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The Bodily Indignities of the Space Life
As an incubator of life, Earth has a lot going for it, something we often fail to appreciate fully from within its nurturing bounds. Merely sending probes and rovers to the moon and Mars won’t do. For various reasons — adventure! apocalypse! commerce! — we insist upon taking our corporeal selves off-world too. Multiple private…
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This Week In Space podcast: Episode 87 — One Lunar Fizz Please
On Episode 87 of This Week In Space, Tariq and Rod discuss drinking in space with Colleen McLeod Garner. As more people take tourist jaunts into space, and eventually into orbit for longer stays, social drinking will become part of the experience—even if it’s just that bottle of congratulatory champagne. Besides the odd effects of…
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Space photo of the week: James Webb telescope finds a secret at the Crab Nebula’s heart
What it is: The highest-resolution image of the Crab Nebula (M1) ever taken Where it is: 6,500 light-years away, in the constellation Taurus When it was taken: October 2023 Why it’s so special: This new infrared image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) shows one of the night sky’s most studied and most impressive…
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Yale astronomer Priyamvada Natarajan helped do something extraordinary — reach back to the dawn of time to discover the glimmers of an ancient quasar. Using a pair of space borne telescopes, Natarajan and her research team found UHZ1, just 450 million years after the Big Bang and far outside our own galaxy. Moving farther away…
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Astronauts dropped a tool bag during an ISS spacewalk, and you can see it with binoculars
Some astronomy targets are less celestial in nature than others. Joining stars, planets, nebulas, and galaxies as a target for skywatchers is now a surprisingly bright tool bag floating through the space around Earth. The bag of tools gave NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara the slip on Nov. 2, 2023, as they were…
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What did ancient humans know about astronomy?
Imagine going back thousands of years and showing off the cool astronomical functions of your smartphone. It can tell the date and time with incredible accuracy. It can pinpoint your location. It can even pull up a map of the stars, tell you the phases of the moon, and predict the next major astronomical event.…
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I review star projectors for a living and this early Black Friday deal is one of the best I’ve seen all year.
No astronomy enthusiast’s home is complete without one of the best star projectors to light up those dark, cold evenings (that have well and truly arrived!) We have reviewed many models of star projectors and selected the best to feature in our Best Star Projector guide. The Pococo model is one of our favorites, and…
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JWST and Hubble telescopes unite to image clash of galaxies
This panchromatic view of galaxy cluster MACS0416 was created by combining infrared observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope with visible-light data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Jose M. Diego (IFCA), Jordan C. J. D’Silva (UWA), Anton M. Koekemoer (STScI), Jake Summers (ASU), Rogier Windhorst (ASU), Haojing Yan (University of…
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Tis the season! Behold the Christmas Tree Galaxy Cluster
Yes, it’s technically only November. But that doesn’t mean astronomers can’t start getting in the spirit of the holiday season! They’re putting up the Christmas Tree early, thanks to a joint-present from NASA’s James Webb and Hubble Space Telescopes. The striking image, dubbed the Christmas Tree Galaxy Cluster, combines visible light from Hubble and infrared…
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X-37B Aiming For New Orbit With Launch On Falcon Heavy
The U.S. Space Force plans to launch its next X-37B mission aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, aiming for a new orbit. The mission, known as USSF-52, will be the seventh for the two-vehicle fleet of Boeing-built X-37B Orbital Test Vehicles (OTV). Liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center is targeted for Dec. 7. The 29-ft. reusable…