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Polaris: How to find the North Star

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Polaris or the North Star is a star that appears almost directly above the Earth’s rotational axis. As the Earth turns, every other star seems to spin around the axis, tracing out a circle in the sky, but the North Star appears to stand still. But no matter what time of night or what season … Read more

‘Star Trek: Picard’ new trailer, ‘Discovery’ renewed, plus ‘Strange New Worlds’ premiere date

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In a single “Star Trek“-tastic announcement, streaming service Paramount Plus provided updates on every incarnation of sci-fi’s favorite franchise, including a new trailer for “Star Trek: Picard” Season 2. The second season of “Picard” will premiere on Thursday, March 3 (moved from Feb. 17) for 10 episodes, while Season 3 was due to start principal … Read more

The Moon That Resembles The Death Star Has Been Hiding Another Epic Secret

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The Solar System may be an even soggier place than we suspected. New analysis of one of Saturn’s moons suggests that it may harbor a liquid ocean. No, not the usual suspects – the new culprit is Mimas, the little moon with a big crater, which gives it more than a passing resemblance to the … Read more

Astronomers Have Identified a New Kind of Supernova We Never Knew Existed

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We often think of supernova explosions as inevitable for large stars. Big star runs out of fuel, gravity collapses its core, and BOOM! But astronomers have long thought at least one type of large star didn’t end with a supernova. Known as Wolf-Rayet stars, they were thought to end with a quiet collapse of their core … Read more

For The First Time, Astronomers Detect Rugby-Ball Shape of a Deformed Exoplanet

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Beyond the Solar System, out there in the wider galaxy, a very strange subset of exoplanets exists. Called hot Jupiters, these are majorly clingy – hugging so close to their host stars, they’re not just intensely hot, but also likely warped by gravitational forces.   Now, for the first time, astronomers have actually detected the … Read more

Learn the backstory of Grudge the Cat with IDW’s new ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ comic miniseries

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To christen the new year in style, IDW Publishing is striking off two-thousand years into the far future with a bold new “Star Trek: Discovery” limited series titled “Adventures in the 32nd Century.” This cat-tastic offering kicks off with a tale of Book’s mysterious feline Grudge and is centered around the daring exploits of The … Read more

Astronomers Detect Water Vapor in The Atmosphere of a ‘Super Neptune’ Exoplanet

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New Year’s Day comes around once every 47.5 hours on the roughly Neptune-sized exoplanet TOI 674b, which makes it something of a rare creature.  In spite of years of hunting, surprisingly few middle-sized gas giants have ever been seen with orbits shorter than a few days in length, creating what astronomers refer to as a … Read more

Giant galactic bubble is driving star formation, new study finds

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This visualization shows the Local Bubble with star formation happening on its surface. (Image credit: Leah Hustak (STScI)) Earth is surrounded by a vast bubble about 1,000 light-years wide whose borders drive the formation of all nearby young stars, a new study finds. For decades, astronomers have known the solar system lies within the so-called … Read more

Star formation: Watch the best ever simulation of a cosmic cloud

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A computer simulation tracks 9 million years of evolution within a stellar nursery – also known as a giant molecular cloud – in which stars are born Space 11 January 2022 By Chen Ly The most detailed simulations to date of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) hint that we may need to rethink our understanding of … Read more