Astronomy & Space News
If you are interested in astronomy, space and universe news you can read these here. We have several news sources like:
- NASA Solar System & Beyond
- Astronomy News - ScienceDaily
- Astronomy News - Astronomy.com
- NASA Image of the Day
- Astronomy News - Sky & Telescope
Select below the tab of the source news that you are interested in, or take a look to every source.
NASA Solar System & Beyond
- NASA Study: To Find an Extraterrestrial Civilization, Pollution Could Be the Solution
10 February 2021, 6:00 pm
If there’s an advanced extraterrestrial civilization inhabiting a nearby star system, we might be able to detect it using its own atmospheric pollution, according to new NASA research. - NASA Awards Launch Services Contract for SPHEREx Astrophysics Mission
4 February 2021, 10:21 pm
NASA has selected Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, California, to provide launch services for the Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) mission. - NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Mission Plans for May Asteroid Departure
26 January 2021, 4:48 pm
On May 10, NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft will say farewell to asteroid Bennu and begin its journey back to Earth. - NASA Highlights Astrophysics Missions at ‘Super Bowl of Astronomy’
11 January 2021, 3:54 pm
Experts from across NASA will discuss topics ranging from black holes to exploding stars to planets beyond our solar system at the 237th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). - NASA, NSF Sign Agreement to Advance Space, Earth, Biological, Physical Sciences
7 January 2021, 4:41 pm
NASA and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) have signed a memorandum of understanding affirming the agencies’ intent to continue their longstanding partnership in mutually beneficial research activities advancing space, Earth, biological, and physical sciences to further U.S. national space policy and promote the progress of science. - NASA Discoveries, R&D, Moon to Mars Exploration Plans Persevere in 2020
21 December 2020, 4:21 pm
“NASA has impressed the nation with our resilience and persistence during the pandemic,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. - NASA Exploration Mission Integral to 2020 National Space Policy
9 December 2020, 11:06 pm
Today, President Donald J. Trump issued the National Space Policy. - NASA Highlights New Findings, Upcoming Missions at Virtual AGU Meeting
1 December 2020, 9:27 pm
NASA and researchers from around the world will present new findings on a wide range of Earth and space science topics at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), Dec. 1-17, held virtually this year. - NASA Invites Media to Briefing on OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Stowage
29 October 2020, 4:35 pm
NASA will host a media teleconference at 4 p.m. EDT today, Thursday, Oct. 29, to provide an update on the status of the agency’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft and the mission’s work to safely stow the sample it collected from asteroid Bennu. - NASA’s SOFIA Discovers Water on Sunlit Surface of Moon
26 October 2020, 4:02 pm
NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has confirmed, for the first time, water on the sunlit surface of the Moon.
Source: NASA
NASA Image of the Day
- Almost Every Galaxy Has One – A Black Hole, That Is
16 April 2021, 3:06 pm
Spectacular jets are powered by the gravitational energy of a supermassive black hole in the core of the elliptical galaxy Hercules A. - Tokyo at Night
15 April 2021, 2:46 pm
The night lights of Tokyo, Japan, are pictured from the International Space Station as it orbited 261 miles above the island nation. - Sometimes Black Holes Are Prettier in Pink
14 April 2021, 2:28 pm
This image, taken by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory in 2012, shows an extraordinary outburst from a black hole. - Photographing a Black Hole
13 April 2021, 1:57 pm
In April 2019, ablack hole and its shadow were captured in an image for the first time. - STS-1 Takes Flight
12 April 2021, 1:33 pm
When space shuttle Columbia took to the skies, a new era of spaceflight took wing. - Celebrating Mary W. Jackson's 100th Birthday
9 April 2021, 1:56 pm
Mary W. Jackson (second from left) seen in 1984 Student Symposium at Langley Research Center. - Blue Dunes on the Red Planet
8 April 2021, 2:34 pm
A sea of dark dunes, sculpted by the wind into long lines, surrounds Mars' northern polar cap and covers an area as big as Texas. - Researching the Environment and COVID-19
7 April 2021, 2:26 pm
Today is World Health Day and we're funding studies to determine whether environmental factors influence the spread of the virus. - Expedition 65 Soyuz Rollout
6 April 2021, 1:59 pm
The Soyuz rocket is rolled out by train to the launch pad at Site 31, Tuesday, April 6, 2021, at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. - A View of Northrop Grumman's Cygnus Resupply Ship
5 April 2021, 1:50 pm
Northrop Grumman's Cygnus resupply ship, with its prominent cymbal-shaped UltraFlex solar arrays is pictured attached to the space station. - Hubble Revisits the Veil Nebula
2 April 2021, 2:54 pm
This image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope revisits the Veil Nebula, which was featured in a previous Hubble image release. - Space Station View of Sun Over Earth From Space
31 March 2021, 10:09 pm
This view of Earth’s horizon as the Sun sets over the Pacific Ocean was taken by the Expedition 7 crew onboard the International Space Station in 2003. - Penny J. Pettigrew, ISS Payload Communications Manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center
31 March 2021, 1:43 pm
As a payload communications manager Penny J. Pettigrew spends most days in the Payload Operations Integration Center at Marshall Space Flight Center. - Exploring the Metal-Rich Asteroid Psyche
30 March 2021, 2:41 pm
Set to launch next year, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft will explore a metal-rich asteroid of the same name in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. - Nearest Exoplanet to Our Solar System
29 March 2021, 3:02 pm
This artist's concept is of a Jupiter-mass planet orbiting the nearby star Epsilon Eridani.
Source: NASA
Astronomy News - ScienceDaily
- On the pulse of pulsars and polar light
16 April 2021, 9:50 pmFaced with the tragic loss of the Arecibo observatory in Puerto Rico and the often prohibitive cost of satellite missions, astronomers are searching for savvy alternatives to continue answering fundamental questions in physics. - A new super-Earth detected orbiting a red dwarf star
16 April 2021, 7:19 pmResearchers report the discovery of a super-Earth orbiting the star GJ 740, a red dwarf star situated some 36 light years from Earth. - Surprise twist suggests stars grow competitively
16 April 2021, 6:00 pmA survey of star formation activity in the Orion Nebula Cluster found similar mass distributions for newborn stars and dense gas cores, which may evolve into stars. Counterintuitively, this means that the amount of gas a core accretes as it develops, and not the initial mass of the core, is the key factor in deciding the final mass of the produced star. - The light-bending dance of binary black holes
15 April 2021, 11:07 pmA pair of orbiting black holes millions of times the Sun's mass perform a hypnotic pas de deux in a new NASA visualization. The movie traces how the black holes distort and redirect light emanating from the maelstrom of hot gas - called an accretion disk - that surrounds each one. - Baked meteorites yield clues to planetary atmospheres
15 April 2021, 5:41 pmIn a novel laboratory investigation of the initial atmospheres of Earth-like rocky planets, researchers heated pristine meteorite samples in a high-temperature furnace and analyzed the gases released. Their results suggest that the initial atmospheres of terrestrial planets may differ significantly from many of the common assumptions used in theoretical models of planetary atmospheres. - Fast-spinning black holes narrow the search for dark matter particles
14 April 2021, 7:20 pmAn MIT study narrows the search for particles called ultralight bosons, which, if they exist, could be an important component of dark matter. Certain ultralight bosons would be expected to put the brakes on the spin of black holes, but the new results show no such slowdown. - Telescopes unite in unprecedented observations of famous black hole
14 April 2021, 4:01 pmIn April 2019, scientists released the first image of a black hole in galaxy M87 using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). However, that remarkable achievement was just the beginning of the science story to be told. - Stellar feedback and an airborne observatory; scientists determine a nebula younger than believed
13 April 2021, 11:07 pmResearchers studied RCW 120 to analyze the effects of stellar feedback, and found that RCW 120 must be less than 150,000 years old, which is very young for such a nebula. - Study warns of 'oxygen false positives' in search for signs of life on other planets
13 April 2021, 6:43 pmIn the search for life on other planets, the presence of oxygen in a planet's atmosphere is one potential sign of biological activity that might be detected by future telescopes. A new study, however, describes several scenarios in which a lifeless rocky planet around a sun-like star could evolve to have oxygen in its atmosphere. - Life on Venus? First we need to know more about molecules in the atmosphere
12 April 2021, 4:18 pmTo confirm life on other planets, we need to detect far more molecules in their atmospheres than we currently do to rule out non-biological chemical processes. - New research reveals secret to Jupiter's curious aurora activity
10 April 2021, 4:49 pmJupiter's polar cap is threaded in part with closed magnetic field lines rather than entirely with open magnetic field lines, new research finds. - Amounts of organic molecules in planetary systems differ from early on
9 April 2021, 4:44 pmAn international group of scientists have studied the chemical composition of 50 protoplanetary-disk forming regions in the Perseus Molecular Cloud, and found that despite being in the same cloud, the amounts of complex organic molecules they contain are quite different. - Discovery of rare 'quadruply imaged quasars' can help solve cosmological puzzles
8 April 2021, 9:23 pmWith the help of machine-learning techniques, a team of astronomers has discovered a dozen quasars that have been warped by a naturally occurring cosmic 'lens' and split into four similar images. Quasars are extremely luminous cores of distant galaxies that are powered by supermassive black holes. - Caught speeding: Clocking the fastest-spinning brown dwarfs
8 April 2021, 9:23 pmAstronomers have discovered the most rapidly rotating brown dwarfs known. They found three brown dwarfs that each complete a full rotation roughly once every hour. That rate is so extreme that if these 'failed stars' rotated any faster, they could come close to tearing themselves apart. Identified by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, the brown dwarfs were then studied by ground-based telescopes including Gemini North, which confirmed their surprisingly speedy rotation. - NASA's NICER finds X-ray boosts in the Crab Pulsar's radio bursts
8 April 2021, 9:22 pmA global science collaboration using data from NASA's Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) telescope on the International Space Station has discovered X-ray surges accompanying radio bursts from the pulsar in the Crab Nebula. The finding shows that these bursts, called giant radio pulses, release far more energy than previously suspected.
Source: Astronomy News - ScienceDaily
Astronomy News - Astronomy.com
- <i>The Sky This Week:</i> The Lyrid meteor shower peaks
16 April 2021, 12:00 pmCatch meteors, the First Quarter Moon, and one of Jupiter’s moons eclipsing another from April 16 to 23. - <i>Infinity & Beyond </i> — Episode 18: The Cosmic Microwave Background
15 April 2021, 12:00 pmJoin host Abigail Bollenbach as she walks you through the basics of the cosmic microwave background, the oldest snapshot of the infant universe.
- What would happen if Earth stopped spinning?
15 April 2021, 12:00 pmThe thought experiment reveals just how important our planet’s rotation really is. - <i>Watch</i>: Blue Origin successfully launches and lands another New Shepard rocket
14 April 2021, 12:00 pmNS-15 serves as another successful step toward commercial crewed flights. - There might be remnants of an ancient planet buried inside Earth
14 April 2021, 12:00 pmAn ancient impactor called Theia hit Earth to create the Moon. New research suggests the rest of that planet may still be inside Earth. - How do scientists build the best diet for astronauts?
13 April 2021, 12:00 pmFor healthy and happy space travelers, food scientists must make meals compact, nutritious and long-lasting. Astronauts particularly benefit from fresh-tasting foods with a variety of textures. - 40 years since the first space shuttle mission, STS-1
12 April 2021, 12:00 pmOnly 20 years — to the day — after the first human ventured to space, Columbia became the first reusable space shuttle to take humans into orbit. - "Let's go!" — Remembering Yuri Gagarin's first spaceflight, 60 years later
12 April 2021, 12:00 pmThe first human spaceflight stunned the world on April 12, 1961. But famed Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had been preparing for that moment all of his life. - 25 facts you should know about the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024
9 April 2021, 12:00 pmBrush up on your eclipse basics before the big day. - <i>The Sky This Week:</i> The Moon meets Uranus
9 April 2021, 12:00 pmCelebrate dark skies and catch the crescent Moon from April 9 to 16. - <i>Snapshot</i>: Chandra discovers X-rays from Uranus
8 April 2021, 12:00 pmIn a first, scientists have seen X-ray light coming from one of our solar system’s most mysterious planets. The question is: Why? - First look at the 2024 total solar eclipse
8 April 2021, 12:00 pmExactly three years from now, on April 8, 2024, millions of Americans will witness the Moon entirely blot out the Sun, providing one of the most mesmerizing sights a person can witness. - <em>Snapshot:</em> Hypergiant star VY Canis Majoris sneezes like Betelgeuse
8 April 2021, 4:00 amThe red hypergiant star VY Canis Majoris, 4,000 light-years distant, is in a turbulent phase near the end of its life. Wracked by pulsations, it is expelling mass in a series of dusty knots and arcs. And thanks to the high resolution of the Hubble image above, researchers were able to estimate when several of these outbursts occurred, finding they started popping off more than 1,000 years ago and have persisted until as recently as about 30 years ago. By comparing these timeframes to historical - Who has the right of way in space? So far, it’s NASA
7 April 2021, 12:00 pmAn agreement between SpaceX and NASA right before another Starlink launch should help in managing satellite traffic. - A starry sense of wonder can combat fears and doubts about science
6 April 2021, 12:00 pmThe wonder of astronomy can help people overcome the worries that turns so many away from science.
Source: Astronomy News - Astronomy.com
Astronomy News - Sky & Telescope
- This Week's Sky at a Glance, April 16 – 24
16 April 2021, 10:49 amThe waxing Moon this week steps out of Taurus past Mars, across Gemini and Cancer, and into Leo. Sirius and Procyon remain in the southwest after dusk. Jupiter and Saturn shine in early dawn.
The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, April 16 – 24 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
- A Bouquet of Novae Brightens April Nights
15 April 2021, 8:06 pmWith the recent discovery of Nova Scorpii 2021 earlier this week, three bright stellar explosions are now visible in small telescopes from dusk till dawn.
The post A Bouquet of Novae Brightens April Nights appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
- What's in the New NASA Budget Proposal
15 April 2021, 6:34 pmThe latest NASA budget proposal would invest in science in a big way, including a large increase in funding for space exploration.
The post What's in the New NASA Budget Proposal appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
- New Distances Support Idea of Dark Matter–less Galaxies
14 April 2021, 8:37 pmNew distances to two dwarf galaxies with unusually spread-out stars support the idea that these galaxies have little to no dark matter.
The post New Distances Support Idea of Dark Matter–less Galaxies appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
- Astronomers Use AI to Investigate Quasars and Galaxies Galore
14 April 2021, 4:25 pmNew applications of machine learning have enabled astronomers to classify 27 million galaxies and pick out a dozen rare quadruply lensed quasars.
The post Astronomers Use AI to Investigate Quasars and Galaxies Galore appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
- Flares from the Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole
12 April 2021, 6:23 pmThe supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way released an unusual number of strong flares in 2019. Now, astronomers are trying to figure out why.
The post Flares from the Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
- This Week's Sky at a Glance, April 9 – 17
9 April 2021, 11:31 amArcturus ascends in the east as Sirius sinks in the southwest. Orion tilts further as the Dipper rides high. And this week Mars threads the horntips of Taurus, closely followed by the crescent Moon.
The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, April 9 – 17 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
- T–3 Years Until the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse
8 April 2021, 2:00 pmThe countdown has begun to a special total solar eclipse that will cross Mexico, the U.S. and Canada on April 8, 2024.
The post T–3 Years Until the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
- Make the Most of Comet ATLAS
7 April 2021, 6:33 pmBright comets will be scarce this year, but you can see one of the better ones this month as it races from Aquila to Canes Venatici. In other news, a new, bright nova has flared in Sagittarius.
The post Make the Most of Comet ATLAS appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
- Seeking the Origins of Galactic Stellar Streams
6 April 2021, 10:25 pmA recent study has identified the origins of many of the long streams of stars that encircle the Milky Way. These streams may contain hints about our galaxy's past.
The post Seeking the Origins of Galactic Stellar Streams appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
Source: Astronomy News - Sky & Telescope