It's the year 2000. We're floating in space, and we come across the side view of a spectacular spiral galaxy. It's called UGC 10043 and is located 150 million light-years away. Spiral galaxies like this one are vast structures of stars, gas and dust, characterized by swirling arms that ...

According to a new study, our Milky Way galaxy may have already begun colliding with the closest giant galaxy, Andromeda. Published in Nature Astronomy, the study reveals that there may be a shroud of gas around every galaxy that stretches up to a million light years. If that’s the ...

What are they? Earlier this year, astronomers revealed one of the James Webb Space Telescope's most spectacular and intriguing discoveries yet — and that's saying something. Lying in one of the most ancient regions of the observable universe, they found, were hundreds of galaxies that ...

Astronomers often have more questions than answers about the universe — and the universe, in turn, has asked its own question. Quite literally. Last year, the James Webb Space Telescope fortuitously spotted the unmistakable shape of a question mark across the sky. The uncanny feature was ...

What comes to mind when you think of space? Imagine a friend boasting about a spacious building, stadium or museum they recently visited. Do you envision the building as vast and expansive? Is it simply very large, or does it seem empty? The word spacious does not necessarily mean empty. ...

Warp drives have a long history of not existing, despite their ubiquitous presence in science fiction. Writer John Campbell first introduced the idea in a science fiction novel called Islands of Space. These days, thanks to Star Trek in particular, the term is very familiar. It's almost ...

Space Wonders: After making headlines with the first-ever images of supermassive black holes at the centers of two different galaxies, the global collaboration known as the Event Horizon Telescope is preparing even more spectacular shots from space. By capturing data at different wavelengths, ...

Andromeda is the closest major galaxy to our Milky Way – and it's getting closer. In fact, astronomers believe that the two galaxies are destined to crash into each other. But a new study suggests this fate isn't necessarily written in the stars. Andromeda is currently barreling down ...

When the Moon fully slips into Earth's shadow, a king shall die. So warns an ominous prediction from Old Babylonia, inscribed across several ancient clay tablets. For over a century now, these precious astrological artifacts have been housed at the British Museum, but only recently did ...

I bet there are still some people among you who still don't think bases on the Moon and trips to Mars are things we just might experience during our lifetimes. But you only have to look at the intense prep work the world's space agencies and private companies are conducting, and at the fortunes ...

What just happened? NASA transmitted hip-hop artist Missy Elliott's iconic track "The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)" to Venus, making her the first hip-hop artist to have her music sent into space. The Deep Space Network at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory beamed the song 158 million miles to our ...

Saturn has its famous hexagon, and Jupiter has just now been caught throwing mad shapes too. High up in its atmosphere, astronomers have identified strange, glowing new features, in the region above the tempestuous Great Red Spot. There, in the ionosphere, concentrations of ionized ...

A rogue planet is a world that has been ejected from the planetary system in which it originally formed. Because rogue planets do not orbit a parent star, they are cast adrift into interstellar space. On their meanderings, rogue planets are pulled toward whatever large, gravitationally ...

A manned mission to Mars is a long-term goal of the scientific community. However, a new study has presented a significant challenge to this objective: human kidneys may not endure the long trip to the Red Planet. While scientists are already considering potential solutions, much more research ...

We've received a strange signal from across the galaxy, and astronomers are struggling to understand what it means. They know what's emitting the signals. It's a neutron star named ASKAP J193505.1+214841.0 (ASKAP J1935+2148 for short), located in the plane of the Milky Way, some 15,820 ...

Slowly but surely, the ground is regurgitating its secrets. The history that lies buried beneath the swirling sands of time yields, piece by piece, to technology. But one such piece, in a well-explored region, has archaeologists a little baffled. Near the famous ancient Great Pyramid of ...

Within the last five years, astronomers have discovered a new type of astronomical phenomenon that exists on vast scales – larger than whole galaxies. They're called ORCs (odd radio circles), and they look like giant rings of radio waves expanding outwards like a shockwave. Until now, ORCs ...

Meteors – commonly known as shooting stars – can be seen on any night of the year. But some nights are better than others. As Earth moves around the Sun, we encounter streams of dust and debris from comets and asteroids. That debris gives birth to "meteor showers" – times when the number ...

This high-res processed image of the April 8 eclipse shows the Sun’s corona, its outermost ... atmosphere, in artificial colors that indicate the polarization or orientation of the light. Citizen scientists in Dallas collected these data through the SwRI-led Citizen Continental-America ...

Space IT support: After months of doubts, uncertainties, and somber predictions, NASA was finally able to establish communication with Voyager 1's flight system and assess its status. The probe is still operational as expected, and the space agency is now preparing to retrieve new flight data ...

NASA has shared a video  that maps all of the flights taken on Mars by its trailblazing Ingenuity helicopter. Ingenuity became the first aircraft to achieve powered, controlled flight on another planet when its rotors fired up for the first time to carry it above the martian surface in April ...

POTSDAM, N.Y. — At first, it seemed like every other college orientation session happening in universities across the country. A handful of prospective students, my teenage daughter Zadie included, listened intently on the eighth floor of the administration building here while an ...

Back in October of 2022, astronomers around the world were baffled and awed by the largest gamma-radiation burst we’ve ever recorded. The burst was so powerful, in fact, that it has been nicknamed the BOAT (Brightest of All Time). Now, almost two years later, the BOAT continues to reveal ...

Hostile Cosmos: Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are powerful energetic explosions observed by astronomers in distant galaxies. NASA describes GRBs as the most powerful class of explosions known in the universe, and they are primarily observed in connection with dying stars and resulting supernova ...

The Eta Aquariids, slated to be one of the best meteor showers during 2024, have begun. The Eta Aquariid meteor shower runs from April 15 through May 27, peaking on the night of May 4-5. The absolute maximum number of “shooting stars” per hour is 50, according to the American Meteor Society, ...

We're about to find out what's happening with NASA's beleaguered Mars Sample Return mission. In just a few hours – at 1PM EDT – NASA is going to host a media teleconference that sets out its recommendations for moving forward. The mission has been ongoing for several years, with the ...

A new image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a galaxy partly hidden by a huge cloud of dust known as a dark nebula. The galaxy IC 4633 still shines brightly and beautifully in the main part of the image, but to the bottom right, you can see dark smudges of dust that are blocking the light from ...

Dozens of broken pieces of pottery dating between 2,000 and 3,000 years old have been unearthed on a windswept island on the Great Barrier Reef – the oldest pottery ever discovered in Australia. The remnants, found less than a meter below the surface by Traditional Owners and ...

There are many words that could be used to describe WASP-76b — hellish, scorching, turbulent, chaotic, and even violent. This is a planet outside the solar system that sits so close to its star it gets hot enough to vaporize lead. So, as you can imagine, until now, "glorious" wasn't one of ...

The second diamond ring during the total eclipse of the Sun, November 14, 2012, from a site near ... Lakeland Downs, Queensland, Australia. Shot through the Astro-Physics 105mm Traveler f/5.8 refractor scope, tracked on the AP 400 mount, and with the Canon 60Da. 1/400th sec at ISO 100. ...

There are dozens of fabulous eclipse maps and eclipse map apps available for April’s total solar eclipse—some of them have even become ultra-successful memes. But they all have something unexpected in common—they’re wrong. For those heading far into the path of totality—which about 115 ...

Last November, when NASA's Lucy spacecraft flew past its first official asteroid target named Dinkinesh, it found the space rock was not one, not two but three rocks huddled together. While scientists were surprised to spot Selam, Dinkinesh's natural satellite, they were shocked to discover ...

Scientists have discovered a rare stardust particle that came from the explosive supernova death of a distant star. This speck, it seems, is locked within an ancient meteorite. The grain of dust, though small, can help tell a story of stellar life, death and rebirth that spans almost the ...

Spending time in space can provide both good and bad experiences for the astronauts who live aboard the International Space Station — and it apparently provides some laughs, too. As Space.com reports, the international crew that hitched a ride back to Earth on a SpaceX Crew Dragon said ...

There are plenty of craters on Mars, especially when compared to Earth. That is primarily thanks to the lack of weathering forces and strong plate tectonics that disrupt the formations of such impacts on our home planet. However, not all impact craters on Mars are directly caused by ...

This morning, a massive solar flare spewing into space at light speed reminds us that the sun is at—or is very close to—the peak of its 11-year magnetic activity cycle. After a month of relatively low activity, at 0130 UTC on March 23, the sun produced an “X1.1 class” solar flare—followed ...

NASA is calling on citizen astronomers in the U.S. to help it learn more about our sun. It’s using April’s solar eclipse as an opportunity to conduct a special experiment in which millions of people can participate. A video (top) released by NASA on Tuesday shows exactly how you can help ...

"The gravity fields of the planets in the solar system interfere with each other..." Martian Whirlpools Despite being a planet away, Mars may be triggering "giant whirlpools" in the Earth's oceans. As detailed in a new paper published in the journal Nature Communications, researchers ...

NASA's Artemis program is scheduled to return astronauts to the Moon and establish a permanent orbiting laboratory by the end of the decade. Meanwhile, private companies are making significant steps in taking paying customers further into space. As humanity's footprint expands beyond the ...

Best laptops 2024: Jump Menu Whether you're running cutting-edge astronomy software or the best photo editing apps like Adobe Photoshop, we're here to help. The best laptop shouldn't just look good but must run the most graphically intensive workloads without a hitch. They should also ...

The moon's shadow only hits the Earth when the line of nodes is pointed toward the Sun.   NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio On Sunday, March 10, at 09:00 UTC (5:00 a.m. EDT), our natural satellite will pass between the Earth and the sun. This new moon will be invisible, lost in ...

What if the giant sail-backed Spinosaurus wasn’t actually a swimming dinosaur at all? Despite some scientists’ impressions of the dinosaur, as well as the way it is portrayed in Jurassic Park 3, the Spinosaurus might not have been very good at diving. This new theory is shared in-depth in a ...

Hot enough to cook an egg. Watery Depths About 70 light years away from our solar system is a planet that may potentially be covered entirely with water. But before you start imagining oceans just like the ones here on Earth, astronomers at the University of Cambridge say the planet-wide sea ...

We know that there are thousands of exoplanets out there, with many millions more waiting to be discovered. But the vast majority of exoplanets are simply uninhabitable. For the few that may be habitable, we can only determine if they are by examining their atmospheres. LIFE, the Large ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ancient stone tools found in western Ukraine may be the oldest known evidence of early human presence in Europe, according to research published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The chipped stones, deliberately fashioned from volcanic rock, were excavated from a quarry in ...

The asteroid Apophis, infamous because it's headed to brush past Earth in 2029, most likely isn't something to worry about, a new study finds. This space rock, scientists calculated, will not collide with other space rocks that could worryingly alter its orbit and redirect it toward Earth ...

What just happened? After becoming the first American craft to land on the lunar surface since Apollo 17 in 1972, and the first ever commercial craft to achieve such a feat, the Odysseus lander has powered down and may never wake again, bringing an end to its historic mission. At 6:23 p.m. ET ...

Mount Everest climbers must now rent and wear a tracking device on their journeys to cut down time on search and rescue missions, CNN reported. Rakesh Gurung, Nepal’s tourism department director, is quoted as telling the news outlet that a climber will pay $10 to $15 for a chip, which will be ...

Using data from the Gemini North telescope in Hawai’i, a team of astronomers has measured the heaviest pair of supermassive black holes ever found. Despite being already predicted, the merging of two black holes has never been observed. This discovery offers insights into the unlikelyness of ...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The first U.S. spacecraft to land on the moon since the Apollo astronauts fell silent Thursday, a week after breaking a leg at touchdown and tipping over near the lunar south pole. Read More: TIME's Original 1969 Coverage of Apollo 11 Intuitive Machines’ lander, Odysseus, ...