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China will send a new team of astronauts to its space station on Thursday (Apr 24) as it marches towards its ambition of becoming a space power to rival the dominance of the United States. Beijing has pumped billions of dollars into its space programme in recent years in an effort to achieve what President Xi Jinping describes as the Chinese people's "space dream". The world's second-largest economy has bold plans to send a crewed mission to the moon by the end of the decade and eventually build a base on the lunar surface. It will mark its latest milestone...

Explanation: Beautiful emission nebula NGC 6164 was created by a rare, hot, luminous O-type star, some 40 times as massive as the Sun. Seen at the center of the cosmic cloud, the star is a mere 3 to 4 million years old. In another three to four million years the massive star will end its life in a supernova explosion. Spanning around 4 light-years, the nebula itself has a bipolar symmetry. That makes it similar in appearance to more common and familiar planetary nebulae - the gaseous shrouds surrounding dying sun-like stars. Also like many planetary nebulae, NGC 6164 has...

Explanation: This surprising sky has almost everything. First, slanting down from the upper left and far in the distance is the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy. More modestly, slanting down from the upper right and high in Earth's atmosphere is a bright meteor. The dim band of light across the central diagonal is zodiacal light: sunlight reflected from dust in the inner Solar System. The green glow on the far right is aurora high in Earth's atmosphere. The bright zigzagging bright line near the bottom is just a light that was held by the scene-planning astrophotographer. This "almost...

(Credit: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL/NOIRLab) NASA’s Lucy spacecraft captured the most detailed images yet of an oddly shaped asteroid during its recent flyby, revealing the space object’s weird features and “strikingly complex” attributes. Lucy’s visit to the peculiar asteroid, dubbed Donaldjohanson, marked the intrepid NASA probe’s second close encounter, showcasing the object’s unusual barbell shape and offering images that provide additional clues to its unique geology. The flyby occurred on April 20, 2025, as Lucy approached to within just 600 miles of Donaldjohanson. High-resolution images of the contact binary object, which possesses two outer lobes joined by a narrow “neck,” offered...

Explanation: What's different about this Moon? It's the terminators. In the featured image, you can't directly see any terminator -- the line that divides the light of day from the dark of night. That's because the featured image is a digital composite of many near-terminator lunar strips over a full Moon. Terminator regions show the longest and most prominent shadows -- shadows which, by their contrast and length, allow a flat photograph to appear three-dimensional. The overlay images were taken over two weeks in early April. Many of the Moon's craters stand out because of the shadows they all cast...

The best time to view the Lyrids this year will be early morning on April 22. The best time to observe the Lyrids is in the predawn hours when the shower’s radiant is at its highest in the sky. However, be mindful that as the morning progresses, the radiant will continue to climb, but so will the approaching sunrise and the brightening skies, which will hinder visibility. The shower is known for its luminous dust trains which can be observed for several seconds according to NASA. The Lyrids are associated with Comet Thatcher, a long-period comet that orbits the sun...

Get ready for a spectacular light show tonight as geomagnetic storms bring the northern lights closer to unexpected locations. The northern lights, or aurora borealis, are expected to put on a stunning display across several U.S. states tonight, thanks to geomagnetic storms that are disrupting Earth’s magnetic field. These solar-driven storms, forecasted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), will bring the auroras closer to areas typically outside their usual range. This rare opportunity offers a chance for skywatchers in unexpected locations to witness one of nature’s most mesmerizing phenomena. Where Will the Northern Lights Be Visible? According to...

Explanation: Is this one galaxy or two? Although it looks like one, the answer is two. One path to this happening is when a small galaxy collides with a larger galaxy and ends up in the center. But in the featured image, something more rare is going on. Here, the central light-colored elliptical galaxy is much closer than the blue and red-colored spiral galaxy that surrounds it. This can happen when near and far galaxies are exactly aligned, causing the gravity of the near galaxy to pull the light from the far galaxy around it in an effect called gravitational...

Earth's Northern Lights typically dance near the poles, but 41,000 years ago, they lit up skies over North Africa and Australia. New research reveals how dramatically Earth's magnetic field weakened and shifted during an event called the Laschamps geomagnetic excursion, potentially influencing human evolution at a pivotal moment in our history...During the Laschamps excursion, Earth's magnetic field weakened to just 10% of its current strength, while the magnetic poles shifted dramatically away from the geographic poles...Using advanced computer modeling, the research team reconstructed Earth's magnetosphere during five key periods of the excursion. At its peak around 40,977 years ago, Earth's...

In Astronauts carefully tell the truth, I noted astronaut Butch Wilmore confirmed Elon Musk’s assertion that he and Suni Williams really were stranded on the ISS, and that Musk offered to bring them home during Biden’s Handler’s Administration but was refused because they didn’t want Biden to look bad before the election. The Biden Administration and the Democrat media went to great lengths to deny they were stranded. Arizona Democrat Senator Mark Kelly’s brother Scott claimed there was always a capsule docked there so they could come home at will. While there was a capsule docked, it was there as...

Explanation: The Great Nebula in Orion is a colorful place. Visible to the unaided eye, it appears as a small fuzzy patch in the constellation of Orion. Long exposure, multi-wavelength images like this, however, show the Orion Nebula to be a busy neighborhood of young stars, hot gas, and dark dust. This digital composite features not only three colors of visible light but four colors of infrared light taken by NASA's orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope as well. The power behind much of the Orion Nebula (M42) is the Trapezium - four of the brightest stars in the nebula. Many of...

The entire universe may be rotating—just like its individual components, from massive galaxies to solar systems and planets—a possibility that could help explain the long-standing “Hubble tension” that has puzzled scientists for years. None of the currently accepted models of the universe account for any overall spin. Instead, they describe it as expanding uniformly in all directions. However, these models run into trouble with the so-called Hubble tension, a discrepancy where different methods of measuring the universe’s expansion yield conflicting results. “To paraphrase the Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus, who famously said ‘Panta Rhei’—everything moves—we thought that perhaps Panta Kykloutai—everything...

In a landmark discovery, astronomers have confirmed the existence of a solitary stellar-mass black hole—an object with immense gravity, yet no visible companion, quietly roaming the depths of the Milky Way galaxy. Identified in the direction of the Sagittarius constellation, this black hole is believed to be around seven times more massive than our Sun and marks the first confirmed detection of a black hole not bound to another star. The study, published in The Astrophysical Journal and led by Kailash C. Sahu and colleagues at the Space Telescope Science Institute, relied on more than a decade of high-precision data...

Explanation: In digital brush strokes, Jupiter's signature atmospheric bands and vortices were used to form this interplanetary post-impressionist work of art. The creative image from citizen scientist Rick Lundh uses data from the Juno spacecraft's JunoCam. To paint on the digital canvas, a JunoCam image with contrasting light and dark tones was chosen for processing and an oil-painting software filter applied. The image data was captured during perijove 10. That was Juno's December 16, 2017 close encounter with the solar system's ruling gas giant. At the time the spacecraft was cruising about 13,000 kilometers above northern Jovian cloud tops. Now...

If you look up to the sky in the early hours of April 25 you might just see it smiling back at you, NASA skywatchers have forecast. That's when a rare celestial spectacle called a triple conjunction will occur. On the morning of Friday, April 25, Venus, Saturn and the crescent moon will appear close together in the predawn sky, forming a triangular formation reminiscent of a smiley face. You can spot the celestial spectacle close to the eastern horizon just before sunrise, according to NASA. Both planets are bright and easily seen with the naked eye, but a good...

Explanation: In late March, the comet now designated C/2025 F2 SWAN was found independently by citizen scientists Vladimir Bezugly, Michael Mattiazzo, and Rob Matson while examining publicly available image data from the Solar Wind ANisotropies (SWAN) camera on the sun-staring SOHO spacecraft. Comet SWAN's coma, its greenish color a signature of diatomic carbon molecules fluorescing in sunlight, is at lower left in this telescopic image. SWAN's faint ion tail extends nearly two degrees toward the upper right across the field of view. The interplanetary scene was captured in clear but moonlit skies from June Lake, California on April 14. Seen...

NASA’s Perseverance rover has made a mysterious discovery during its exploration of Jezero Crater: a dark-colored stone with unusual features that “may have originated from elsewhere.” The unexpected discovery, which the Perseverance team has dubbed “Skull Hill,” was made last week while the intrepid rover continued its descent down the lower part of Witch Hazel Hill along the crater’s rim. At one point, the rover stopped at the boundary between a pair of distinct rock outcrops of contrasting coloration that were first revealed in orbital imagery of the crater. The intriguing location, which the Perseverance team had nicknamed “Port Anson,”...

A strange new planet has been found circling two stars at a right angle — like something out of sci-fi. It’s the first solid evidence of a so-called polar orbit around a binary system. Credit: SciTechDaily.com *************************************************************************** Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope have discovered a truly bizarre planet — one that orbits two stars at a perfect 90-degree angle. This “polar planet” circles a rare eclipsing pair of brown dwarfs, making it the first confirmed world with this kind of alignment. It was a surprising and accidental find, defying expectations and proving that planet formation in extreme orbital setups...

A team of astronomers have detected what they call the most promising signs to date of a possible biosignature, or signs of past or present life linked to biological activity, on an exoplanet named K2-18b. But the study authors, and other experts, remain cautious and have not declared a definitive discovery of life beyond our planet. Using the James Webb Space Telescope, the team detected chemical fingerprints within the atmosphere of K2-18b that suggest the presence of dimethyl sulfide or DMS, and potentially dimethyl disulfide or DMDS. On Earth, both molecules are only produced by microbial life, typically marine phytoplankton....

Explanation: Galaxies of the Virgo Cluster are scattered across this nearly 4 degree wide telescopic field of view. About 50 million light-years distant, the Virgo Cluster is the closest large galaxy cluster to our own local galaxy group. Prominent here are Virgo's bright elliptical galaxies from the Messier catalog, M87 at bottom left, and M86 and M84 near center right. M86 and M84 are recognized as part of Markarian's Chain, the visually striking line-up of galaxies on the that runs through the upper portion of this frame. Near the middle of the chain lies an intriguing interacting pair of galaxies,...