Space

CoRoT-2 b Hotspot Anomaly Challenges Tidal Locking Assumptions Featured image: Artist’s impression of a hot Jupiter exoplanet with atmospheric glow; credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Hot Jupiters are some of the most extreme planets in the universe: gas giants that orbit so close to their stars that they complete a full lap in a matter of days. Astronomers […]

JWST Reveals Aerosols and Hydrocarbons in the Atmosphere of a Planet Orbiting a Dead Star Featured image: Artist’s impression of a Jupiter-sized planet transiting a white dwarf; credit: NASA/ESA/Joseph Olmsted (STScI) For the first time, astronomers have detected an atmosphere on a planet transiting a dead star. Using the James Webb Space Telescope, an international […]

NASA IG Audit Suggests Boeing’s Starliner Will Be a Decade Late for Certification Date: 2026-07-02 Featured image: Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner approaches the International Space Station during its Crew Flight Test; credit: NASA Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner crew capsule may not achieve NASA human-rating certification until 2027, a full decade later than originally planned, according to a […]

Vera C. Rubin Observatory Begins the Largest Cosmic Time-Lapse in History Featured image: The Vera C. Rubin Observatory at Cerro Pachon, Chile, under the Milky Way; credit: Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in northern Chile has officially begun the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), a 10-year project that will image the […]

ESA Outlines High-Tech Lander Instruments for Flagship 2050 Enceladus Mission Featured image: Artist’s concept of the Enceladus south pole with cryovolcanic plumes erupting from tiger stripe fractures; credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute The European Space Agency has detailed the tentative payload for a lander that would touch down on Saturn’s moon Enceladus in the early 2050s, […]

Russell Croman’s RC Astro has released standalone command-line versions of its most popular astrophotography tools, freeing BlurXTerminator, NoiseXTerminator, and StarXTerminator from their longtime dependency on PixInsight and Photoshop. The new RC-Astro CLI, announced June 24 and currently in beta, lets users run all three machine-learning-powered tools from a terminal or integrate them directly into other […]

!Keim et al. (2026)/DECaLS/HST – A close-up Hubble image of the faint dwarf galaxy DF9 (inset) against the wider NGC 1052 group. MAUNAKEA, Hawaii, Astronomers using the W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaii Island, have discovered the third known galaxy that appears to contain no dark matter, deepening the mystery of how such objects […]

!First Humans on Mars – Artist Concept Artist’s concept of astronauts and habitats on Mars. New research shows Earth microbes can survive individual Martian hazards and evade human immune detection. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech NIJMEGEN, Netherlands Human pathogens can withstand individual harsh conditions on Mars and, in doing so, undergo changes that make them harder for the […]

NASA’s Chandra Reveals ‘Red, White, Blue’ Universe for US 250th Anniversary Featured image: Composite image showing four cosmic scenes rendered in red, white, and blue. Four views of the universe, Cassiopeia A, NGC 3603, Messier 94, and ZwCl 0024+1652, rendered in red, white, and blue for America’s 250th birthday. Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/STScI/ESA NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory […]

!First Humans on Mars – Artist Concept Artist’s concept of astronauts and habitats on Mars. New research shows Earth microbes can survive individual Martian hazards and evade human immune detection. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech NIJMEGEN, Netherlands Human pathogens can withstand individual harsh conditions on Mars and, in doing so, undergo changes that make them harder for the […]