The stars Shaula and Lesath herald the coming spring

Star chart showing stars Shaula and Lesath in the Tail of constellation Scorpius.

If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, Shaula and Lesath will come over your southeastern horizon before dawn sometime this month. They’re a hopeful sign that spring is coming. How do you recognize the coming of spring? Maybe you spot a first returning robin. Or tune into news about a groundhog looking for its shadow. For … Read more

Webb Sees a Supercluster of Galaxies Coming Together

As a species, we’ve come to the awareness that we’re a minuscule part of a vast Universe defined by galaxy superclusters and the large-scale structure of the Universe. Driven by a healthy intellectual curiosity, we’re examining our surroundings and facing the question posed by Nature: how did everything get this way? We only have incremental … Read more

Cosmology is at a Crossroads, But New Instruments are Coming to Help

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