NASA’s space telescope Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered a “hot Neptune desert” exoplanet in a tight orbit around its host star Artist’s concept of “hot Neptune” TOI-3261 b. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/K. Miller (Caltech/IPAC). The planet, TOI-3261 b, is only the fourth such planet found. Researchers say it’s an ideal candidate for studying how planets…

Find all the astronomical events of December 2024 in this guide! Comet forecast, all the meteor showers, best visibility of Mercury and Jupiter, and more. To easily find celestial objects in the sky, use the free astronomy app Sky Tonight. Let’s get started! Contents Astronomical events in December 2024 We provide the event dates in…

A temporary mini-moon snared by Earth’s gravity for nearly two months before departing back into the solar system can be seen in a new image from the Two-Meter Twin Telescope in Spain. The near-Earth asteroid (NEO) 2024 PT5 was snared by the gravitational influence of our planet on Sept. 29, 2024. From the start of…

The crew on the International Space Station celebrates Thanksgiving. Credit: NASA Astronauts aboard the International Space Station may be far from family and friends this Thanksgiving, but will still enjoy a festive meal. The SpaceX CRS-31 supply mission that docked Nov. 5 carried some 2,119 pounds (961 kilograms) of crew supplies. Among those supplies are…

Researchers from the Curtin node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) have made a record-breaking astrophysical discovery while simultaneously uncovering a possible explanation for the rare and extreme astrophysical event known as long-period radio transients. Associate Professor Natasha Hurley-Walker, along with Csanád Horváth, a Curtin University undergraduate student at the time, discovered…

What can binary stars comprised of two different types of stars teach astronomers about stellar evolution? This is what a recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal hopes to address as a team of researchers from the United States and Canada investigated a binary star system comprised of white dwarfs and main sequence stars that…

An early conceptual image of SpaceX’s lunar cargo lander, which NASA will need to deliver 26,000 to 33,000 pounds of payload to the Moon. Credit: NASA NASA has picked SpaceX and Blue Origin to deliver a lunar rover and habitat to the moon within the next decade. The space agency last week announced it will assign two…

For the first time, astronomers have taken a high-quality, zoomed-in photo of a star outside our galaxy — and it’s right on the brink of exploding in a violent supernova. The new close-up image, captured by the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) in Chile, shows the red supergiant WOH G64, commonly…

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have captured an amazing new photo of the spiral galaxy NGC 2090. This Hubble image shows NGC 2090, a spiral galaxy some 40 million light-years away in the southern constellation of Columba. The color image was made from separate exposures taken in the ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared regions…