Best satellite imagery of 2024

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Earth has never been more observed, with swarms of spacecraft providing nonstop satellite imagery of our planet. And there’s some amazing imagery to look back on this year! From historic hurricanes to a total solar eclipse, here are 12 breathtaking sights captured by NOAA’s GOES satellites in 2024. The 2025 EarthSky Lunar Calendar is now … Read more

‘Silo’ Season 2 ‘Barricades’: Missed meals, Quinn’s coded letter, and confessing to a corpse

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Life in Silos 17 and 18 isn’t getting any easier as we enter the sixth episode of Apple TV+’s “Silo” titled “Barricades.” And this is an apt name for this chapter as all the traumatized denizens of the bunkers suffer restrictions from barricades, both physical and emotional, as their unnatural subterranean life seems to be … Read more

Orphaned bonobos can develop social skills and empathy

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Bonobos (along with chimpanzees) are the closest surviving relatives to humans. They live solely in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Central Africa. Bonobos are listed as endangered due to habitat loss and poaching for meat and pets. Unfortunately, poaching has left many bonobos orphans. On December 18, 2024, Durham University in the U.K. … Read more

Smallest main-belt asteroids ever detected found in JWST data

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Back to Article List MIT researchers have identified 138 near-Earth objects using a common astrophotography technique. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals a population of small asteroids in the main asteroid belt in this artist’s illustration. Credit: Ella Maru/MIT Over the past 200 years, astronomers have cataloged over a million asteroids in the solar system’s … Read more

Accidental discovery reveals ‘millinovas’ a new class of cosmic explosion 100 times brighter than the sun

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Superman isn’t the only one with X-ray vision. Plenty of exploding stars are also adept at blasting outbursts of this high-energy light. Now, thanks to a chance discovery, scientists are aware of an entirely new explosive stellar source of X-ray radiation. These outbursts’ light output didn’t resemble any previous cosmic explosion. Meet the “millinovas,” a … Read more

This Christmas Eve, humans will try to embrace a star

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There’s this running debate among astronomers about whether our moon deserves a proper name. After all, it is the way of our solar system. Other moons each have monikers, like Phobos and Deimos, and there is certainly no planet named “planet” nor asteroid named “asteroid.” Even worlds beyond our cosmic neighborhood have names, albeit often … Read more

M87 Releases a Rare and Powerful Outburts of Gamma-ray Radiation

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In April 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration made history when it released the first-ever image of a black hole. The image captured the glow of the accretion disk surrounding the supermassive black hole (SMBH) at the center of the M87 galaxy, located 54 million light-years away. Because of its appearance, the disk that encircles … Read more

What time is NASA’s Parker Solar Probe closest sun flyby ever on Christmas Eve?

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A NASA spacecraft is about to give astronomers an epic early Christmas present with the closest ever flyby of the sun on Dec. 24, but if you’re wondering exactly when the ambitious solar encounter will occur, don’t worry. We’ve got you covered. The NASA spacecraft, called the Parker Solar Probe, is on course for what … Read more

Space2Sea Antarctica: William Shatner, Neil deGrasse Tyson and NASA astronauts talk exploration and science from the Drake Passage

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Space2Sea Antarctica marks the inaugural voyage in a series produced by FUTURE of SPACE (FoS). This innovative journey blends Earth’s uncharted territories with the inspiring narrative of human curiosity and exploration. It encapsulates the core mission of FoS to: Embrace New Frontiers, Celebrate the Human Experience, and Elevate the Conversation. Student journalist Gabe Castro-Root of … Read more