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Artemis II’s moonbound astronauts capture Earth’s brilliant blue beauty as they leave it behind

The Artemis II astronauts have captured our blue planet’s brilliant beauty as they zoom ever closer to the moon.

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The Habitable Worlds Observatory will need astrometry to find life

We’re getting closer and closer to finding a real Earth-like exoplanet. But finding one is only half the battle. To truly know if we’re looking at an Earth analog somewhere else in the galaxy, we have to directly image it too. That’s a job for the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), a planned space-based telescope whose […]

The depths of Neptune and Uranus may be ‘superionic’

The interiors of ice giant planets like Uranus and Neptune could be home to a previously unknown state of matter, according to new computational simulations by Carnegie’s Cong Liu and Ronald Cohen. Their work, published in Nature Communications, predicts that a quasi-one-dimensional superionic state of carbon hydride exists under the extreme pressures and temperatures found […]

Webb eyes a pair of planet-forming disks

This month’s NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month offers us a two-for-one on brand new stars—with some potential planets thrown in as well. This visual highlights Webb’s views of the protoplanetary disks Tau 042021 (left) and Oph 163131 (right), otherwise known by the catalog numbers 2MASS J04202144+2813491 and 2MASS J16313124-2426281, respectively. Tau […]

Earth from space: Eyes on our moon

In an unusual perspective for an Earth-observing satellite, the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission captured this image of the moon, Earth’s only natural satellite. The Sentinel-2 mission acquired this lunar image by rolling one of its satellites sideways to view the moon instead of Earth. This is part of a regular calibration process, whereby the stable intensity […]

Artemis II’s moon-bound astronauts capture Earth’s brilliant blue beauty as they leave it behind

The Artemis II astronauts have captured our blue planet’s brilliant beauty as they zoom ever closer to the moon.

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The most pristine star yet found in the known universe

An unusual team of astronomers used Sloan Digital Sky Survey-V (SDSS-V) data and observations on the Magellan telescopes at Carnegie Science’s Las Campanas Observatory in Chile to discover the most pristine star in the known universe, called SDSS J0715-7334. Their work is published in Nature Astronomy.

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Artemis II astronauts rocket toward the moon after spending a day around Earth

NASA’s Artemis II astronauts fired their engines and blazed toward the moon Thursday night, breaking free of the chains that have trapped humanity in shallow laps around Earth in the decades since Apollo.

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The unseen challenges of life on the moon

For the first time since the Apollo era, humans are preparing not just to visit the moon, but to live and work there for weeks, months—and eventually years.

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Artemis II to test new models that predict solar particle storms up to a day ahead

During the Artemis II mission launched Wednesday, NASA will test out a pair of new solar radiation forecasts, developed at University of Michigan Engineering, designed to protect astronauts venturing away from Earth. The forecasts will provide warnings of harmful solar radiation released by solar flares and eruptions up to 24 hours in advance. NASA’s Space […]

Ghostly particles: Dark radiation may have masqueraded as neutrinos

New research suggests that neutrinos in the early universe may have transformed into a previously unknown form of radiation. A study from Washington University in St. Louis offers a new way to explain certain puzzling observations about how the universe evolved.

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‘Serendipitous’ discovery of Martian ripple marks reveals an ancient sandstorm

The search for life on Mars involves the efforts of scientists from many different disciplines. An important aspect of that search is to study Martian sedimentary rocks for information about the planet’s environment when it is likely that the surface environment hosted abundant water and therefore more habitable, around three to four billion years ago. […]

Early data from Vera C. Rubin Observatory reveals over 11,000 new asteroids

Using preliminary data from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, scientists have discovered over 11,000 new asteroids. The data were confirmed by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center (MPC), making this the largest single batch of asteroid discoveries submitted in the past year. The discoveries were made using data from Rubin’s early optimization surveys and […]

Astronomers find a third galaxy missing its dark matter, validating a violent cosmic collision theory

Astronomers have long argued that dark matter is the invisible scaffolding that holds galaxies together. Without its immense gravitational pull, the rotational spins of galaxies would force them to simply fly apart. But now, scientists have found a string of galaxies that seem to be missing their dark matter entirely. The latest in this string, […]

Giant ‘forbidden planet’ orbiting small star shows an unusually low-metal atmosphere

Scientists have discovered that a highly unusual giant planet—sometimes called “forbidden”—could have an atmosphere with fewer heavier elements than its host star. University of Birmingham astrophysicist Dr. Anjali Piette worked with an international research team to analyze James Webb Space Telescope data from the exoplanet TOI-5205 b. This is a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting a star […]