The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has found one of the strangest things in the vast cosmic menagerie: a celestial owl staring back at us from 11 billion light-years away. This strange structure is not just any old galactic formation; it is known as the “Cosmic Owl.” It’s the result of two very rare ring ...
Tragic and bestowed with a sense of ambition, a German aerospace startup’s endeavor to deliver heavenly memorials and perform unique agricultural experiments in space ended in the Pacific Ocean. Aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the Exploration Company launched a Nyx capsule containing human remains and cannabis seeds. The female capsule’s operational orbit was reached ...
The extraordinary features of a rapidly moving celestial object are scintillating astronomers’ interest. Upon initial discovery, A11pl3Z was given a name but recently NASA has confirmed it as 3I/ATLAS, the third interstellar object out of four comets or asteroids discovered. Unlike the comets or asteroids which are bound to the sun’s asteroid belt and viewable ...
Astronomers have found a rare Jupiter-sized planet hiding at the edge of the Milky Way using a phenomenon that Albert Einstein predicted more than a hundred years ago. This is part of a cosmic detective story that has been going on for years. Gravitational microlensing, which uses the bending of space-time itself, found the exoplanet ...
The universe has never looked this clear or this bright. The NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory sent out its first scientific pictures on June 23, 2025. These pictures gave people an unprecedented look at the universe, which is always changing. The biggest digital camera ever built took these early pictures. They are just a taste ...
Behind clouds of interstellar dust, a cosmic drama is playing out deep in the southern constellation of Chamaeleon. The Chamaeleon I dark cloud is one of the closest places to Earth where stars are born. It is only 550 light-years away. In this “stellar nursery,” newborn stars break through the darkness and light up huge ...
Right now, somewhere in the vast darkness of space, robotic explorers are pushing the boundaries of what we thought possible. These aren’t just machines floating in the void – they’re our ambassadors to worlds we’ve only dreamed of visiting. The next decade promises to deliver missions so ambitious, so revolutionary, that they could fundamentally change ...
Water in the great, cold nurseries where stars birth has a cosmic fingerprint. Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have found, for the first time, a rare form of water ice surrounding a young star remarkably similar to our infant Sun. Published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, this finding implies that some of ...
When you look up at the Arizona night sky, free from the light pollution that plagues most of the world, you’re witnessing the same celestial canvas that has made this desert state America’s unofficial space capital. The vast, arid landscapes that stretch across Arizona don’t just resemble Mars—they’ve literally helped us prepare for missions to ...
Dr. Mae Jemison, renowned for breaking barriers as the first African American woman in space, was born on October 17, 1956, in Decatur, Alabama. Growing up in Chicago, Illinois, Mae displayed an early interest in science and the arts. Encouraged by supportive parents, she pursued an education that combined her scientific curiosity with her artistic ...
