Posts

James Webb Space Telescope celebrates its 4th birthday with stunning image of a galaxy crash site

Image
July 2026 marks four years since NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) images were first revealed to the general public, marking a new era for astronomy. To celebrate this anniversary of the most powerful space telescope ever launched, NASA has released a stunning image of the strangely shaped galaxy called Centaurus A. Located around 11 million light-years away, Centaurus A owes its unusual structure to a collision between two galaxies around 2 billion years ago. This merger provided the galaxy with an abundance of gas and dust, the raw material for intense star formation. It also supplied the supermassive black hole at the heart of this galaxy with an abundant supply of the same matter to feed upon and power a bright and violent central region, or active galactic nucleus (AGN), as that central area blasts out powerful, high-speed jets of plasma. Though this galaxy is much closer to us...
Post a Comment
Read more

Our Milky Way galaxy might be larger than we thought  

Image
Is the Milky Way even bigger than we thought? New observations have revealed that our galaxy's spiral arms could stretch farther and wider than we previously concluded. The Milky Way's spiral structure was discovered over 175 years ago in 1850. But new information could completely change our understanding of our cosmic home. Astronomers have taken a new look at our Milky Way galaxy using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton observatory and have pieced together new, precise measurements of the galaxy's spiral arms. And what they found is that its spiral arms stretch out farther than we once thought, a discovery that could change our understanding of our galaxy's structure. "The differences are small, but any revision of these distances is important because they are so fundamental for understanding our galaxy," co-...
Post a Comment
Read more

'Project Hail Mary' is finally streaming Amazon Prime Video, and we can't wait to watch it again

Amazon MGM Studios' " Project Hail Mary ," the science fiction blockbuster starring Ryan Gosling that launched into theaters back on March 20, 2026 is now hitting its streaming stride on Prime Video after a stop on MGM+. The $200 million outer space saga , directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller ("The Lego Movie," "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse") and adapted from author Andy Weir's 2021 novel of the same name, made a respectable $630 million in its full theatrical run. Despite a general jokiness and long runtime, the film was well-received by critics and audiences and now those who've held out from going to the multiplex to absorb the adventure will have a chance to catch it at home. Gosling portrays Ryland Grace, a middle-grade teacher and molecular biologist who reluctantly gets recruited for a desperate deep space mission to try and solve a co...
Post a Comment
Read more

Artemis 2's Jeremy Hansen stepping down from active astronaut duty after epic moon mission

Image
The first non-American to reach the moon is ready for a new mission. Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy Hansen , best known for his flight around the moon in April on NASA's Artemis 2 mission, will step back from active astronaut duty in September. Hansen, who's also a colonel in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), will next serve as a reservist to "enable the vital work happening in Canada with respect to space," the astronaut wrote Monday (July 6) in a statement on X. "Our future depends on a fierce continuation of Canadian innovation and exploration in space," Hansen added. "The technological breakthroughs and economic benefits born from this sector are vital for our country and the world, and I am as determined as ever to push that work forward." Space sovereignty has come under renewed focus in recent months in Canada. Long-standing effort...
Post a Comment
Read more

Watch SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch 81 satellites early on July 7

Image
SpaceX will launch a passel of satellites to orbit early Tuesday morning (July 7), and you can watch the action live. A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 81 payloads is scheduled to lift off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base on Tuesday, during a 95-minute window that opens at 3:10 a.m. EDT (0410 GMT; 12:10 a.m. local California time). You can watch the mission, which is called Transporter-17, live via SpaceX . Coverage will begin about 15 minutes before launch. As its name suggests, Transporter-17 will be the 17th mission of SpaceX 's Transporter rideshare program. The company operates another rideshare series as well, called Bandwagon, which has launched four missions to date . The 20 Transporter and Bandwagon missions that have flown to date sent more than 1,800 payloads to Earth orbit. Transporter-1 lofted 143 of those back in January 2021 , which remains the global single-launch ...
Post a Comment
Read more

More clues surface about the origins of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS

More evidence that the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is much older than our solar system has come to light, along with clues that it formed on the outskirts of the protoplanetary disk belonging to its parent star long ago. Earlier this year, researchers led by Martin Cordiner of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center revealed that data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) suggested that 3I/ATLAS is between 10 and 12 billion years old , based on the ratios of its carbon and deuterium isotopes. This would make it more than twice the age of our 4.6-billion-year-old solar system . Now, new results from the Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope support the JWST observations of carbon isotopes, and also introduce measurements of nitrogen isotopes that arrive at very interesting conclusions. Isotopes are versions of atom...
Post a Comment
Read more

NASA just found a planet 'hiding' in TESS spacecraft data, all thanks to Einstein

Image
NASA's exoplanet-hunting spacecraft TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) has a new method for detecting worlds beyond the solar system. The technique relies on a phenomenon introduced by Einstein in his 1915 theory of gravity, general relativity, called gravitational microlensing. The exoplanet in question is called Gaia23bra b. The first hints of this exoplanet were found in 2023 by the now-retired Gaia space telescope via the slight brightening of a star caused by a microlensing event. TESS usually spots planets by the tiny drop in the light output from their parent star as they cross, or transit, its face. This technique is most effective for very large gas giants that orbit close to their star, so it most likely wouldn't work for Gaia23bra b, which has 1.6 times Jupiter's mass but orbits its star at a similar distance to Jupiter's orbit around the sun. Additionally,...
Post a Comment
Read more