Astronomy & Space News

NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik (left) and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Luca Parmitano view progress on the solid rocket booster integration in High Bay 3 inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026.

Fans pose for a photo with an astronaut in the NASA Experience Zone at an NFL game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Atlanta Falcons at Acrisure Stadium, Sunday, Sept. 13, 2026, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Galaxies are like cosmic gems, each with characteristics including size and shape that make them distinct. A gallery from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes displays a collection of galactic images that showcase this variety.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, an international team of astronomers have discovered that dust and water can form and survive surprisingly close to the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy.

The crew of NASA’s Artemis II mission visited NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama on Sept. 1, 2026.

N44 is a complex nebula filled with glowing hydrogen gas, dark lanes of dust, massive stars, and many populations of stars of different ages. One of its most distinctive features, however, is the dark, starry gap called a “superbubble,” visible in this Hubble Space Telescope image in the upper central region.

On Wednesday, June 17, skywatchers across the United States—and parts of Canada—enjoyed a rare event: a daytime lunar occultation of Venus. A lunar occultation occurs when the Moon moves directly in front of another celestial object from our viewpoint on Earth, briefly hiding it from sight.

Now on a three-month, million-mile journey to its final orbit, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will soon reveal the universe’s darkest secrets. The mission launched at 7:26 a.m. EDT on Aug. 30 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

A lunar eclipse is visible over southern Louisiana. The lunar eclipse was visible throughout much of North and South America and part of Europe and Africa between Aug. 27-28. The Full Moon slipped through Earth’s shadow on Aug. 27, continuing into Aug. 28 for some parts of the world, resulting in the lunar eclipse. At maximum eclipse, the Moon takes on a dramatic dark, ruddy or coppery tint along the covered edge. New Orleans is home to NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility, where stages for NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and structures for Orion spacecraft are produced for the Artemis missions.

Technicians prepare to transfer the #2 RS-25 SLS (Space Launch System) rocket engine (front) to the work stand with the #3 engine (back) for integration with the Artemis III core stage rocket on Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026, inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. During Artemis III, the four RS‑25 engines will launch the Orion spacecraft and its crew of four into low Earth orbit, generating more than two million pounds of thrust at liftoff.

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket with NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Telescope on board is seen transiting the sun during launch from Launch Complex 39A, Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

President Donald J. Trump awarded NASA astronauts Victor Glover and Christina Koch, CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, and NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor on Aug. 28, 2026, at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

New civil servants and guests pose for a group photo with NASA and Center leadership in the National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex (NFAC) 80-by-120-foot test section, N221.

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, encapsulated in its payload fairing, travels to the SpaceX hangar at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026.

From left, Expedition 75 flight engineers Anil Menon of NASA (partially obscured and wearing the spacesuit with a red stripe on the legs) and Sophie Adenot of ESA (European Space Agency) work together during a six‑hour and 23‑minute spacewalk outside the International Space Station.

Telescope Live gives astrophotographers access to world-class imaging data.

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Mike Selby/Warren Keller, taken from El Sauce Observatory, Chile NGC 6902 is a rarely-imaged face-on spiral galaxy about 130 million light-years away in the southern constellation of Sagittarius. Its outer blue arms are filamentary, winding around a bright, yellow core of older stars. The image was taken with a 17-inch PlaneWave CDK astrograph and LRGBContinue reading "A feathery spiral in Sagittarius"

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After over 7,000 days in space, the Cassini mission ended on Sept. 15, 2017. Since its Oct. 15, 1997 launch, the spacecraft had returned a wealth of new knowledge and images of Saturn and its moons. Thanks to Cassini’s observations, researchers discovered liquid methane lakes on Titan, the potential habitability of Enceladus and the geysersContinue reading "Sept. 15, 2017, Cassini’s Grand Finale"

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Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  September 14: Connect four The time around the equinox is one of the best opportunities to catch sight of the ethereal zodiacal light, the soft glow generated by dust that orbits the Sun along the plane of the solar system, the ecliptic.Continue reading "The Sky Today on Tuesday, September 15: View the false dawn"

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Rocket launches this week On Monday, Sept. 14 at 9:21 p.m. EST, Avio — a publicly traded Italian aerospace company headquartered near Rome — is set to launch a Vega C rocket from the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana, carrying two Earth-observation satellites for the European Space Agency (ESA). The first, Sentinel-3C, is theContinue reading "Europe launches two Earth-observation satellites amidst a busy week for China"

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Why do bars form in some spiral galaxies, but not in others? Joe RuszHerndon, VA We believe that stellar bars can form in any galaxy that displays ordered rotation. This includes galaxies with disks of spiral arms, but also many lenticular galaxies, which feature disks with no spiral arms. When disk galaxies are perturbed —Continue reading "Why do bars form in some spiral galaxies, but not in others?"

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On Sept. 14, 1915, John Dobson was born in Bejing. His family moved to San Francisco to avoid political turmoil in China in 1927, and Dobson went on to attend the University of California, Berkeley, majoring in chemistry. Then, in 1944, he entered the Ramakrishna Order. During his 23 years as a monk, Dobson’s personalContinue reading "Sept. 14, 1915: The birth of John Dobson"

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Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  September 13: Venus, the Moon, and Spica The Moon passes 0.5° due north of Venus at 7 A.M. EDT. In the evening sky, the pair is now standing in line with the tiny planet Mercury and the bright star Spica. If youContinue reading "The Sky Today on Monday, September 14: Connect four"

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A joint NASA-ESA mission, the Ulysses solar probe launched Oct. 6, 1990, from the Space Shuttle Discovery. The mission was tasked with studying the solar wind, mapping the heliosphere, and becoming the first craft to study and chart the solar poles in detail. Equipped with a magnetometer, ion composition gauge, and instruments to measure radioContinue reading "Sept. 13, 1994: Ulysses at the Sun’s south pole"

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Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  September 12: Dione skims Saturn’s pole Blazing at magnitude –4.8, Venus is nearing its greatest illuminated extent and stands out as an unmissable evening star after sunset. This evening it is joined by a lovely thin crescent Moon as the pair hangsContinue reading "The Sky Today on Sunday, September 13: Venus, the Moon, and Spica"

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Astronomers have discovered that winds from a supermassive black hole are about 100 times more powerful than previously thought. XRISM observations showed the resulting turbulence spreading roughly 300,000 light-years, extending far beyond the black hole’s host galaxy. The energy involved rivals several billion supernova explosions, revealing just how dramatically black holes can influence the space around them.

A massive worldwide survey of physicists has revealed surprisingly little agreement about some of the universe’s biggest mysteries. No majority backed the standard cosmological model, a leading explanation for dark matter, or any single theory of quantum gravity. One area of stronger agreement stood out: 68% said the Big Bang does not necessarily represent the beginning of time. Researchers say the divisions show just how alive and unsettled the frontiers of physics remain.

Scientists have engineered yeast to turn PET plastic and agricultural waste into ingredients for protein-rich, 3D-printed cookies called µBites. Developed partly for NASA’s Deep Space Food Challenge, the system can produce proteins, fats, vitamins, and even vanilla flavoring from waste materials. Researchers hope the unusual technology could eventually help address both plastic pollution and food insecurity, while also supplying food in extreme environments such as deep-space missions.

A century-old mystery in Venus’s clouds just became more intriguing, as scientists calculated how strongly the unidentified material behind its dark ultraviolet patterns must absorb light. The results sharply narrow the possibilities and could help future spacecraft determine whether the mysterious substance is organic, inorganic, or something unexpected.

Scientists have discovered that Mercury’s surface contains far less silicon dioxide than previously thought, pointing to an unexpectedly hot volcanic past. The finding suggests ancient lava may have originated from deeper, more extensively melted parts of the planet’s mantle.

Scientists have discovered that the Moon-forming collision may have depended heavily on how hot and physically strong early Earth and Theia were. New simulations found that some impacts create the familiar disk of debris that later becomes the Moon, while others can produce an intact Moon in only about five hours. The results challenge the long-standing assumption that the enormous collision could be modeled as if both worlds behaved mostly like fluids.

Two major alien-life announcements in 2025 generated enormous excitement, but most astrobiologists remained unconvinced. Only 6.6% of surveyed experts thought possible biological molecules on K2-18b probably represented extraterrestrial life, while 15.1% said the same about intriguing mineral patterns in a Martian rock.

Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS contains exceptionally high levels of methanol, suggesting it formed under conditions very different from those that shaped most comets in our solar system. ALMA also revealed that tiny icy grains around the comet are releasing methanol like miniature comets, giving astronomers an unusually detailed look at an object from another star system.

A new analysis of more than 1,700 supernovae is questioning whether the universe is really accelerating at all. After accounting for the ages of the stars that produce these explosions, researchers found signs that cosmic expansion may actually be slowing. They also argue that the apparent acceleration changes with direction, which would be difficult to explain with dark energy. Other cosmologists dispute the conclusion, setting up a major test for upcoming observatories.

Astronomers have detected an exceptionally faint hydrogen radio signal from billions of light-years away using South Africa’s MeerKAT telescope. Instead of finding galaxies one at a time, the technique measures their combined hydrogen glow across enormous stretches of space. The successful detection shows that astronomers may soon be able to create much larger 3D maps of the Universe.

Astronomers have identified a surprisingly young population of fading radio galaxies whose supermassive black holes have already switched off their powerful jets. The confirmed remnants range from about 8 to 42 million years old, suggesting many may disappear from view much faster than previously recognized. More distant remnants also seem to fade especially quickly, helping explain why they have been so difficult to detect.

Deep beneath Mars, scientists have found evidence of enormous magmatic systems once thought to require Earth-like plate tectonics. Seismic measurements suggest molten rock repeatedly evolved and recycled itself through the Martian crust, potentially across hundreds or thousands of kilometers. The discovery challenges long-held ideas about how complex planetary crusts form.

A huge 10-sided atmospheric pattern has appeared around Saturn’s south pole, giving the planet a surprising counterpart to its famous northern hexagon. Hubble data suggest the strange decagon only began emerging in the past few years and is still growing stronger. Researchers hope continued observations will reveal why it suddenly formed and whether it could persist for decades.

Star formation across the universe has fallen dramatically over the past 4.5 billion years, but astronomers have uncovered a surprising twist: the supply of neutral hydrogen, a key ingredient for making stars, has barely declined. Using China’s FAST radio telescope and data from roughly 2.5 million galaxies observed by DESI, researchers found that star formation was about 2.5 times higher 4.5 billion years ago, while neutral hydrogen levels were only about 1.4 times higher.

September’s sky features brilliant Venus, the Milky Way’s hazy center, and the seasonal turning point of the equinox. The month ends with a glowing Harvest Moon rising near Saturn and faint Neptune.