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Robotic Spaceflight, Solar System

Tianwen-2 arrives at target asteroid Kamoʻoalewa

Is this the first known binary system to produce two supernova remnants?

Robotic Spaceflight, Science

The first commercial space telescope delivers

A diagram illustrating the outer solar system from an angled top-down perspective. Concentric orbital paths are shown around a central yellow Sun, with Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune labeled at increasing distances. Pluto is shown in yellow text outside Neptune's orbit, and the entire outer region is surrounded by a diffuse haze representing the Kuiper Belt, labeled in white text.

How do planets clear out objects on the other side of their orbit?

Picture of the Day

A dark, twisting column of dust with glowing pink edges curls up from the lower part of the frame toward a small, bright knot near the center. It sits amid vast clouds of deep red and dusky blue-gray gas, sprinkled with hundreds of stars across the field.

A dusty trunk

Mark Killion, taken from Beryl, Utah

The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula (IC 1396A) is a dark, dense column of gas and dust about 2,400 light-years away in Cepheus, part of the larger IC 1396 emission region. The feature is being sculpted by radiation and winds from a nearby massive star, which ionizes the bright rim of the feature. The imager collected 21.6 hours of exposure through broadband and dual-band Hα/OIII filters with a 5-inch f/5 refractor and one-shot-color camera.

In the Sky

The Sky Today on Thursday, July 16: The Moon passes the Lion’s heart

What’s Launching This Week

What’s Launching This Week

Starship flies again as Skyroot chases India’s first private orbital launch

Today in the History of Astronomy

A vintage, monochromatic photograph shows a grainy, dark grey surface with a single, small white star shining brightly in the exact center of the frame. The star emits a subtle, four-pointed cross of light against the textured, speckled background. The outer edges of the image are framed by uneven, darker tattered borders that appear worn and decayed.

Today in the History of Astronomy

July 16, 1850: Bond and Whipple photograph Vega

More News

Robotic Spaceflight, Solar System

Tianwen-2 arrives at target asteroid Kamoʻoalewa

Robotic Spaceflight, Science

The first commercial space telescope delivers

An oval-shaped all-sky map fills the frame in muted blues and purples, with a bright, dense white and yellow band stretching horizontally across the middle. Small yellow dots are scattered across the upper and lower portions of the oval, with two red dots standing out among them, one on each side of center.

Euclid spots the oldest known quasars

A James Webb Space Telescope image of a dense galaxy cluster filled with hundreds of galaxies of varying shapes, sizes, and colors against a black background. Three small white squares labeled A, B, and C mark gravitationally lensed images of a background quasar near the cluster center. At right, three zoomed-in inset panels labeled QSO1A, QSO1B, and QSO1C show each lensed quasar image as a small red point source.

Did this black hole grow up before its galaxy?

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