Astronomy (RSS)

Galactic-02, Virgin Galactic’s first mission to carry paying civilian customers to space, is scheduled to launch from New Mexico on 10 August

Each year, NASA scientists, engineers, and developers create software packages to manage space missions, test spacecraft, and analyze the petabytes of data produced by agency research satellites. As the agency innovates for the benefit of humanity, many of these programs are now downloadable and free of charge through NASA’s Software Catalog.

A “failed star” known as a brown dwarf is orbiting so tightly with a small star that both of them would fit inside our sun, and at least one of them won’t survive

The Curiosity rover has discovered hexagonal patterns in ancient mud on the Red Planet, which hints at cyclical wet and dry periods and boosts chances Mars once hosted life

It’s ‘very doable’, according to the man who co-founded the submersibles company OceanGate. In fact, it’s just like a caravan holiday! Guillermo Söhnlein is a man of many ideas. One of those ideas was OceanGate: the company that used to send people to the bottom of the sea in submersibles until one of those submersibles imploded, killing all five people on board, including Söhnlein’s co-founder. It’s 10 years since Söhnlein left the company, but after a tragedy like that you’d think he’d want to stay away from risky ventures for a while. But no, the businessman recently told Insider that he is intent on colonising Venus. This isn’t some lofty vision of the far future: he wants to send 1,000 people to Venus’s atmosphere by 2050. He lays out all his plans in an extremely unimpressive website for his foundation called Humans2Venus. While all this may sound completely ridiculous, don’t worry: Söhnlein has looked into the logistics and concluded that getting to Venus is “very doable”. “I think it is less aspirational than putting 1 million people on the Martian surface by 2050,” he mused. You should trust him on this – he’s been researching the matter for a very long time. “I think I’ve been driven to help make humanity a multiplanet species since I was 11 years old,” he told Insider. “I had this recurring dream of being the commander of the first Martian colony.” I’ve had a recurring dream that I forgot to do any of my maths homework for a year and then I had to sit a test, but I haven’t spun that into a business venture. Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

What's that below the Moon?

Despite testimony by David Grusch to US Congress about "non-human biologics" and UFO crash sites, there is still no evidence aliens have ever come to Earth. Why are people taking such claims seriously, asks Jacob Aron

Some of the winning images from Central West Astronomical Society’s annual astrophotography competition named after the British-Australian astronomer and photographer. From a smartphone capturing the aurora over Tasmania’s mountains to craters on the moon, Australian astrophotographers bring the wonders of our universe into frame

Ethereal beauty: Milky Way photographer of the year 2023 – in pictures Continue reading...

The Pelican Nebula is slowly being transformed.

NASA will provide live coverage beginning at 10:15 a.m. EDT Wednesday, Aug. 9, as two Roscosmos cosmonauts conduct a spacewalk to upgrade the International Space Station. The spacewalk is expected to begin about 10:45 a.m., and last up to seven hours.

As far as we know, there are three main ingredients required for life: liquid water, an energy source and complex chemistry. Do Europa or Enceladus have them all?

Viewing conditions are good because the moon is in an advanced waning phase

August means meteors – and the annual Perseid meteor shower is widely regarded as the best meteor shower of the year. Although it is active from mid-July through to the end of August, the shower peaks on the night of 12-13 August. Continue reading...

What created this unusual space ribbon?

Britain has a chance to solve the universe’s ultimate mystery – if it can get global support for a project 3,000ft below ground in the UK British scientists have an audacious dream. They want to house a giant international particle detector that would be built 3,000ft underground in a potash mine in Yorkshire. The device, they say, would give them a last clear chance to pinpoint what is the source of one of the universe’s greatest mysteries: dark matter. “We are entering the last-chance saloon to show that these particles are the cause of dark matter, and we want to make sure Britain is at the heart of that work by building the final generation of these detectors,” physicist Professor Chamkaur Ghag of University College London told the Observer. Continue reading...

NGC 1360: The Robin's Egg Nebula

Moonrays of August

As part of the state’s first Earth-to-space call, students from Louisiana will have an opportunity soon to hear from NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station.

As part of the state’s first Earth-to-space call, students from Louisiana will have an opportunity soon to hear from NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station.

Four crew members now are assigned to launch on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 mission for a long-duration stay aboard the International Space Station.

Asteroids are far weirder than we had imagined – landing on one wouldn't go as you expected, says astronomer Phil Plait

In a photo from the early hours of July 29 (UTC),

A new image of the Ring Nebula from the James Webb Space Telescope is revealing its intricate internal structure, which could help us learn what the sun will look like when it dies

NASA and Axiom Space have signed an order for the fourth private astronaut mission to the International Space Station, targeted to launch no earlier than August 2024 from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Extraordinarily high-energy gamma rays have been found emanating from the sun, and none of our theoretical models can explain why there are so many of them

High-resolution images from cutting-edge space telescope reveal inner region around central white dwarf Stunning images of the final stages of a distant star’s life have been captured by the James Webb space telescope (JWST) in unprecedented and exquisite detail. Released by an international team of astronomers, the snapshots reveal the doughnut-shaped structure of glowing gas called the Ring Nebula, a well-known object in the sky, which lies about 2,600 light years from Earth. Continue reading...