News

(Inside Science) -- Scientists have been trying to measure the lifetime of a neutron outside an atomic nucleus for decades, and for the last 15 years, two types of laboratory experiments have provided different answers. In a new study, researchers fo...

The Sun is an active star. Even at its most quiet, its surface trembles and shimmers as if it can barely hold in the contents of its hot belly. And when it finally releases that frightening power — launching a solar flare or a coronal mass ejec...

It’s really “until death do us part” for the two galaxies of Arp 91. The galactic couple — NGC 5953 and NGC 5954 — are so wrapped up in each other that they’ve lost their original spiral shapes. The gravitational...

Seeing a bright Milky Way flowing across the sky is an experience like no other. And observing many beautiful naked-eye deep-sky objects significantly enhances any astronomical session. Unfortunately, many astronomy clubs have to deal with ever-incr...

Millions of Americans were glued to their televisions on the morning of January 28, 1986 to watch the Challenger space shuttle launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida. Networks like CNN alternated between audio from the excit...

Friday, October 22 In the late 1700s, Charles Messier created his famous catalog to identify objects that he didn’t want to mistake for comets. Thus, most of the entries in his list are small and appear fuzzy at low power. One such object is...

It’s true: 124 million miles (200 kilometers) might be a long way for your dog to fetch this cosmic bone. But thanks in part to two powerful telescopes, astronomers were able to inspect the dog-bone shaped asteroid Kleopatra from afar, revealin...

It isn’t a secret that humanity and everything around us is made of star stuff. But not all stars create elements equally. Sure, regular stars can create the basic elements: helium, carbon, neon, oxygen, silicon, and iron. But it takes the coll...

The planets of the solar system are varied in their appearance. Mercury is slate gray while Venus is pearly white, Earth a vibrant blue, and Mars a dusky red. Even the gas giants are different, Neptune and Uranus an opaque blue, while Jupiter and Sat...

Can a black hole form without a parent star? Rich Livitski Seal Beach, California A few different kinds of black holes exist. First are stellar-mass black holes, which can range from 3.3 to 100 times the mass of the Sun. These are the low...

Black holes are regions of austere darkness, gobbling up everything — even light — that strays too close. But the environment immediately surrounding a black hole is not so dark. Astronomers often spot copious amounts of light streaming f...

With all the progress toward putting a human on Mars, I was wondering: What is the North Star for someone on Mars? Ralph Winrich Dunkirk, Wisconsin On Earth, the North Star is defined as the star toward which Earth’s north rotational po...

For 50 years, Landsat satellites have been observing the accelerating changes to our planet, returning many millions of images of the land and coastlines. On September 27th, the latest in the Landsat family, Landsat 9, was successfully launched into...

This Funfetti-like bloom called Cassiopeia A shows the aftermath of a supernova, or a massive star explosion, about 11,000 light-years from Earth. The vibrant colors added to this image denote the elements detected within it; for example, the blue bl...

From the 1960s on, both American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts underwent so-called survival training. This was to prepare them for the unlikely event that they landed in harsh or remote terrain, forcing them to fend for themselves while awaiting r...

What is the difference between the observable universe and the whole universe? Vitthal Nath Jharkhand, India About 13.8 billion years ago, the Big Bang kicked off the universe, filling it with matter, dark matter, and dark energy. Since then, ...

NASA’s Perseverance rover has spent the last eight months in the dry, forlorn landscape of Jezero Crater. But analysis of some of the rover’s first images have confirmed that roughly 3.7 billion years ago, the crater was home to an ancien...

Friday, October 15 The Moon passes 4° south of Jupiter in Capricornus at 6 A.M. EDT. You can’t see them then — both are below the horizon — but they are visible in the sky tonight after sunset. By then, the Moon has shifted over...

(Inside Science) -- Earth might look like a sphere, but it's actually an "oblate spheroid" -- the planet is slightly squished, making the circumference of the equator bigger than the circumference through the poles. Clouds, ocean curren...

About a dozen stellar nurseries reside in the solar neighborhood. Perhaps the most thoroughly studied among them are Taurus and Perseus molecular clouds. Countless celestial cartographers have scrutinized the two regions, filling their maps with star...