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The twinkling stars in the night sky are not just beautiful to look at. Their flickering reveals something about the varying temperatures and densities in the layers of Earth’s atmosphere, which refract the light as it travels toward us. Certain stellar remnants that emit radio waves can exhibit a very similar effect.
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NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) has released its most complete view of the starry sky to date, filling in gaps from previous observations. Nearly 6,000 colored dots scattered across the image show the locations of either confirmed or candidate exoplanets—worlds beyond our solar system—identified by the mission as of September 2025 at the end […]
Astronomers led by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) have made the first direct detection of turbulence distorting light in the interstellar medium. The findings will help scientists achieve clearer imaging of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
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This month, ESA’s Mars Express takes us to Shalbatana Vallis: a fascinating Martian valley surrounded by signs of water, lava, craters and chaos. Shalbatana Vallis is an impressive channel near Mars’s equator. This image, taken by Mars Express’s High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC), captures the northern part of the channel, which weaves its way across […]
The Southwest Research Institute-led Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) instruments aboard ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) spacecraft and NASA’s Europa Clipper made unique observations of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS in late 2025. SwRI leads the UVS instruments on both spacecraft, simultaneously imaging both hemispheres of the comet and detecting the comet’s ultraviolet emissions.
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Silicon carbide (SiC) dust is one of the most important ingredients in cosmic dust, the tiny particles floating throughout the cosmos that eventually give rise to new planets and stars. This compound of silicon and carbon is forged in the atmospheres of dying stars, especially carbon-rich ones, but exactly how has long remained a mystery. […]
Nasa is developing ways to use nuclear power to send spacecraft to their destinations. Nuclear propulsion could greatly reduce the journey time to Mars, perhaps cutting a voyage of more than six months to three or four months.
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You’re an anaerobic microbe sunbathing on a Martian beach billions of years ago listening to the small waves hit the shoreline as you take in the perchlorates in the Martian regolith. This is because while Mars is warm and wet, it still lacks sufficient oxygen, so anaerobic life like yourself doesn’t need oxygen to survive. […]
When you think of outer space, you’re likely picturing stars, planets and moons. But much of space is filled with clouds of gas, plasma and stardust—known as interstellar clouds.
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Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon, is also the solar system’s largest satellite, even larger than the planet Mercury. It is also the only celestial body aside from Earth (and the gas giants) to have an intrinsic magnetic field. As if this didn’t make the icy body interesting enough, scientists also predict that it has a massive […]
Gravitational wave researchers working on the world’s most sensitive scientific instruments have found a way to tune their detectors using a process akin to the pitch-correction used in music production.
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If you’ve ever taken an introductory astronomy class, you’ve probably seen the Hertzsprung-Russell (HR) diagram. This graph maps out the life cycle of stars by plotting their temperature against their luminosity, and has been a “cheat sheet” for stellar astrophysics for over a century. But the universe is full of more than just stars, and […]
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover recently took a self-portrait against a sweeping backdrop of ancient Martian terrain at a location the science team calls Lac de Charmes. Assembled from 61 individual images, the selfie shows Perseverance training its mast on a rocky outcrop on which it had just made a circular abrasion patch, with the western […]
The galaxy cluster Abell 2029 is sometimes described as “the most relaxed cluster in the universe.” This moniker does not arise from some sort of mellow vibe, but rather because of how calm and undisturbed the superheated gas that pervades the cluster appears to be.
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Cornell astronomers are deploying a new instrument that grants them, for the first time, a better view of the universe’s earliest galaxies, which can’t be observed individually with traditional ground- or space-based telescopes.
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