Today, the question of where life’s building blocks come from is largely settled. Thanks to numerous discoveries in recent decades, scientists have confirmed that the organic molecules are found in space. In addition,
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base on the USSF-481 mission on Oct. 15, 2026. Image: SpaceX via livestream Update 8:23 p.m.
The age of exoplanet science took shape with the Kepler mission, and gained more momentum with the TESS mission. The initial goal had a simple definition: use the transit method to find planets
Two annual meteor streams offer good cause to watch the sky in October. Fall meteor season has begun. Late October not only sees dusk falling ever earlier as ghouls and goblins walk the
Brown dwarfs are the black (or brown?) sheep of astronomy. They’re too big to be considered a traditional gas planet, but they are too small to have started nuclear fusion and made the
After five-and-a-half years on Mars, NASA’s Perseverance Rover has set a distance record for travel on another world. Since landing in Mars’ Jezero Crater, an ancient paleolake, on February 18, 2021, Perseverance has
The Sun is so intensely bright we can’t safely look at it directly. We need a filter to block much of its light. And when we do, we can start to see some
In 1181, astronomers, poets, and diary keepers in China and Japan recorded a ‘guest star’ in Cassiopeia. The luminous transient lit up the sky for 6 months. Those ancient astronomers didn’t know it
In the 1930s, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar placed a limit on stars. Using our understanding of relativity and quantum theory, Chandrasekhar demonstrated that white dwarfs could never have a mass greater than 1.44 suns. It
Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System and has a planetary magnetosphere to match! Since 2016, NASA’s Juno probe has studied this massive planet to better understand its magnetosphere and its
