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NASA astronauts training in Arizona.

NASA conducts ‘moonwalks’ in the Arizona desert for Artemis lunar mission

Being an astronaut isn't always glamorous, as years of training and research are carried out on terra firma prior to a crewed mission.
Trevor Mogg
A coronal aurora appeared over southwestern British Columbia on May 10, 2024.

How your aurora photographs are helping NASA study solar storms

The most dramatic solar storm in decades wasn't only notable for the gorgeous colors seen in the sky -- it's also a way for scientists to learn about the sun.
Georgina Torbet
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of a solar flare – as seen in the bright flash toward the middle of the image – on May 10, 2024. The image shows a subset of extreme ultraviolet light that highlights the extremely hot material in flares and which is colorized in gold.

Extreme solar storms create gorgeous views of auroras across the planet

The sun has been unusually active this week, leading to stunning views of auroras across Europe and parts of the U.S. this weekend.
Georgina Torbet
This cloudy, ominous structure is CG 4, a cometary globule nicknamed ‘God’s Hand’. CG 4 is one of many cometary globules present within the Milky Way, and how these objects get their distinct form is still a matter of debate among astronomers. This image was captured by the Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera on the U.S. National Science Foundation Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, a Program of NSF NOIRLab. In it, the features that classify CG 4 as a cometary globule are hard to miss. Its dusty head and long, faint tail vaguely resemble the appearance of a comet, though they have nothing in common. Astronomers theorize that cometary globules get their structure from the stellar winds of nearby hot, massive stars.

Dark Energy Camera captures the gorgeous ‘God’s Hand’ globule

A stunning new image from the Dark Energy Camera shows an unusually shaped structure in the Gum Nebula called a cometary globule.
Georgina Torbet
This artist’s concept shows what the exoplanet 55 Cancri e could look like. Also called Janssen, 55 Cancri e is a so-called super-Earth, a rocky planet significantly larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune, which orbits its star at a distance of only 2.25 million kilometres (0.015 astronomical units), completing one full orbit in less than 18 hours. In comparison, Mercury is 25 times farther from the Sun than 55 Cancri e is from its star. The system, which also includes four large gas-giant planets, is located about 41 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Cancer.

James Webb telescope peers at the atmosphere of a rocky hell world

The James Webb Space Telescope recently investigated an exoplanet that could have the first atmosphere of a rocky planet discovered outside the solar system.
Georgina Torbet
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft aboard is seen on the launch pad at Space Launch Complex-41 on Sunday, May 5, 2024 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

First crewed launch of Boeing Starliner rescheduled to later this week

Following the last-minute scrub of the first crewed test flight of the Boeing Starliner, NASA will make another launch attempt on May 10 at the earliest.
Georgina Torbet
A graphic displaying Boeing’s spacesuit for Starliner astronauts.

Here are the new spacesuits astronauts will wear for tonight’s Starliner launch

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have been suiting up in new spacesuits ahead of the first crewed Boeing Starliner test flight tonight.
Georgina Torbet
The Orion crew module for NASA’s Artemis II mission.

NASA’s Orion spacecraft has ‘critical issues’ with its heat shield, report finds

NASA intends to use its Orion capsule to send astronauts to the moon, but a report has found that issues with the capsule's heat shield could be a safety risk.
Georgina Torbet
Image of a piece of space debris seen from Astroscale's ADRAS-J satellite.

Japanese satellite chases down space junk

A satellite from Japanese company Astroscale has taken an up-close image of a piece of space debris it has been chasing down.
Georgina Torbet
This mosaic is made up of more than 100 images captured by NASA’s Viking 1 orbiter, which operated around Mars from 1976 to 1980. The scar across the center of the planet is the vast Valles Marineris canyon system.

NASA selects 9 companies to work on low-cost Mars projects

NASA is expanding its plans for Mars, looking at not only a mission to bring back a sample but also smaller, lower-cost missions to enable exploration.
Georgina Torbet
This artist’s concept shows what the hot gas-giant exoplanet WASP-43 b could look like. WASP-43 b is a Jupiter-sized planet circling a star roughly 280 light-years away, in the constellation Sextans. The planet orbits at a distance of about 1.3 million miles (0.014 astronomical units, or AU), completing one circuit in about 19.5 hours. Because it is so close to its star, WASP-43 b is probably tidally locked: its rotation rate and orbital period are the same, such that one side faces the star at all times.

James Webb observes extremely hot exoplanet with 5,000 mph winds

Astronomers using the James Webb telescope have modeled the weather on a distant exoplanet, revealing winds whipping around at speeds of 5,000 miles per hour.
Georgina Torbet
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured the sharpest infrared images to date of one of the most distinctive objects in our skies, the Horsehead Nebula. These observations show a part of the iconic nebula in a whole new light, capturing its complexity with unprecedented spatial resolution. Webb’s new images show part of the sky in the constellation Orion (The Hunter), in the western side of the Orion B molecular cloud. Rising from turbulent waves of dust and gas is the Horsehead Nebula, otherwise known as Barnard 33, which resides roughly 1300 light-years away.

James Webb captures the edge of the beautiful Horsehead Nebula

A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows the sharpest infrared view to date of a portion of the famous Horsehead Nebula.
Georgina Torbet
NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams prepare for their mission in the company’s Starliner spacecraft simulator at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

NASA gives Starliner’s first crewed launch the go-ahead

With the first crewed test flight of the new Boeing Starliner spacecraft less than two weeks away, NASA has given the go-ahead for the launch.
Georgina Torbet
NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is shown in a clean room at the Astrotech Space Operations facility near the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Dec. 8, 2022. DSOC’s gold-capped flight laser transceiver can be seen, near center, attached to the spacecraft.

Psyche spacecraft sends data back to Earth using lasers for the first time

NASA's experimental laser communication system, riding along with the Psyche spacecraft, has transmitted Psyche data from over 140 million miles away.
Georgina Torbet
A Tour of Cassiopeia A & Crab Nebula Timelapses

See incredible time lapses of two of space’s most famous objects

Two striking time lapses from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory show how two famous objects have changed over the last two decades.
Georgina Torbet
In celebration of the 34th anniversary of the launch of NASA’s legendary Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers took a snapshot of the Little Dumbbell Nebula, also known as Messier 76, or M76, located 3,400 light-years away in the northern circumpolar constellation Perseus. The name 'Little Dumbbell' comes from its shape that is a two-lobed structure of colorful, mottled, glowing gases resembling a balloon that’s been pinched around a middle waist. Like an inflating balloon, the lobes are expanding into space from a dying star seen as a white dot in the center. Blistering ultraviolet radiation from the super-hot star is causing the gases to glow. The red color is from nitrogen, and blue is from oxygen.

Celebrate Hubble’s 34th birthday with this gorgeous nebula image

Tomorrow is the 34th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble. To celebrate, Hubble scientists have shared an image of the striking Little Dumbbell Nebula.
Georgina Torbet
NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is depicted in this artist’s concept traveling through interstellar space, or the space between stars, which it entered in 2012.

Voyager 1 spacecraft is still alive and sending signals to Earth

NASA has announced that it is back in contact with Voyager 1, around five months after communications with the spacecraft were disrupted.
Georgina Torbet
The JunoCam instrument on NASA’s Juno captured this view of Jupiter’s moon Io — with the first-ever image of its south polar region — during the spacecraft’s 60th flyby of Jupiter on April 9.

See a flyby of Io, a hellish moon with lakes of lava and an otherworldly mountain

NASA's Juno spacecraft has been investigating Jupiter's moon Io, the most volcanically active body in the solar system, and has observed some dramatic features.
Georgina Torbet
Astronomers have found the most massive stellar black hole in our galaxy, thanks to the wobbling motion it induces on a companion star. This artist’s impression shows the orbits of both the star and the black hole, dubbed Gaia BH3, around their common centre of mass. This wobbling was measured over several years with the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission. Additional data from other telescopes, including ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, confirmed that the mass of this black hole is 33 times that of our Sun. The chemical composition of the companion star suggests that the black hole was formed after the collapse of a massive star with very few heavy elements, or metals, as predicted by theory.

Biggest stellar black hole to date discovered in our galaxy

Astronomers have discovered a large stellar mass black hole that weighs 33 times the mass of the sun and is located just 2,000 light-years away.
Georgina Torbet
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of the barred spiral galaxy UGC 12158 looks like someone took a white marking pen to it. In reality it is a combination of time exposures of a foreground asteroid moving through Hubble’s field of view, photobombing the observation of the galaxy. Several exposures of the galaxy were taken, which is evidenced by the dashed pattern.

Hubble discovers over 1,000 new asteroids thanks to photobombing

Astronomers have used 19 years' worth of Hubble data to detect over 1,000 previously unknown asteroids in our solar system.
Georgina Torbet
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter is seen here in a close-up taken by Mastcam-Z, a pair of zoomable cameras aboard the Perseverance rover. This image was taken on April 5, the 45th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.

Final communications sent to the beloved Ingenuity Mars helicopter

NASA's hugely successful Mars helicopter Ingenuity will continue saving data in case future explorers should come its way again.
Georgina Torbet
An illustration of NASA's Sample Return Lander shows it tossing a rocket in the air like a toy from the surface of Mars.

NASA needs a new approach for its challenging Mars Sample Return mission

NASA is seeking new ideas for its Mars Sample Return mission after admitting that its previous plan to bring samples from Mars back to Earth was too ambitious.
Georgina Torbet
The subject of this image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is the spiral galaxy IC 4633, located 100 million light-years away from us in the constellation Apus. IC 4633 is a galaxy rich in star-forming activity and also hosts an active galactic nucleus at its core. From our point of view, the galaxy is tilted mostly towards us, giving astronomers a fairly good view of its billions of stars.

Hubble spots a bright galaxy peering out from behind a dark nebula

A new image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a galaxy partly hidden by a huge cloud of dust known as a dark nebula.
Georgina Torbet
Clumps of debris from a disrupted planetesimal are irregularly spaced on a long and eccentric orbit around the white dwarf. Individual clouds of rubble intermittently pass in front of the white dwarf, blocking some of its light. Because of the various sizes of the fragments in these clumps, the brightness of the white dwarf flickers in a chaotic way.

This is how the world ends: swallowed or shredded by a dying sun

Researchers recently studied the status of dead stars called white dwarfs, giving a glimpse at what our own solar system will look like in 5 billion years.
Georgina Torbet
This image, taken with the VLT Survey Telescope hosted at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, shows the beautiful nebula NGC 6164/6165, also known as the Dragon’s Egg. The nebula is a cloud of gas and dust surrounding a pair of stars called HD 148937.

This beautiful nebula holds a starry mystery at its heart

A gorgeous nebula turns out to hold a surprise at its center: a pair of stars that don't match as they should.
Georgina Torbet
The Moon’s shadow, or umbra, is pictured from the space station as it orbited into the path of the solar eclipse on April 8, 2024.

See what the solar eclipse looked like from space

The astronauts on board the International Space Station caught a stunning glimpse of this week's solar eclipse, and NASA has shared some images.
Georgina Torbet
Still from the NASA livestream of the total eclipse in Russellville, Arkansas on March 8, 2024.

The first views of the eclipse are coming in, and they’re stunning

Eclipse mania is gripping swaths of the U.S. today as a total solar eclipse passes across the country from Texas to Maine.
Georgina Torbet
For the first time, potential signs of the rainbow-like ‘glory effect’ have been detected on a planet outside our Solar System. Glory are colourful concentric rings of light that occur only under peculiar conditions. Data from ESA’s sensitive Characterising ExOplanet Satellite, Cheops, along with several other ESA and NASA missions, suggest this delicate phenomenon is beaming straight at Earth from the hellish atmosphere of ultra-hot gas giant WASP-76b, 637 light-years away.

First indications of a rare, rainbow ‘glory effect’ on hellish exoplanet

Researchers believe they may have identified a set of rainbow-like colorful rings, called a glory, on a planet outside our solar system for the first time.
Georgina Torbet
An artistic celebration of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) year-one data, showing a slice of the larger 3D map that DESI is constructing during its five-year survey. By mapping objects across multiple periods of cosmic history with extremely high precision, DESI is allowing astronomers to make unprecedented measurements of dark energy and its effect on the accelerating expansion of the Universe.

Is dark energy changing over time? A new survey suggests it could be

New results from a survey into dark energy show a look back  11 billion years into the past, with the largest ever 3D map of the universe.
Georgina Torbet
An artist’s concept design of NASA’s Lunar Terrain Vehicle.

These 3 companies are developing NASA’s new moon vehicle

Today, NASA announced the three companies that will be developing its new lunar vehicle: Intuitive Machines, Lunar Outpost, and Venturi Astrolab.
Georgina Torbet
A team of astronomers used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to survey the starburst galaxy Messier 82 (M82), which is located 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. M82 hosts a frenzy of star formation, sprouting new stars 10 times faster than the Milky Way galaxy. Webb’s infrared capabilities enabled scientists to peer through curtains of dust and gas that have historically obscured the star formation process. This image from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument shows the centre of M82 with an unprecedented level of detail. With Webb’s resolution, astronomers can distinguish small, bright compact sources that are either individual stars or star clusters. Obtaining an accurate count of the stars and clusters that compose M82’s centre can help astronomers understand the different phases of star formation and the timelines for each stage.

James Webb images capture the galactic winds of newborn stars

A stunning new pair of images from the James Webb Space Telescope show a new view of a familiar galaxy: Messier 82.
Georgina Torbet
Photograph of the camera, with one of the colour filters positioned in place.

The world’s largest digital camera for astronomy is ready to go

Ready to scan the night sky for evidence of dark matter and to identify near-Earth asteroids, the camera for the upcoming Vera Rubin Observatory is complete.
Georgina Torbet
Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks photographed in March 2024.

The ‘Devil Comet’ will be visible during the solar eclipse in April

Not only will April bring a rare total solar eclipse, but there's also the chance to view the dramatically named Devil Comet.
Georgina Torbet
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, who produced the first ever image of our Milky Way black hole released in 2022, has captured a new view of the massive object at the center of our Galaxy: how it looks in polarized light. This is the first time astronomers have been able to measure polarization, a signature of magnetic fields, this close to the edge of Sagittarius A*. This image shows the polarized view of the Milky Way black hole. The lines mark the orientation of polarization, which is related to the magnetic field around the shadow of the black hole.

Stunning image shows the magnetic fields of our galaxy’s supermassive black hole

The Event Horizon Telescope collaboration, the group that took the historic first ever image of a black hole, is back with a new stunning black hole image.
Georgina Torbet
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