Astronomy

The James Webb Space Telescope has crossed another milestone on the path to its long-awaited launch. NASA engineers have now completed a deployment test, unfurling the telescope’s gigantic mirror into the configuration it will take in space.

With OSIRIS-REx in close orbit around Bennu, we’ve already seen some pretty amazing up-close shots of the asteroid. And now, NASA has released a full global map of this rocky little world in unprecedented resolution.

Unifying conflicting models into a “Theory of Everything” is the Holy Grail of physics. Now a NASA observatory has conducted an experimental test, scouring the sky for evidence of a hypothetical particle that could tie the universe together.

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured a view of a stellar laboratory that is being used to understand how truly gargantuan stars come to form. The image features a colorful starfield and a substructure of the famous Tarantula Nebula.

Despite being the closest planet to the Sun, Mercury is home to a surprising amount of ice. Now, researchers at Georgia Tech have put forward an explanation for how at least some of it got there – and it turns out, the heat plays an important role.

The International Dark-Sky Association is a non-profit dedicated to safeguarding night skies for future generations to enjoy, and has just granted its first designation that covers an entire country, the small Pacific island nation of Niue.

Well over 100 new minor planets have been discovered in our solar system, in the darkness out beyond the orbit of Neptune. The discoveries were made by sifting through several years’ worth of data gathered by the Dark Energy Survey (DES).

Astronomers may have found a world where it rains iron. The exoplanet is exposed to thousands of times the radiation that the Earth receives from the Sun, rendering the surface hot enough to vaporize metals that later fall as rain.

The light from stars usually pulsates uniformly across the whole surface, but now astronomers have discovered a star that only pulses on one side. That’s thanks to its teardrop shape, as a close binary companion pulls it out of whack.

The introduction of 26 thousand new megaconstellation satellites could have a significant effect on ground-based astronomy, according to a new study commissioned by the European Southern Observatory.

Dark matter is believed to outnumber regular matter by a ratio of five-to-one, but so far it’s never been directly detected. Now, nuclear physicists have proposed a new candidate particle that might make up the stuff – and we’ve already found it.

Astronomers have analyzed the atmosphere of a large exoplanet and found that it could have liquid water – and so possibly life – on its surface. This new study adds weight to the idea that habitable exoplanets don’t have to be strictly Earth-sized.