NASA Is Chasing the Moon’s Shadow With a Jet and Scientific Balloons
When the Moon’s shadow crosses the Earth on August 12, the darkness will last only a few minutes in any one place. NASA is planning to use those minutes as…
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Cosmos
This category presents the reader with astronomical events that can be seen each week, and month.
How Do Astronomers Know a Black Hole Is There If They Cannot See It?
A black hole’s event horizon is invisible. Light that crosses it cannot return to a telescope, so astronomers do not photograph the black hole itself in the usual sense. They…
Why Is the Sun’s Corona Hotter Than Its Surface?
The Sun appears hottest at its bright surface, but the outer atmosphere above it is far hotter. The photosphere, the layer we see as the Sun’s surface, is about 5,500…
Hubble Finds Andromeda’s Star Formation Has Been Fading for 500 Million Years
Andromeda is often described as the Milky Way’s larger neighbour and future collision partner. A new study using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope adds another part to that story: the galaxy…
NASA’s Swift Caught a Wandering Black Hole Tearing Apart a Star
Black holes are difficult to find when they are quiet. The one in NASA’s latest Swift result gave itself away by destroying a star. The flare came from the outskirts…
New Horizons Finds Signs of Liquid Nitrogen Rising Through Pluto’s Ice
Pluto’s famous heart is not a smooth, frozen decoration. A new analysis of images from NASA’s New Horizons flyby suggests that liquid nitrogen may occasionally rise through cracks in the…
Why Moon Dust Is One of the Hardest Problems for Artemis
Moon dust is not just a dirtier version of sand. It is made of sharp, broken grains created by billions of years of impacts, with no wind or water to…
The 2026 Perseids Peak on August 12: How to Watch the Meteor Shower
The Perseid meteor shower reaches its 2026 peak on the night of August 12 and into the morning of August 13. This year the timing is especially friendly to observers…
Perseverance Watched Earth Disappear Behind Mars’ Moon Phobos
From the rim of Jezero Crater, Earth is only a bright point in the sky. On July 2, NASA’s Perseverance rover watched that point vanish behind Phobos, Mars’ larger moon,…
NASA’s Lunar Test Facility Is Trying to Keep Moon Dust Out of Artemis Hardware
Moon dust looks soft in photographs, but it is a difficult material for machines and people. The grains are sharp, abrasive and electrically clingy. NASA engineers at Johnson Space Center…
NASA Is Testing the Antennas for Its Next Mars Aircraft
NASA is testing the communications and radar hardware for a proposed Mars aircraft mission called SkyFall. The project is still on Earth, but its engineers are working through the details…
NASA’s PREFIRE Satellites Reveal How the Poles Lose Heat to Space
Earth’s poles are constantly shedding heat into space, but much of that energy is invisible to human eyes. NASA’s twin PREFIRE CubeSats are measuring that far-infrared loss directly, and the…
A Magnetar May Have Bent Empty Space—NASA’s IXPE Tests a 90-Year-Old Prediction
Empty space is not completely empty in the equations of quantum physics. Under an ordinary magnetic field, that distinction is impossible to notice. Near a magnetar—a neutron star with a…
NASA’s PUNCH Mission Cut Solar-Storm Arrival Uncertainty to 30 Minutes
Forecasting a solar storm is a little like watching a wave leave a distant coast and trying to guess when it will reach the beach. Scientists can see a coronal…
Why Do Stars Twinkle While Planets Usually Look Steady?
Stars do not actually switch their lights on and off when they twinkle. The flicker happens between the star and your eyes, as its light passes through Earth’s moving atmosphere.…
The Oort Cloud: The Distant Shell of Comets We Have Never Seen Directly
The Oort Cloud is one of the strangest places in the Solar System because it has never been seen directly. Astronomers infer its existence from the paths of long-period comets:…
Webb Found a Hidden Planet in Beta Pictoris By Reading Its Atmosphere
Astronomers have found a third giant planet around Beta Pictoris, one of the best-known young planetary systems near Earth. The discovery is striking because the planet was not first picked…
NASA Is Targeting an August Launch for Roman. Here’s What the Telescope Will See
NASA is currently targeting August 30 for the launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from Florida. The date can move, as launch dates do, but the mission is…
NASA’s PUNCH Mission Predicted a Solar Storm Arrival Within 30 Minutes
NASA says a new four-spacecraft mission has completed an early test that could make one of the hardest parts of space-weather forecasting much more precise: estimating when a solar eruption…
A Near-Earth Object Called an Asteroid for Decades Turns Out to Be a Comet
For nearly three decades, 1998 SH2 looked like a fairly ordinary near-Earth asteroid. It was discovered in 1998, catalogued, and followed through a 4½-year orbit around the Sun. Then, during…
A Black Hole Far from Its Galaxy’s Center Was Caught Tearing Apart a Star
A star being torn apart by a black hole is already an unusual sight. In this case, the black hole was in an even stranger place: more than 30,000 light-years…
Chandra Has Tracked the Jet of M87’s Black Hole as It Changes
Messier 87 is already famous for a photograph most people have seen: the Event Horizon Telescope image of the black hole at its center. Yet the black hole’s most dramatic…
The August 12 Total Solar Eclipse: Where to See It—and Why NASA Is Flying Through Its Shadow
On Wednesday, August 12, the Moon’s shadow will sweep across a narrow stretch of the Northern Hemisphere. Greenland, Iceland, northern Russia, the Atlantic, Spain and a small corner of Portugal…
Should Halley’s Comet Be Renamed?
Although Halley’s Comet will not return to our vicinity for another 35 years, a new analysis has sparked media attention with the claim that this famous object is wrongly named.…