AstroForge, a private company, wants to mine a space rock, but it doesn’t want the competition to find out which one. For generations, Western space missions have largely occurred out in the open. We knew where they were going, why they were going there and what they planned to do. But the world is on…

The massive galaxy cluster RXC J0142.9+4438 is seen in this image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, RELICS Just how large is the universe? The short answer is 93 billion light-years — at least. That 93 billion light-year number refers to what astronomers call the observable universe, and it extends about…

What it is: The young star cluster NGC 2264, the so-called “Christmas Tree Cluster.” When it was taken: Between February 2002 and December 2011, via eight observations spanning 137 hours. Where it is: 2,500 light-years away, within the Milky Way. Why it’s so special: NGC 2264 is a cluster of stars with ages between 1…

1. The most powerful light from the sun Among the new astronomical records set in 2023 was an announcement of the highest-energy gamma ray ever seen coming from the sun, an order of magnitude more powerful than had previously been seen. “The sun is more surprising than we knew,” Mehr Un Nisa, an astronomer at…

In addition to great discoveries, the JWST works with other telescopes to produce magnificent images, like this of the M74 “Phantom Galaxy.” Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-JWST Team The ground in French Guiana literally shook as the rockets on the Ariane 5 launch vehicle ignited the morning of Dec. 25,…

From cosmic carnival parades in the most colorful image of the universe ever taken to the acrid surface of a supervolcanic moon — space really went out of its way to be beautiful in 2023. Here are our 8 favorite space photos of the year. The Euclid space telescope’s first images Euclid’s view of the…

The basis for everything we understand about the orbits of the planets comes from the work of German astronomer Johannes Kepler Kepler, without knowing about the force of gravity, mathematically described the motions of the planets around the sun in his three laws of planetary motion. His work was key in providing evidence for Nicolaus…

A newfound population of stars in nearby dwarf galaxies represents the long-sought progenitors of a specific type of stellar death, or supernova, according to new research. Theories have shown that, for every three massive stars, one is stripped of its outer hydrogen layers across hundreds, or even thousands, of years such that its scorching hot…

Astronomers watched 35 explosive outbursts from a rare repeating “fast radio burst” (FRB) as it shifted in frequency like a “cosmic slide whistle,” blinking in a puzzling pattern never seen before. FRBs are millisecond-long flashes of light from beyond the Milky Way that are capable of producing as much energy in a few seconds as…

The way astronomers study planets in our own solar system is surprisingly similar to the way they study exoplanets, despite the latter being orders of magnitude more distant. The key is spectroscopy – examining the wavelengths of light that reach a telescope from a planet’s atmosphere. Different molecules allow different wavelengths to pass through, creating…