Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 lunar lander – which is already circling the moon – will touch down on the lunar surface on Sunday, March 2! But before that EarthSky will get an exclusive insider look at the mission and the lander. At 12:15 p.m. CST (18:15 UTC) on Thursday, February 27, Firefly’s future … Read more
Sometimes, things across the vast Universe line up just right for us. The Einstein Ring above, like all Einstein Rings, has three parts. In the foreground is a distant massive object like a galaxy or galaxy cluster. In the background, at an even greater distance away, is a star or another galaxy. We’re the observers, … Read more
The Euclid space telescope has, by chance, discovered its first Einstein ring, and it is absolutely stunning. Beyond its aesthetic appeal, this perfectly circular Einstein ring has allowed researchers to “weigh” the dark matter at the heart of a galaxy almost 600 million light-years away. The European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft, which launched in July … Read more