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Dark matter research is unsettling. Scientists were unnerved when they first noticed that galaxies don’t rotate by the same physics as a spinning plate. The stars at a galaxy’s edge rotate faster than expected. And their motion can only b...

In 1964, astronomers Arno A. Penzias and Robert W. Wilson found themselves cleaning pigeon poop out of the Holmdel Horn Antenna, a radio telescope in New Jersey. The data from the instrument had weird, persistent noise that they couldn’t get ri...

Full Moon occurs at 10:53 p.m. EDT. At that moment, our lone natural satellite will lie 245,106 miles (394,460 kilometers) away. At this time, the Sun stands high above the lunar surface, a condition similar to midday here on Earth. Shadows at this ...

After falling past the event horizon — the point of no return — nothing can escape a black hole. While the depths of black holes may forever remain a mystery, astronomers can observe the regions around them. In a paper published September...

Friday, September 21 Venus peaks at magnitude –4.8 this evening, shining brighter than at any other time during this evening apparition. (The difference is essentially imperceptible, however — it appears only a thousandth of a magnitude ...

Venus peaks at magnitude –4.8 this evening, shining brighter than at any other time during this evening apparition. However, the difference is essentially imperceptible — it appears only a thousandth of a magnitude brighter today than it...

Neutron stars, the end-stage remnants of massive stars, are high-energy objects. They’re usually studied in X-rays, some of the most energetic light in the universe. Neutron stars also give off radio emissions, most famously as pulsars. But now...

If we wish to colonize another world, finding a planet with a gravitational field that humans can survive and thrive under will be crucial. If its gravity is too strong our blood will be pulled down into our legs, our bones might break, and we could ...

Saturn and its rings always look wonderful when viewed through a telescope, but this evening provides a great opportunity to target the planet’s moons through an 8-inch or larger instrument. Two inner moons — 12th-magnitude Enceladus a...

In late spring in the year 1054, a strange light appeared in the sky in what we would now call the constellation Taurus the Bull. It was a new star, where no star had been before. It grew quickly brighter, until by July it outshone everything except ...

Our Milky Way galaxy holds hundreds of billions of stars. Many of those suns were formed locally from clouds of gas — at the rate of handful every year —over billions of years. But our home galaxy gets stars another way, too. It steals th...

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) launched April 18, headed for an orbit that takes it out to about the distance of the Moon at its apogee. Just a few weeks later, it began science operations and a list of 50 exoplanet candida...

via GIPHY Every single episode of MacGyver would have been ruined had he gotten his hands on a few patches of a new robotic skin developed by researchers at Yale University. A diversion to distract cartel enforcers? Wrap a stick of dynamite in robo...

Although autumn arrives with the equinox this coming weekend, the famed Summer Triangle — a skywatcher warm weather favorite — remains prominent in the evening sky. Look high in the west after darkness falls and your eyes will fall on th...

Since 2003, NASA has been monitoring the height of Earth’s ice with lasers. This undertaking began with a satellite — the Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) — which ran through 2009. Operation IceBridge has used plane...

Anders. Borman. Lovell. The names of the first three humans to journey around the Moon will echo throughout eternity. But these brave Apollo 8 astronauts were actually not the first earthlings to complete the voyage. Two tortoises beat NASA to the Mo...

The universe is filled with billions of massive celestial objects, from stars to planets to comets to asteroids. But what happens when lines start to blur between these classifications, and we just can’t place an object in any major category? ...

Asteroid hunters have a great opportunity to spot Vesta in the vicinity of one of the Milky Way’s brightest star-forming regions this week.The 7th-magnitude minor planet resides in western Sagittarius, a region currently hosting the major plane...

Nothing is normal on Ceres — least of all its mud volcanoes. In new research published in Nature Astronomy, a large team of astronomers has laid out a new view of the weirdest world in our solar system. It seems that Ceres has had a busy last ...

The future of space exploration may rest in the hands of a group of Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers. They’ve built the first of a new generation of small nuclear reactors intended to power missions to deep space and even future astro...

Mapping our galaxy’s formation and evolution would be pretty easy if stars just stayed in their birthplaces, but unfortunately that’s not the case. The Milky Way’s vast pool of stars is constantly expanding outward, getting knocked ...

Friday, September 14 Although Jupiter reached opposition and peak visibility in early May, it remains a conspicuous object from evening twilight until it sets around 9:30 p.m. local daylight time. Jupiter shines at magnitude –1.9 and dominates...

In just six weeks of science observations, NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has already found 50 possible new worlds for scientists to examine. TESS finds planets by watching the dip in light as a planet passes in front of its pa...

Since June 10, the 14-year-old Opportunity rover has been silent, presumably sleeping as thick dust clouds blocked the Sun from its solar cells. But now, that sky is clearing, and NASA is implementing a listening plan for the rover through January 20...

Although Jupiter reached opposition and peak visibility in early May, it remains a conspicuous object from evening twilight until it sets around 9:30 p.m. local daylight time. Jupiter shines at magnitude –1.9 and dominates the southwestern sk...

Recent months have featured a few stories about how Albert Einstein’s theories, or the ideas underpinning them, have all been confirmed to a new degree of accuracy. That’s usually the case: Scientists try to disprove Einstein, and Einstei...

When it comes to exoplanets, the search for water is paramount, thanks to its vital role in the evolution of life as we know it. However, finding the life-giving liquid on other worlds is an ongoing challenge. For nearly a decade, scientists have pr...

The Moon moves eastward relative to the background stars at an average rate of about 13° per day. This motion carries it to a position 4° to Jupiter’s upper right this evening. The pretty pair will be on display from twilight until Jup...

In October 1957, a basketball-sized metallic sphere began circling Earth, transmitting a beacon from above. For many, the launch of Sputnik 1 heralded in the Space Age. But lost often in the story of Sputnik, the Space Age, and the space race is tha...

At the center of most galaxies lie supermassive black holes. Their exceptional gravity pulls in thousands of stars and stellar mass black holes, or black holes formed when a massive star collapses due to gravity. By simulating how objects interact n...

Jupiter is by far the largest and most massive planet in the solar system. And befitting a world named for the Roman king of the gods, Jupiter has an impressive entourage. It includes a set of faint and dusty rings, 67 known or suspected moons, and t...

The idea of building a base to colonize Mars and become an interplanetary species has seen decades of talk and not a whole lot of action, but now at least there’s plan. On September 10, researchers from the École polytechnique fé...

Venus dominates the twilight sky after sunset on Wednesday. The dazzling object shines at magnitude –4.7 among the background stars of southern Virgo. The planet stands 8° high 30 minutes after sundown and sets shortly after 8:30 p.m. loca...

Sometimes scientific discoveries are made in world-class laboratories, when brilliant scientists come together to prove a wonderful idea true with fresh experiments. And sometimes, the secrets of the universe are hidden under a pile of pigeon poop. ...

Over 2,500 years ago, two small stars collided. The collision produced an outburst called a red nova, which then slowly cooled, producing molecular gas and dust. By the time the light from the nova reached Earth in 1670, astronomers were already keen...

Blazing across the sky for mere milliseconds, fast radio bursts (FRBs) are among the newest and most puzzling astronomical phenomena. They come from extreme distances and appear without any known rhyme or reason, making them almost impossible to stud...

Much like the famed Trojan horse, Jupiter's Trojan asteroids are hiding a secret. According to a new study published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the existence of a bound pair of "Trojan asteroids" trapped in a stable orbit near Jupiter suggests...