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Latest by G. Torbet

This image of Uranus from NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows the planet and its rings in new clarity. The Webb image exquisitely captures Uranus’s seasonal north polar cap, including the bright, white, inner cap and the dark lane in the bottom of the polar cap. Uranus’ dim inner and outer rings are also visible in this image, including the elusive Zeta ring—the extremely faint and diffuse ring closest to the planet.

James Webb captures a unique view of Uranus’s ring system

A festive new image from the James Webb Space Telescope has been released, showing the stunning rings of Uranus.
The SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft is pictured approaching the space station above the Indian Ocean on March 16, 2023.

How to watch a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft depart the ISS this week

This week, a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft will depart from the International Space Station after a brief one-month stay. Here's how to watch.
Astronaut Loral O’Hara sets up an exercise cycle.

In a gym 250 miles above Earth, astronauts sweat for science

With the demands of gravity absent, astronauts must spend hours per day exercising to maintain the muscles they'll still need back on Earth.
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of a solar flare – as seen in the bright flash in the upper right – on Dec. 14. The image shows a subset of extreme ultraviolet light that highlights the extremely hot material in flares, and which is colorized in teal.

Sun emits most powerful solar flare observed in six years

This week, the sun let out a powerful solar flare - the most powerful since 2017, and among the most powerful recorded to date.
An interacting galaxy system known as Arp-Madore 2105-332, that lies about 200 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Microscopium.

Hubble captures a formation of galaxies neatly lined up

A new Hubble image shows both an interacting galaxy system, and a string of galaxies which happen to line up in a neat procession.
Water from the subsurface ocean of Saturn’s moon Enceladus sprays from huge fissures out into space.

Key ingredient for life found at Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus

Researchers have found a key ingredient for life in the plumes of water which spew from Enceladus's surface.
Artist’s illustration of one of the Voyager spacecraft.

Computer glitch hampers Voyager 1’s communication system

The nearly 50 year old spacecraft has experienced a glitch which means it is no longer sending science data back to Earth.
The central portion of the star cluster IC 348. Astronomers combed the cluster in search of tiny, free-floating brown dwarfs.

James Webb spots tiniest known brown dwarf in stunning star cluster

A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows a stunning view of a star cluster that contains one of the smallest brown dwarfs ever identified.
Over 100 meteors are recorded in this composite image taken during the peak of the Geminid meteor shower in 2014.

How to watch the Geminid Meteor Shower this week

This week will see the peak of one of the year's best meteors showers, the Geminids. Here's how to watch either in person or online.
A new high-definition image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) unveils intricate details of supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A), and shows the expanding shell of material slamming into the gas shed by the star before it exploded. The most noticeable colors in Webb’s newest image are clumps of bright orange and light pink that make up the inner shell of the supernova remnant. These tiny knots of gas, comprised of sulfur, oxygen, argon, and neon from the star itself, are only detectable by NIRCam’s exquisite resolution, and give researchers a hint at how the dying star shattered like glass when it exploded.

James Webb provides a second view of an exploded star

A beautiful supernova remnant, Cassiopeia A, was recently imaged by the James Webb telescope. See how the observation compares to a previous MIRI image.
This illustration, updated as of June 2020, depicts NASA’s Psyche spacecraft.

NASA’s Psyche spacecraft sends back its first image of a star field

NASA has shared the first images taken by its Psyche mission, which launched in October to study a strange metal asteroid located in the main belt.
NASA astronaut and Expedition 68 Flight Engineer Frank Rubio checks tomato plants growing inside the International Space Station for the XROOTS space botany study on Oct. 14, 2022.

Missing tomato recovered after being lost on the ISS for 8 months

Astronauts on board the the International Space Station have finally located a single tomato that was lost somewhere in the station for eight months.
Hubble orbiting more than 300 miles above Earth as seen from the space shuttle.

Hubble Space Telescope is back up and running following gyro problem

The Hubble Space Telescope is back to full operations following several weeks in safe mode due to a problem with one of its components.
The Hubble Space Telescope orbits Earth.

NASA will try bringing the Hubble telescope back online on Friday

The Hubble Space Telescope recently suffered a glitch that made it go into safe mode. On Friday, NASA will attempt to get the telescope up and running again.
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope reveals intricate details of the Herbig Haro object 797 (HH 797). Herbig-Haro objects are luminous regions surrounding newborn stars (known as protostars), and are formed when stellar winds or jets of gas spewing from these newborn stars form shockwaves colliding with nearby gas and dust at high speeds. HH 797, which dominates the lower half of this image, is located close to the young open star cluster IC 348, which is located near the eastern edge of the Perseus dark cloud complex. The bright infrared objects in the upper portion of the image are thought to host two further protostars. This image was captured with Webb’s Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam).

James Webb telescope captures a dramatic image of newborn star

A new image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope shows the dramatic outflows from a young star.
NASA Orbiter Snaps Stunning Views of Mars Horizon

Mars Odyssey spacecraft pulls a sideways maneuver to capture the planet’s horizon

A new image from a NASA orbiter shows an unusual view of Mars, capturing the planet's horizon complete with clouds.
Orbital geometry of HD110067: Tracing a link between two neighbour planets at regular time intervals along their orbits, creates a pattern unique to each couple. The six planets of the HD110067 system together create a mesmerising geometric pattern due to their resonance-chain.

Astronomers spot rare star system with six planets in geometric formation

Astronomers have discovered a star system in which six planets orbit one star in an elaborate geometrical pattern due to a phenomenon called orbital resonance.
This is an artist’s impression of a young star surrounded by a protoplanetary disk in which planets are forming.

James Webb finds that rocky planets could form in extreme radiation environment

The James Webb Space Telescope investigated a disk that could be forming rocky planets, even though nearby massive stars are pumping out significant radiation.
Hubble orbiting more than 300 miles above Earth as seen from the space shuttle.

Hubble Space Telescope is in safe mode due to a gyro problem

The Hubble Space Telescope has a problem with its hardware and is currently in safe mode, with science operations paused until the fault can be corrected.
Artist’s illustration of ultra-high-energy cosmic ray astronomy to clarify extremely energetic phenomena.

Super high energy particle falls to Earth; its source is a mystery

Researchers have detected one of the highest-energy particles ever falling to Earth. And no one knows where it came from.
Artist's impression of ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) approaching Earth.

Juice spacecraft gears up for first ever Earth-moon gravity boost

The Juice mission is on its way to Jupiter, and it will be carrying out the first gravity assist around both Earth and the moon.
An artists rendering of a blue and white exoplanet known as WASP-80 b, set on a star-studded black background. Alternating horizontal layers of cloudy white, grey and blue cover the planets surface. To the right of the planet, a rendering of the chemical methane is depicted with four hydrogen atoms bonded to a central carbon atom, representing methane within the exoplanet's atmosphere. An artist’s rendering of the warm exoplanet WASP-80 b whose color may appear bluish to human eyes due to the lack of high-altitude clouds and the presence of atmospheric methane identified by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, similar to the planets Uranus and Neptune in our own solar system.

How astronomers used James Webb to detect methane in the atmosphere of an exoplanet

Scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope recently announced they had made a rare detection of methane in an exoplanet atmosphere.
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter is seen here in a close-up taken by Mastcam-Z, a pair of zoomable cameras aboard the Perseverance rover. This image was taken on April 5, the 45th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.

NASA engineers testing successor to Ingenuity helicopter rotors

NASA is investigating the possibility of more helicopters for future Mars missions, and recently shared a peek at its testing of new Mars helicopter hardware.
The full view of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument reveals a 50 light-years-wide portion of the Milky Way’s dense centre. An estimated 500,000 stars shine in this image of the Sagittarius C (Sgr C) region, along with some as-yet unidentified features. A vast region of ionised hydrogen, shown in cyan, wraps around an infrared-dark cloud, which is so dense that it blocks the light from distant stars behind it. Intriguing needle-like structures in the ionised hydrogen emission lack any uniform orientation. Researchers note the surprising extent of the ionised region, covering about 25 light-years. A cluster of protostars – stars that are still forming and gaining mass – are producing outflows that glow like a bonfire at the base of the large infrared-dark cloud, indicating that they are emerging from the cloud’s protective cocoon and will soon join the ranks of the more mature stars around them. Smaller infrared-dark clouds dot the scene, appearing like holes in the starfield. Researchers say they have only begun to dig into the wealth of unprecedented high-resolution data that Webb has provided on this region, and many features bear detailed study. This includes the rose-coloured clouds on the right side of the image, which have never been seen in such detail.

Stunning James Webb image shows the beating heart of our Milky Way

A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows the heart of our galaxy, in a region close to the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
Composite X-ray, Optical, & Infrared Image of the Galactic Center.

NASA project turns images of space into music you can play

NASA has turned an image of the center of the Milky Way galaxy into an original composition to be performed by a group of musicians.
An artist's rendition of NASA's SPHEREx space mission.

Scientists disagree on how fast the universe is expanding, and new tech is making it worse

Usually new tech brings us closer to understanding more of the universe, but in the field of cosmology, one uncertainty is only getting worse.
NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is shown in a clean room at the Astrotech Space Operations facility near the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Dec. 8, 2022. DSOC’s gold-capped flight laser transceiver can be seen, near center, attached to the spacecraft.

NASA laser communications test riding with Psyche sends back its first data

An experimental test of laser communications has sent back its first data, in a demonstration of the use of laser communications for deep space missions.
Artistic concept of the exoplanet WASP-107b and its parent star. Even though the rather cool host star emits a relatively small fraction of high-energy photons, they can reach deep into the planet’s fluffy atmosphere.

James Webb investigates a super puffy exoplanet where it rains sand

One of the least dense exoplanets known was recently investigated using James Webb, and the planet's weather seems is as strange as its puffiness.
An artist’s concept of the nearby exoplanet, LTT 1445Ac, which is the size of Earth. The planet orbits a red dwarf star.

Hubble spots an Earth-sized exoplanet just 22 light-years away

The Hubble Space Telescope has recently confirmed that a nearby planet, which is diminutive by exoplanet standards, is 1.07 times the size of Earth.
Starship on the launch pad ahead of the second orbital flight test on November 11, 2023.

SpaceX Starship makes it off the pad, but is lost during second test flight

SpaceX has performed a second integrated test flight of its Starship, which survived stage separation but was lost near to the end of its engine burn.
A dwarf galaxy in the throes of transitioning to an ultra-compact dwarf galaxy as it’s stripped of its outer layers of stars and gas by a nearby larger galaxy.

Astronomers discover how tiny dwarf galaxies form ‘fossils’

When tiny dwarf galaxies age and begin to erode away, they can transform into an even smaller and more dense shape, called an ultra-compact dwarf galaxy.
The asteroid Dinkinesh and its satellite as seen by the Lucy Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (L’LORRI).

Lucy’s asteroid surprise: ‘we never suspected anything so bizarre’

NASA's Lucy mission recently passed by a small asteroid called Dinkinesh, which turned out to be a fascinating system all of its own.
This panchromatic view of galaxy cluster MACS0416 was created by combining infrared observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope with visible-light data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. To make the image, in general the shortest wavelengths of light were color-coded blue, the longest wavelengths red, and intermediate wavelengths green. The resulting wavelength coverage, from 0.4 to 5 microns, reveals a vivid landscape of galaxies that could be described as one of the most colorful views of the universe ever created.

Webb and Hubble work together to image the Christmas Tree Galaxy Cluster

A beautiful new image of a cluster of thousands of galaxies combines data from both the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope.
Astronomers found the most distant black hole ever detected in X-rays (in a galaxy dubbed UHZ1) using the Chandra and Webb telescopes. X-ray emission is a telltale signature of a growing supermassive black hole. This result may explain how some of the first supermassive black holes in the universe formed. This composite image shows the galaxy cluster Abell 2744 that UHZ1 is located behind, in X-rays from Chandra (purple) and infrared data from Webb (red, green, blue).

Record-breaking supermassive black hole is oldest even seen in X-rays

The supermassive black hole is 13.2 billion light-years away and could help uncover the mysteries of how the largest black holes form.