Blue Sky
September 2026
Every article published in September 2026. 43 articles · Back to full archive
Science
A newly found star circles the Milky Way's central black hole every 8.7 years and passes it at about 25,000 kilometres a second, more than 8 percent of the speed of light, and the pass is so close that its discoverers say there is a fair chance of measuring the hole's spin within a decade
Solar Science
The November 2025 geomagnetic superstorm pushed satellite-positioning errors beyond 10 metres in parts of the continental US, with interference stretching nearly coast to coast. Researchers warn that had it struck during spring planting, it could have caused hundreds of millions of dollars in agricultural losses.
Space Scopes
A $30 million rescue mission launched on 3 July to grab NASA’s ageing Swift telescope and lift it into a safer orbit. When its LINK spacecraft began spinning at nine degrees per second, engineers regained partial control—but not enough for a safe capture—leaving Swift conducting its final observations as atmospheric drag pulls it toward re-entry later this year.
Science
A black monkey with a pinkish-orange patch around its mouth was photographed in a Congo forest canopy in 2008, detected 114 times between 2018 and 2022, and only then named Colobus congoensis — by its describers' count, the fifth African monkey species new to science in 75 years
Science
In 2025, astronomers mapped Quipu, the largest reliably identified cosmic superstructure yet—a branching filament roughly 1.4 billion light-years long, 13,000 times the diameter of the Milky Way’s stellar disc, with an estimated mass of about 200 quadrillion Suns.
Psychology
Thought of the day from Stoic philosopher Cleanthes: "The Fates lead the willing; they drag the unwilling."
Deep Space
Every galaxy in our neighborhood, including our own, is being pulled toward a single point in space hidden directly behind the crowded disk of the Milky Way, and when astronomers finally looked through the dust, they found a large, previously hidden cluster of thousands of galaxies sitting almost exactly where the pull was coming from
Marsdaily
Radio signals take between three and 22 minutes to cross the distance between Earth and Mars. Even if a reply were transmitted instantly, a single question-and-answer exchange could take 44 minutes—and near solar conjunction, the Sun can interrupt the conversation entirely.
Science
Joro spiders' common prey families came out 10 to 25 percent apart from the native orb weavers' in a gut-content DNA study of 356 spiders at 52 sites in Georgia and South Carolina — and where the Joros were present, the natives' guts were not distinguishable from sites without them
Science
An icy world only 500 kilometres across beyond Neptune was found in May 2026 to possess an atmosphere that should escape within 1,000 years. Scientists suspect a recent impact or continuing cryovolcanism—but still cannot explain what created or replenishes its improbable veil of gas.
Manufacturing
Chile's Atacama desert has dumps where huge quantities of unsold and second-hand clothing end up, and a small factory nearby now shreds textile waste from that pile and presses it into insulation panels for buildings
Science
Cloud-9 appears to be a dark-matter halo weighing five billion suns, containing a million solar masses of hydrogen but no detectable stars. Hubble observations announced in January 2026 identified it as the strongest known candidate for a primordial “failed galaxy”—a fossil from early galaxy formation that never crossed the threshold required to make stars.
Saturn Daily
Saturn's rings look ancient, but data from the Cassini spacecraft suggests they are surprisingly young, likely no more than a few hundred million years old, meaning dinosaurs walked the Earth in a solar system where Saturn had no rings at all
Science
Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS arrived from the direction of Sagittarius with the highest incoming speed of any known interstellar visitor, accelerated to nearly 250,000 kilometres per hour near the Sun, and is now escaping on a hyperbolic trajectory that will never bring it back.
Deep Space