Muhammad Mirza 
All those spaceships, droids, lightsabers, and scoundrels had a big part to play in capturing the imaginations of a generation back in 1977. Even so, there’s a much subtler moment that arguably defines the original ‘Star Wars’ movie better than any other. Young farmer Luke Skywalker, told by his uncle that he needs to stay … Read more
Our understanding of the Universe is profound. Only a century ago, astronomers held a Great Debate to argue over whether our galaxy was an island universe, or whether nebulae such as Andromeda were galaxies in a much larger cosmos. Now we know that the Universe is billions of years old, ever expanding to billions of … Read more
We’ll have to wait a bit longer to see the first crewed moon mission since the Apollo era lift off. NASA announced today (Dec. 5) that it’s delaying the planned launch of Artemis 2, a flight that will send four people around the moon and back, from September 2025 to April 2026. And Artemis 3, … Read more
Fine particles from ship exhaust act as seeds for clouds, as shown in this satellite image. Tighter regulations on marine pollution means that there are fewer ship tracks to reflect sunlight back into space. This may be one reason that Earth is warming faster than models predicted — but not the only one, a new … Read more
WISE, NEOWISE’s predecessor mission, imaged the entire sky in the mid-infrared range. Credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech/UCLA The NASA project NEOWISE, which has given astronomers a detailed view of near-Earth objects – some of which could strike the Earth – ended its mission and burned on re-entering the atmosphere after over a decade. On a clear night, the … Read more
For the past thirty years, NASA’s Great Observatories – the Hubble, Spitzer, Compton, and Chandra space telescopes – have revealed some amazing things about the Universe. In addition to some of the deepest views of the Universe provided by the Hubble Deep Fields campaign, these telescopes have provided insight into the unseen parts of the … Read more
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured this stunningly sharp view of Jupiter when the planet was near opposition in 2019. Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center) and M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley) Friday, December 6 Asteroid 15 Eunomia is making its way through central Auriga this month, passing numerous deep-sky objects along … Read more
Scientists believe that at the heart of all large galaxies lurk supermassive black holes, cosmic titans with masses equivalent to that of millions or even billions of suns. Yet some black holes exceed even these monstrous masses to become “ultramassive black holes.” The most massive black hole that we are currently aware of is Phoenix … Read more
The Optical Telescope Assembly for NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope was recently delivered to the largest clean room at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. (Image credit: Future) Scientists working on NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope have achieved a significant milestone in assembling the next-generation observatory, which aims to address … Read more
The phenomenon of the blue moon is a fascinating celestial event steeped in folklore, science, and cultural intrigue. Often misunderstood and misinterpreted, a blue moon can mean the second full moon in a calendar month, the third full moon in a season containing four, or a moon appearing blue due to atmospheric effects. Despite its … Read more