Watch this video of the largest radio jet that astronomers have seen yet in the early universe. Image via NOIRLab. Largest radio jet seen yet in the early universe In the nearby universe, astronomers have seen many radio jets blasting outward from the black holes at the cores of galaxies. But on February 6, 2025, … Read more
NEW ORLEANS — Scientists continue to advance the process of updating the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Scales, with the next steps expected to be taken as early as this year. Just like there’s a classification system for hurricanes and tornadoes, space weather storms that develop and pose threats to Earth have … Read more
Canadian artist Gustav Hahn painted his impression of what the 1913 Great Meteor Procession looked like. Image via Gustav Hahn/ Wikimedia Commons (public domain). February 9, 1913: the Great Meteor Procession An odd and still-unexplained parade of meteors on this date dazzled viewers in Canada, the northeastern United States and ships in the Atlantic all … Read more
View larger. | NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft captured this view of Uranus’ moon Ariel on January 24, 1986. We can clearly see various canyons and grooves. Image via NASA/ Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Uranus’ moon Ariel might have a subsurface ocean, a study found last year. The ocean could be ancient or it could still exist … Read more
On October 14th, 2024, NASA’s Europa Clipper mission launched atop a Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It will spend the next few years traveling 2.9 billion km (1.8 billion mi) to reach Jupiter’s moon Europa, arriving in April 2030. Once it arrives in the system, the … Read more
The colored dots represent different superstructures out to 800 million light-years (250 megaparsecs) from Earth. The red dots denote Quipu, the largest structure in the universe. Yellow is Sculptor-Pegasus superstructure, green is Serpens-Corona Borealis, purple is Hercules and blue is Shapley. Image via Böhringer et al. Astronomy and Astrophysics, 2025. Used with permission. Quipu is … Read more
Despite being a hellish world, the hot, cloud-enveloped world Venus is a tantalizing target for scientists eager to learn more about its history, evolution and present state. At the forefront of tackling what that puzzling place can teach us is the Venus Exploration Analysis Group (VExAG), a community-based forum to help NASA shape and advance … Read more
The mere mention of Leonardo da Vinci evokes genius. We know him as a polymath whose interests spanned astronomy, geology, hydrology, engineering and physics. As a painter, his Mona Lisa and Last Supper are considered works of mastery. Yet one great achievement that frequently goes unrecognised is his studies of human anatomy. More than 500 … Read more
Our Moon continues to surprise us with amazing features. Scientists recently shared new information about two canyons that branch out from a major lunar impact. The site is the Schrödinger basin near the Moon’s South Pole. It formed when an asteroid or possibly even a leftover planetesimal slammed into the surface. It took only minutes … Read more
How would detecting methane help astronomers identify if exoplanets, or even exomoons, have life as we know it, or even as we don’t know it? This is what a recent study published in The Astronomical Journal hopes to address as a team of researchers led by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center investigated how a … Read more