the most detailed...
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Attention all stargazers, dust off your DLSR camera and adjust your weekend plans accordingly, because you're about to be treated to the first full moon of spring. Otherwise known as the Pink Moon, Paschal Moon, and Passover Moon, there's some interesting trivia afoot to be the life of the moon watch party, should you bring along less celestial-savvy
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Japanese tire maker Bridgestone is showing off two new lunar rover tire concepts at the 40th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. Yes, they basically look like airless puncture-proof tires currently found on UTVs (utility task vehicles) and skid steer loaders, except that Bridgestone's are metal and designed to...
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The weekend is when most Americans like to sleep in (at least who work a typical 9-5 shift Monday through Friday), but if you fancy yourself a stargazer who enjoys celestial events, you'll want to set your Nintendo Alarmo clock (or smartphone's alarm) to go off early tomorrow morning. That's because there is going to...
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It only took some 417 years since the invention (if going by patent filings) of the telescope to finally see Neptune's auroras, and it's thanks to NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST (the same telescope that provided a crystal clear view of Neptune's rings in 2022). Webb is much more powerful than the handheld...
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Firefly has announced that its "Blue Ghost" spacecraft has captured a stunning video showing the dark side of the moon while it was preparing to land on the lunar surface. Firefly is one of the private companies selected via NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, the purpose of which is to transport...
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A recent study has claimed that Mars is red in color due to ferrihydrite, an iron oxide mineral that's left over from liquid water. This finding suggests that the Red Planet could've had a cold and wet, but habitable past. The ferrihydrite study was done in controlled lab environments recreated using Mars orbital and...
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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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The space telescope Euclid has made a significant discovery, uncovering its first Einstein ring, which scientists believe will pave the way to unraveling the mysteries of the universe's invisible components. As the name suggests, the Einstein ring is named after Albert Einstein, as it's a product of his theory of...
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If you've seen photos of the far side of the moon, specifically of two long canyons within what is called the Schrödinger basin and wondered what created them, look no further—researches have determined that ejecta from an ancient asteroid strike carved out the grand canyons (Vallis Schrödinger and Vallis Planck) in...
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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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As a part of its grand plans for outer space domination, China intends on sending another Chang'e probe into space next year. The mission this time is to search for water potentially frozen in the far side of the moon after previous Chinese probes had found potential for further exploration. Discovering frozen water...
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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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If things had gone to plan in the wee hours of the morning today, Jeff Bezos and his Blue Origin team would be celebrating the successful liftoff of the company's towering New Glenn rocket. Instead, celebrations will have to wait for another day after pesky issues ultimately kept the 30-story rocket grounded at the...
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On Tuesday, January 7th, 2025, NASA announced an update to its Mars Sample Return (MSR) Program, created to help scientists understand the Red Planet by bringing home Martian rock samples. The agency is now torn between two plans for bringing the samples back to Earth: recreating a previous rocket method or getting a...
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Talk about a close call! A large metal ring suspected to be space debris, measuring around 8 feet wide and weighing a hefty 1,100 pounds, crashed in a village in Kenya earlier this week. Preliminary evaluations point to a separation ring from a rocket, but an investigation is still pending by the Kenya Space Agency...
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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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It's not too often that you see an accident report for a vehicle on another planet, but such is the case with NASA providing some preliminary details from "the first aircraft accident investigation on another world." The first by NASA, anyway, as who knows if some intelligent beings on a distant planet or solar system...
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