Astronomers have observed the second-largest cosmic ray ever detected. Physicists cannot comprehend where in the universe such an energetic ray could come from. The particles within it shouldn’t exist. Cosmic ray 101 Cosmic rays’ highly energetic streams of subatomic particles shoot through the universe at nearly the...
The Leonids are known for producing some of the most amazing meteor displays in the annals of astronomy. Probably the most famous of the annual meteor showers will soon be reaching its maximum: The Leonids. These ultrafast meteors are due to reach their peak on Saturday morning...
Today, ESA’s Euclid space mission reveals its first full-colour images of the cosmos. Never before has a telescope been able to create such razor-sharp astronomical images across such a large patch of the sky, and looking so far into the distant Universe. These five images illustrate Euclid’s...
After years of anticipation and hard work by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security – Regolith Explorer) team, a capsule of rocks and dust collected from asteroid Bennu finally is on Earth. It landed at 8:52 a.m. MDT (10:52 a.m. EDT) on Sunday, in a targeted...
This new image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope features Herbig Haro 211 (HH 211), a bipolar jet travelling through interstellar space at supersonic speeds. At roughly 1000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Perseus, the object is one of the youngest and nearest protostellar outflows, making...
A new investigation with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope into K2-18 b, an exoplanet 8.6 times as massive as Earth, has revealed the presence of carbon-bearing molecules including methane and carbon dioxide. Webb’s discovery adds to recent studies suggesting that K2-18 b could be a Hycean exoplanet, one...
Maybe it will put on a better show for us when it returns around the year 2317. In recent days, the social media pipeline has been promoting the prospects for a bright new comet for September. The new object was discovered by Japanese amateur astronomer Hideo Nishimura of Kakegawa...
Did you catch it? A very bright meteor crossed the night sky last night and was seen all over Cyprus! The meteor disintegrated high up in the atmosphere but the shock wave from the explosion was still heard! Bright meteors like these are seen about once or twice a...
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has followed up on observations by the Hubble Space Telescope of the farthest star ever detected in the very distant universe, within the first billion years after the big bang. Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument reveals the star to be a massive B-type star...
