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The exoplanet explosion: This Week in Astronomy with Dave Eicher
This artist’s view shows the hot Jupiter exoplanet 51 Pegasi b, sometimes referred to as Bellerophon. This was the first exoplanet discovered around a Sun-like star and was found in 1995 by Didier Queloz and Michel Mayor. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser/Nick Risinger. It may be hard to imagine today, but just over 30 years ago, we…
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Asteroid Named for Sky & Telescope’s Gary Seronik
The asteroid 20046 Seronik, a 5.3-kilometer space rock orbiting in the main belt, as photographed by Alan Hale. The International Astronomical Union has named asteroid 20046 Seronik (1993 FE15) in honor of Sky & Telescope Consulting Editor Gary Seronik. The IAU announcement suggests, correctly, that Seronik has been communicating astronomy to amateur astronomers and the public for many…
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Black Friday: Save $310 on Celestron NexStar 8SE at Amazon
If you want the number one bestselling telescope, look no further — we present to you: The Celestron NexStar 8SE, now $310 off for Black Friday on Amazon. Celestron claims it’s the ‘world’s most beloved telescope’ and we have to agree — we ranked it best overall in our best telescopes for seeing planets and…
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‘Stellar vampires’ study could revolutionise the way astronomers understand stars in universe
A recent finding by a team of scholars might revolutionise how astronomers comprehend some of the universe’s largest and most common stars. They studied some of the Milky Way’s brightest and hottest stars and found that theorised binary systems consisting of a fast-rotating star feeding off a companion may actually be trinary systems. For instance,…
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James Webb telescope discovers 2 of the oldest galaxies in the universe
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have discovered two of the oldest and most distant galaxies in the known universe, dating to just 330 million years after the Big Bang. These ancient objects — estimated to be the second and fourth most distant galaxies ever detected — fall just shy of the earliest…
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Deep Space Astronauts May Be Prone To Erectile Dysfunction, Study Finds
As if homesickness, wasting muscles, thinner bones, an elevated cancer risk, the inescapable company of overachievers and the prospect of death in the endless vacuum of space were not enough to contend with, male astronauts may return from deep space prone to erectile dysfunction, scientists say. From a report: In what is claimed to be…
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ATU and CEPT Propose Agenda to Safeguard Radio Astronomy from Satellite Interference
The African Telecommunications Union (ATU) and the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) have formally proposed new agenda items for the upcoming 2027 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-27) for improved protection of radio astronomy from the harmful effects of satellite constellations. “Securing an agenda item at the WRC is not easy, and this would…
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‘I felt that Africans could also be part of this’: Meet the Kenyan stargazer inspiring children to look to the sky
CNN — Susan Murabana’s life-changing moment happened at 22 years old, when she looked through a telescope for the very first time. Suddenly, Saturn and its yellow-gold rings were more than just an illustration in a textbook; they were real and the experience was powerful. The opportunity came while she was a student volunteering with…
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JWST uncovers some of the most distant galaxies yet seen
The second- and fourth-most distant galaxies ever seen, shown here as near-infrared wavelengths of light that have been translated to visible-light colors. Cluster image: NASA, UNCOVER (Bezanson et al., DIO: 10.48550/arXiv.2212.04026) Insets: NASA, UNCOVER (Wang et al., 2023) Composition: Dani Zemba/Penn State When the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launched almost two years ago, it…
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NASA tool bag tonight: How to see the dropped space box floating across the sky
We’ve all been there. You’ve put something down, and now you can’t find it – it’s like it disappeared into thin air. But earlier this month, a NASA tool bag literally did fly off into a vacuum during routine checks aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The tool bag has been orbiting Earth for the…