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Scientists are racing to learn as much as possible about the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS before it fades from view forever The interstellar object 3I/ATLAS appears as a blurry, dust-shrouded dot in this image from the Gemini North telescope. Future observations should reveal much more about this mysterious object, the third known visitor from beyond our solar system. International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/K. Meech (IfA/U. Hawaii) Image Processing: Jen Miller & Mahdi Zamani (NSF NOIRLab) (CC BY 4.0) ================================================================= Earlier this month astronomers were thrilled to discover only the third known interstellar object ever seen in our solar system. Now dubbed 3I/ATLAS, the...

Explanation: Discovered on July 1 with the NASA-funded ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert, System) survey telescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile, 3I/ATLAS is so designated as the third known interstellar object to pass through our Solar System It follows 1I/ʻOumuamua in 2017 and the comet 2I/Borisov in 2019. Also known as C/2025 N1, 3I/ATLAS is clearly a comet, its diffuse cometary coma, a cloud of gas and dust surrounding an icy nucleus, is easily seen in these images from the large Gemini North telescope on Maunakea, Hawai‘i. The left panel tracks the comet as it moves across the sky against fixed...

Astronomers using the Gemini North telescope at NSF’s International Gemini Observatory have captured 3I/ATLAS as it makes its temporary passage through our cosmic neighborhood ============================================================== This image from the Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS-N) at the Gemini North telescope shows the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. Image credit: International Gemini Observatory / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / K. Meech, IfA & U. Hawaii / Jen Miller & Mahdi Zamani, NOIRLab. Interstellar objects are objects that originate outside of, and are observed passing through, our Solar System. Ranging from tens of meters to a few kilometers in size, these objects are pieces of cosmic...

Astronomers at the Planetary Virtual Observatory and Laboratory (PVOL) are appealing for help, after an image taken by NASA's Mario Rana appears to show an object slamming into Saturn.Saturn, like Jupiter, is a gas giant. With their impressive masses, you would expect these giants to attract their share of asteroid impacts. Unlike terrestrial planets, which are usually left with an obvious crater after impact, on gas giants, it is not entirely obvious. With outer layers primarily composed of hydrogen and helium, any trace of an impact can disappear.Astronomers have attempted to model how many impacts take place on the gas...

Trying to create a whiff of an alien atmosphere—sunbaked sulfur and chalk NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS ============================================================= Robot explorers have found Mars to be a world of sulfur, acids, magnesium, iron and chlorine compounds, all of which are sunbaked and wrapped in a carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere. But what would this complex and exotic brew smell like? It turns out that everyone—not just Mars explorers—might be able to find out, because there may be ways to recreate whiffs of the Red Planet here on Earth. One relatively recent innovation in the perfume business is "Headspace" technology. "It gathers the molecules, and then the sample is...

In a groundbreaking discovery published in The Planetary Science Journal, a team of astronomers led by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian has confirmed the existence of a rare object located far beyond Neptune. Known as 2020 VN40, this trans-Neptunian object is in a unique orbital resonance with the giant planet Neptune. For every ten orbits Neptune completes, 2020 VN40 completes one orbit around the Sun. This rare alignment provides key insights into how objects in the outer solar system behave and evolve over time. The research, which draws from extensive observations made by the Large Inclination Distant...

Explanation: Would the Rosette Nebula by any other name look as sweet? The bland New General Catalog designation of NGC 2237 doesn't appear to diminish the appearance of this flowery emission nebula, as captured by the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the Blanco 4-meter telescope at the NSF's Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Inside the nebula lies an open cluster of bright young stars designated NGC 2244. These stars formed about four million years ago from the nebular material and their stellar winds are clearing a hole in the nebula's center, insulated by a layer of dust and hot...

Welcome to the neighborhood, Ammonite. The object during observations. Image credit: NAOJ/ASIAA The Subaru telescope located at the Mauna Kea Observatory on Hawai'i has found a new world within our Solar System, dubbed "Ammonite" by the team who found it. In 2003, NASA-funded researchers spotted what was then the most distant object discovered in our Solar System. The dwarf planet, named Sedna after the Inuit goddess of the sea, was found over 12.9 billion kilometers (8 billion miles) from Earth, potentially making it an inner object of the hypothetical "Oort cloud" surrounding our Solar System. "Sedna is distinguished among other...

The largest piece of Mars ever found on Earth was sold for just over $5 million at an auction of rare geological and archaeological objects in New York on Wednesday, while a juvenile dinosaur skeleton went for more than $30 million. Source NBCThe 54-pound (25-kilogram) rock named NWA 16788 was discovered in the Sahara Desert in Niger by a meteorite hunter in November 2023, after having been blown off the surface of Mars by a massive asteroid strike and traveling 140 million miles (225 million kilometers) to Earth, according to Sotheby’s. The estimated sale price before the auction was $2...

The ∞ galaxy is interpreted as the aftermath of a nearly head-on collision between two face-on disk galaxies with massive, compact bulges. The bulges survived the collision, and the inner disk stars were swept up in outwardly expanding collisional rings around the bulges. The nearby galaxy II Hz 4 is the prototype for this kind of binary ring formation (R. Lynds & A. Toomre 1976). Compression and shocks in the colliding gas likely produced a dense gaseous remnant in between the nuclei, as has been observed in the bullet cluster on much larger scales. It is proposed that the black...

This illustration depicts NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft prior to impact at the Didymos binary asteroid system. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben ================================================================= Astronomers at the University of Maryland found that a surprising burst of rocky debris released during the DART mission carried three times more momentum than the spacecraft. This discovery offers valuable new insights for improving future planetary defense strategies. When NASA’s DART spacecraft struck the asteroid moon Dimorphos in September 2022, it not only achieved its goal of shifting the asteroid’s orbit but also triggered the release of a large number of boulders. These fragments...

Americans’ unpaid medical bills will remain on their credit reports after a federal judge last week vacated a Biden-era Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) rule that would have removed such debt. Judge Sean Jordan of the US District Court of Texas’ Eastern District found that the rule exceeded the bureau’s authority under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, agreeing with the arguments of two industry associations, which had filed a lawsuit against the rule that was later joined by the Trump administration. The court found that “every major substantive provision of the Medical Debt Rule” exceeded the CFPB’s authority, Jordan, a...

In the vast expanse between Uranus and Neptune, a team of researchers have uncovered something really quite extraordinary, a minor planet that has been locked in precise gravitational manouevres with Uranus for at least a million years. This discovery sheds new light on the complex dynamics that govern our Solar System's outer reaches. The object in question, designated 2015 OU₁₉₄, belongs to a class of small bodies called Centaurs, rocky and icy objects that orbit between Jupiter and Neptune. What makes this particular Centaur special is its remarkably stable relationship with Uranus, locked in what is known as a 3:4...

Explanation: What's happened in Hebes Chasma on Mars? Hebes Chasma is a depression just north of the enormous Valles Marineris canyon. Since the depression is unconnected to other surface features, it is unclear where the internal material went. Inside Hebes Chasma is Hebes Mensa, a 5 kilometer high mesa that appears to have undergone an unusual partial collapse -- a collapse that might be providing clues. The featured image, taken by ESA's robotic Mars Express spacecraft currently orbiting Mars, shows great details of the chasm and the unusual horseshoe shaped indentation in the central mesa. Material from the mesa appears...

US-based COMSPOC and Swiss firm s2a systems tracked close proximity maneuvers between Shijian-21 and Shijian-25 from June to early July. ============================================================= China has reportedly performed a historic refueling mission in Earth’s orbit. During the mission, two Chinese satellites appear to have docked in geostationary orbit, a report from the South China Morning Post reveals. One then refueled the other, marking an impressive milestone that no other nation has achieved. While China’s space administration has not officially confirmed the operation was a success, a US space observation company observed the two satellites coming together. Refueling technologies are a key evolution for...

For decades, Pluto remained one of the most mysterious objects in our solar system, until July 14, 2015, when NASA's New Horizons spacecraft became the first mission to visit it up close, capturing breathtaking images of the distant world.It took over nine years for New Horizons to reach Pluto after blasting off atop an Atlas 5 rocket on Jan. 19, 2006. After traveling billions of miles through the solar system, New Horizons sent home stunning images of Pluto and its moons, making headlines around the world. It took more than 15 months for the spacecraft to send all of the...

Explanation: What is going on with this galaxy? NGC 2685 is a confirmed polar ring galaxy - a rare type of galaxy with stars, gas and dust orbiting in rings perpendicular to the plane of a flat galactic disk. The bizarre configuration could be caused by the chance capture of material from another galaxy by a disk galaxy, with the captured debris strung out in a rotating ring. Still, observed properties of NGC 2685 suggest that the rotating helix structure is remarkably old and stable. In this sharp view of the peculiar system also known as Arp 336 or the...

Gravitational waves from massive black holes challenge current astrophysical models The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration has detected the merger of the most massive black holes ever observed with gravitational waves using the US National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded LIGO observatories. The powerful merger produced a final black hole approximately 225 times the mass of our Sun. The signal, designated GW231123, was detected during the fourth observing run of the LVK network on November 23, 2023. LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, made history in 2015 when it made the first-ever direct detection of gravitational waves, ripples in space-time. In that case, the...

This artist's conception depicts ordinary matter in the warm, thin gas making up the intergalactic medium (IGM)—which has been difficult for scientists to directly observe until now. Different colors of light travel at different speeds through space. Here, the artist has used blue to highlight denser regions of the cosmic web, transitioning to redder light for void areas. Credit: Jack Madden, IllustrisTNG, Ralf Konietzka, Liam Connor/CfA ==================================================================================== Using Caltech's DSA-110 radio telescope, astronomers pinpoint whereabouts of "fog" between galaxies ============================================================== The vast majority of matter in the universe is dark—it is entirely invisible and detected only through its gravitational effects....

Scientists predict up to 100 invisible galaxies may orbit the Milky Way, hiding just beyond our current detection limits. Credit: Shutterstock *********************************************************************** Astronomers may be on the verge of uncovering a long-lost galactic population. Using ultra-high-resolution simulations and sophisticated modeling, researchers at Durham University predict that the Milky Way could be surrounded by up to 100 previously undetected satellite galaxies. These faint, elusive “orphan galaxies” may have been stripped of their dark matter halos, making them nearly invisible to current telescopes. But with the advent of powerful new instruments like the Rubin Observatory, scientists believe we’re finally approaching the ability...