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Here's what to expect from 5 stages of the total solar eclipse 2026

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We're just a few short days away from the Aug. 12 total solar eclipse , when millions will watch as the moon glides across the face of the sun, hiding its light in a wondrous display of orbital mechanics. The eclipse will unfold during August's new moon phase, as the lunar disk slips silently between the sun and Earth in the daytime sky. Ordinarily, the subtle tilt in the moon's orbit causes its shadow to pass just below, or above our planet, missing it entirely. However, on Aug. 12, the moon's orbit will carry it into a near-perfect alignment with the sun and Earth, casting its colossal shadow across a 182-mile-wide corridor known as the path of totality, where viewers will get to see the lunar disk fully hide the sun's disk. The path of totality for the Aug. 12 eclipse cuts through Spain, Iceland and Greenland. Hundreds of millions more watching from outside of this narro...
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SpaceX launches 24 Starlink satellites to orbit from California (video)

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SpaceX launched another batch of its Starlink broadband satellites to orbit today (Aug. 8) from California's scenic central coast. A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base today at 12:35 p.m. EDT (1635 GMT; 9:35 a.m. local time), carrying 24 of the internet-beaming spacecraft to low Earth orbit (LEO). The rocket's first stage returned to Earth as planned about 8.5 minutes later, landing in the Pacific Ocean atop the SpaceX droneship "Of Course I Still Love You." It was the 16th flight for this particular booster, which is designated B1093. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches 24 Starlink internet satellites from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base on Aug. 8, 2026. (Image credit: SpaceX) B1093's most recent flight before today was on July 14 , when it launched 27 Starlink satellites to LEO from Vandenberg. Meanwhile, the Falcon 9's upper st...
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'Not looking good right now': Starship likely to be lost at sea 2 weeks after epic 13th test flight, Elon Musk says

It looks like Starship's two-week-long ocean adventure won't have a happy ending. The SpaceX megarocket conducted its 13th test flight on July 24, lifting off from the company's Starbase site in South Texas. Things went pretty well on Flight 13 , especially for Starship 's 171-foot-tall (52 meters) upper stage, known as Ship, which splashed down as planned in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Western Australia. In an unexpected first, Ship survived that homecoming, staying in one piece even after toppling over and hitting the waves. It remains intact still, and SpaceX is towing it toward shore in Western Australia to get a better look. But the ambitious effort is unlikely to succeed, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk told us today (Aug. 7). "Unfortunately, ship recovery is not looking good right now. Nonetheless, we were able to obtain close-up photos of critical regions o...
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NASA figured out how to keep its 48-year-old Voyager 2 probe running for yet another year

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NASA just made an interstellar tweak to the Voyager 2 spacecraft, known as the "Big Bang", to keep its remaining 50-year-old science instruments running a little longer. Voyager 2 and its twin launched in 1977, called Voyager 1, rely on a form of nuclear battery known as a radioisotope thermoelectric generator that uses the heat produced by the decay of plutonium. But the supply of plutonium on each probe drops at about four watts a year on each spacecraft. To keep the probe running on this dwindling power supply, engineers recently reduced Voyager 2's power requirements by turning off a few non-science devices and using "lower-power alternatives" that are still effective enough to keep the spacecraft warm while it's so far from the sun, NASA officials said in a statement . "The spacecraft power margins have grown razor thin, requiring the team to conserve energy ...
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Inside the mystery of the James Webb Space Telescope's little red dots — and how they might be evolving

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New evidence has come to light showing that the mysterious 'little red dots' discovered in the early universe by the James Webb Space Telescope could evolve into the active centers of fully formed galaxies. "Everything created in the early universe must evolve into something around us," said George Rieke of the University of Arizona in a statement . "We have had little idea of what little red dots become, but these results finally show us how to find their progeny." Discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) almost as soon as it became operational in 2022, little red dots have been a perplexing cosmological mystery. As their name suggests, they appear small, red and surprisingly bright. They are mostly found at redshift values suggesting they existed between 13.2 and 12.2 billion years ago. To shine so brightly at such great distances would usually imply the...
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Scientists rediscover lost Megalodon fossils—and reveal a 79-foot giant

Several enormous Megalodon vertebrae thought to have been destroyed in 1989 were found sitting unnoticed on a museum shelf. Their analysis strengthens evidence that the giant shark could exceed 24 meters (79 feet) in length and live for nearly a century. Researchers also estimate that its newborns may have measured an astonishing 3.6 meters (12 feet). from Latest Science News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/DrqKYct
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Why you don't need a perfectly clear sky to enjoy the total solar eclipse on Aug. 12

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Are you ready for the eclipse? Whether you're bound for the path of totality or set to see a partial eclipse from Europe, Canada or the northeast U.S. on Wednesday, Aug. 12, there's a dirty word eclipse chasers hate to utter during an eclipse season, and yet become completely obsessed with — clouds. Related: Total solar eclipse 2026 — Everything you need to know We all start behaving as though Earth's atmosphere owes us something. After spending years studying the climate and where it is most likely along a path of totality to have a clear sky, we're in position and can now do almost nothing about it save for drive or sail a few miles. We refresh cloud forecasts. We compare satellite imagery. We point at scraps of blue sky as if we can persuade them to remain so at a specific time. By the time the moon is almost on the sun, we've spent the best part of a week staring at our ...
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