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Communication with the craft was interrupted, but Voyager 1 itself found an unorthodox solution. Voyager 1 has gone through a lot over the last 12 months. Image credit: NASA Voyager 1 continues to amaze. After 47 years, having crossed together with its twin into interstellar space, you’d think the spacecraft would stop surprising us. No chance. The probe had another glitch in the last few weeks that caused a loss of communication, but it managed to find a fix all by itself using hardware that had not been used since 1981. The probe is more than 24 billion kilometers (15...

Little did the comet know that calamity was about to strike minutes after this snapshot was taken. Image credit: NASA/ESA/SOHO Many across the world have witnessed the spectacle of Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS. Some of us, due to constant clouds, were not so lucky. There was, however, hope for a second bright comet this year: Comet ATLAS (C/2024 S1). It was expected to get as bright as Venus by Halloween, but the Sun is a cruel mistress, making these objects bright but also capable of destroying them. That was the fate of this comet. It passed at its closest point by Earth...

Explanation: What created this huge space bubble? Blown by the wind from a star, this tantalizing, head-like apparition is cataloged as NGC 7635, but known simply as the Bubble Nebula. The featured striking view utilizes a long exposure to reveal the intricate details of this cosmic bubble and its environment. Although it looks delicate, the 10 light-year diameter bubble offers evidence of violent processes at work. Seen here above and right of the Bubble's center, a bright hot star is embedded in the nebula's reflecting dust. A fierce stellar wind and intense radiation from the star, which likely has a...

Explanation: The stars are destroying the pillars. More specifically, some of the newly formed stars in the image center are emitting light so energetic that is evaporating the gas and dust in the surrounding pillars. Simultaneously, the pillars themselves are still trying to form new stars. The whole setting is the star cluster NGC 602, and this new vista was taken by the Webb Space Telescope in multiple infrared colors. In comparison, a roll-over image shows the same star cluster in visible light, taken previously by the Hubble Space Telescope. NGC 602 is located near the perimeter of the Small...

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured these images of a solar flare — seen as the bright flash in each of the three image panes — on October 26, 2024. The images show three different subsets of extreme ultraviolet light that highlight the extremely hot material in flares and which are colorized in teal, gold, and red. Credit: NASA/SDO ======================================================================================= On October 26, 2024, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded a powerful solar flare that peaked at 3:19 a.m. ET. Classified as an X1.8 flare, this intense event has the potential to disrupt radio signals, navigation systems, and power grids on Earth,...

Explanation: Sometimes a river of hot gas flows over your head. In this case the river created a Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement (STEVE) that glowed bright red, white, and pink. Details of how STEVEs work remain a topic of research, but recent evidence holds that their glow results from a fast-moving river of hot ions flowing over a hundred kilometers up in the Earth's atmosphere: the ionosphere. The more expansive dull red glow might be related to the flowing STEVE, but alternatively might be a Stable Auroral Red (SAR) arc, a more general heat-related glow. The featured picture, taken...

Explanation: What is the most spook-tacular nebula in the galaxy? One contender is LDN 43, which bears an astonishing resemblance to a vast cosmic bat flying amongst the stars on a dark Halloween night. Located about 1400 light years away in the constellation Ophiuchus, this molecular cloud is dense enough to block light not only from background stars, but from wisps of gas lit up by the nearby reflection nebula LBN 7. Far from being a harbinger of death, this 12-light year-long filament of gas and dust is actually a stellar nursery. Glowing with eerie light, the bat is lit...

Explanation: These brightly outlined flowing shapes look ghostly on a cosmic scale. A telescopic view toward the constellation Cassiopeia, the colorful skyscape features the swept-back, comet-shaped clouds IC 59 (left) and IC 63. About 600 light-years distant, the clouds aren't actually ghosts. They are slowly disappearing though, under the influence of energetic radiation from hot, luminous star gamma Cas. Gamma Cas is physically located only 3 to 4 light-years from the nebulae and lies just above the right edge of the frame. Slightly closer to gamma Cas, IC 63 is dominated by red H-alpha light emitted as hydrogen atoms ionized...

After a successful splashdown of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8, one astronaut was kept under observation for medical issues while the rest returned to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Credit: NASA Following the splashdown of the SpaceX Crew-8 mission, one astronaut remains under medical observation, with the others safely back in Houston. The crew had completed a mission of over 235 days in space, conducting scientific research at the International Space Station. After safely splashing down on Earth as part of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 mission on Friday, a NASA astronaut encountered a medical issue. NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, Jeanette...

Explanation: Some 13,000 light-years away toward the southern constellation Pavo, the globular star cluster NGC 6752 roams the halo of our Milky Way galaxy. Over 10 billion years old, NGC 6752 follows clusters Omega Centauri, 47 Tucanae, and Messier 22 as the fourth brightest globular in planet Earth's night sky. It holds over 100 thousand stars in a sphere about 100 light-years in diameter. Telescopic explorations of NGC 6752 have found that a remarkable fraction of the stars near the cluster's core are multiple star systems. They also reveal the presence of blue straggle stars, stars which appear to be...

This simulation shows a top-down view of how different light patterns in red and green are generated when fed with input from a waveguide on the left. Credit: Md Nafiz Amin =================================================================================== A new miniature spectrometer combines cutting-edge technology with affordability, offering high precision in fields such as astronomy and health diagnostics. This device promises to bring complex spectral analysis into more frequent use by reducing size and cost, without sacrificing performance. Spectrometers, tools for analyzing light, have been around since the time of 17th-century physicist Isaac Newton. They function by splitting light waves into their various colors, or spectra,...

Stone pillars, moon’s 18.6-year cycle and ancient structures tell a story.. The major lunar standstill northern moonrise is visible between Chimney and Companion rocks once per month for a period of about 24 months, every 18.6 years.. To archaeo-astronomers, the stone pillars that give Chimney Rock National Monument its name and the structures there built by ancestral Puebloan people send a message. .... And something did happen at the monument Tuesday night: The moon rose between Chimney Rock and Companion Rock, demonstrating a rare celestial occurrence called the major lunar standstill. The event occurs monthly over the course of about...

Explanation: A mere seven hundred light years from Earth toward the constellation Aquarius, a star is dying. The once sun-like star's last few thousand years have produced the Helix Nebula. Also known as NGC 7293, the cosmic Helix is a well studied and nearby example of a Planetary Nebula, typical of this final phase of stellar evolution. Combining narrow band data from emission lines of hydrogen atoms in red and oxygen atoms in blue-green hues, this deep image shows tantalizing details of the Helix, including its bright inner region about 3 light-years across. The white dot at the Helix's center...

Oct. 23 (UPI) -- The U.S. Space Force and Roscosmos are tracking potential threatening debris from a Boeing-built satellite that exploded in orbit. Intelsat said an anomaly triggered the explosion earlier this week and the cause is under investigation. According to the British company Spaceflux, the fragments might still be a danger to other satellites. "The problem is that there is a lot of uncertainty regarding the orbits of these fragments at the moment," said a Spaceflux spokesperson. "They can be potentially dangerous for other satellites but we do not know that yet." The breakup of the satellite interrupted power...

Explanation: What if a rocket could return to its launch tower -- and be caught? This happened for the first time 10 days ago, after a SpaceX Starship rocket blasted off from its pad in Boca Chica, Texas, USA. Starship then split, as planned, with its upper stage landing in the Pacific Ocean. The big difference was the lower stage, Super Heavy Booster 12, was caught by its launch tower about 7 minutes later. Catching a rocket for reuse is a new and innovative way to help reduce the cost of rocket flight by making rockets more easily reusable. Starship...

Graphical depiction of Betelgeuse and the Betelbuddy. Credit: Lucy Reading-Ikkanda/Simons Foundation. ===================================================================== New research has revealed that the star Betelgeuse is likely sharing its orbit with a companion astronomers have nicknamed “Betelbuddy.” According to the new findings, unexpected dips in the star’s brightness observed in 2019 caused some scientists to speculate Betelgeuse may soon enter its supernova phase. As a result, media outlets quickly dubbed the tenth brightest star in the sky the doomed star. Now, an international team of scientists says they’ve ruled out all conventional explanations for the star’s change in brightness, a phenomenon witnessed by observers dating...

On 15 October 2024, ESA’s Euclid space mission revealed the first piece of its great map of the Universe, showing millions of stars and galaxies. This first chunk of the map, which is a huge mosaic of 208 gigapixels, was revealed at the International Astronautical Congress in Milan, Italy, by ESA’s Director General Josef Aschbacher and Director of Science Carole Mundell. The mosaic contains 260 observations made between 25 March and 8 April 2024. In just two weeks, Euclid covered 132 square degrees of the Southern Sky in pristine detail, more than 500 times the area of the full Moon....

Explanation: These dark pillars may look destructive, but they are creating stars. This pillar-capturing picture of the Eagle Nebula combines visible light exposures taken with the Hubble Space Telescope with infrared images taken with the James Webb Space Telescope to highlight evaporating gaseous globules (EGGs) emerging from pillars of molecular hydrogen gas and dust. The giant pillars are light years in length and are so dense that interior gas contracts gravitationally to form stars. At each pillar's end, the intense radiation of bright young stars causes low density material to boil away, leaving stellar nurseries of dense EGGs exposed. The...

Explanation: The tails of Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS were a sight to behold. Pictured, C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) was captured near peak impressiveness last week over the Eastern Sierra Mountains in California, USA. The comet not only showed a bright tail, but a distinct anti-tail pointing in nearly the opposite direction. The globular star cluster M5 can be seen on the right, far in the distance. As it approached, it was unclear if this crumbling iceberg would disintegrate completely as it warmed in the bright sunlight. In reality, the comet survived to become brighter than any star in the night (magnitude -4.9), but...

This image, taken by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, shows an ancient quasar (circled in red) with fewer than expected neighboring galaxies (bright blobs), challenging physicists’ understanding of how the first quasars and supermassive black holes formed. Credit: Christina Eilers/EIGER team ===================================================================================== Astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope to detect ancient lonely quasars with murky origins. They appear to have few cosmic neighbors, raising questions about how they first emerged more than 13 billion years ago. A quasar is an incredibly bright region at the center of a galaxy, powered by a supermassive black hole. As this black hole...