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Look up tonight (March 15) to see the Hyades star cluster light up the Taurus constellation in the night sky. The Hyades star cluster is the closest star cluster to Earth, located only 150 light-years away. Viewers can spot the star cluster by looking for the tall, Y-shaped constellation Taurus, the bull, which is situated … Read more
New satellite views from space show the Russian military moving towards Kyiv, Ukraine on Friday (March 11), including images of a battalion firing upon the besieged capital. Muzzle flashes and smoke are visible in some of the satellite images obtained by Maxar’s WorldView-2 satellite, which has been watching the invasion of Ukraine by Russia since … Read more
Astronomers spotted the largest molecule yet found in a planet-forming disk, which they say will tell us more about the origin of life. The molecule, dimethyl, is a precursor to organic molecules like methane that in some cases may be indicative of life. The team also may have found methyl formate, which is deemed a … Read more
Ceres might be spewing cryovolcanoes in yet another spot on the dwarf planet’s surface. Close-up pictures from NASA’s Dawn mission that orbited Ceres between 2015 and 2018 revealed salt deposits in a crater known as Urvara, spotted for the first time in a new study. The salt deposits may be associated with icy volcanoes, the … Read more
A new sensor aims to send information about volcanic activity and air quality from a tiny satellite as swiftly as possible, to help speed up the response to eruptions. The Nanosat Atmospheric Chemistry Hyperspectral Observation System, or NACHOS, will fly roughly 300 miles (480 kilometers) in altitude above Earth, scanning the ground using a hyperspectral … Read more
The Milky Way galaxy feasted on more galaxies in its early days than astronomers thought. The Gaia spacecraft uncovered the remains of an ancient cosmic collision in our Milky Way, revealing a previously unknown galaxy, now nicknamed “Pontus,” absorbed by the Milky Way long before our galaxy looked the way it does now. Pontus was … Read more
Scientists watching the skies for asteroids that may threaten Earth have hit a new milestone, spotting the 10,000th sizable space rock that circles the sun near Earth’s orbit. The detection comes as part of NASA’s ongoing planetary defense work, which discovers and monitors space rocks in the inner solar system to assure that no large … Read more
A supermassive black hole masked by a cloud of cosmic dust was found at the center of an active galaxy in new images from the European Southern Observatory (ESO). The galaxy, known as Messier 77 or NGC 1068, is a barred spiral galaxy located about 47 million light-years from Earth, in the constellation Cetus. Taken … Read more
Soaring 250 miles (400 kilometers) over Earth, astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) looked down on our planet last May and saw a heart-shaped oasis blooming in the Egyptian desert. Today (Feb. 14), our friends in space are sharing the striking image as a special Valentine for the whole planet, courtesy of NASA’s Earth … Read more
A pair of asteroids orbiting the Sun formed less than 300 years ago, a new study has revealed. This makes them the youngest pair of asteroids ever discovered in the Solar System, by a factor of 10. The discovery could tell us more about how asteroids crumble, while raising some intriguing new questions. “It’s … Read more