Universe
Saturn has a six-sided storm system wider than Earth, and scientists still cannot…
At Saturn's north pole, clouds race around a shape that looks as if it was drawn with a ruler.
Universe
The engineers trying to save a fading Voyager had one chance to fire thrusters…
The story sounds almost too neat: a spacecraft launched in 1977, a set of thrusters last used in 1980, and a team on Earth asking them to work again 37 years later.
Universe
The observable universe is roughly 93 billion light-years across despite being only…
If light has had only 13.8 billion years to travel, a universe 93 billion light-years across sounds impossible.
Universe
The closest star beyond the Sun is only four light-years away, yet at the speed of…
Four light-years sounds close only because astronomy usually deals in much larger numbers.
Universe
Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, yet permanently shadowed craters near its…
Mercury is a planet of extremes. At the equator during the day, its surface can become hot enough to melt lead.
Universe
Human radio signals have expanded into space for more than a century, but they have…
Humanity has been changing the radio sky for a little over a century. Early experimental transmissions, commercial broadcasting, military radar, television, satellite links and communications with spacecraft have all sent some energy beyond Earth.
Universe
Voyager 1 crossed the edge of the Sun's protective bubble and entered interstellar…
For six years one of Voyager 1's instruments had counted the same steady drizzle of low-energy particles streaming off the Sun.
Science & Engineering
Scientists searching for alien life are looking ever further out, to Europa, a moon…
The case for looking for life on Europa runs through the bottom of Earth's own ocean.
Universe
The universe is supposed to have no preferred direction or special axis
The cosmic microwave background is supposed to be directionless in the statistical sense.
Universe
Beneath Europa’s fractured ice may be an ocean containing more liquid water than…
From a distance, Europa looks like a frozen world. Its surface is a pale shell crossed by rust-coloured bands, ridges and fractures, with few of the impact craters that scar most old moons.
Universe
Some objects that appear to be extraordinarily cold, dim stars could theoretically…
An object that looks unusually cold and faint on a map of the stars need not be a star at all.
Universe
NASA once reactivated Voyager 1 thrusters that had been unused for 37 years…
On 28 November 2017, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory sent Voyager 1 a command to fire four thrusters that had been silent since November 1980.…
Universe
Vera Rubin watched stars at the edges of galaxies moving far faster than visible…
Vera Rubin did not watch individual stars race around distant galaxies in real time.
Universe
We tend to assume Earth is a rare cosmic fluke, but a full analysis of NASA's…
NASA's Kepler mission did not detect 300 million temperate rocky planets. It observed a narrow field of stars, found the small fraction of planets whose orbits…
Universe
The James Webb Space Telescope found tiny “little red dots” that looked like…
The first deep images from the James Webb Space Telescope contained a population that astronomers had not expected to see.
Space & Missions
Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson spent months at Bell Labs in New Jersey convinced…
In May 1964, a chart recorder at Bell Telephone Laboratories registered more microwave power from the sky than Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson could explain.