Time-lapse view of the asteroid Euphrosyne as seen by NASA’s WISE spacecraft on May 17, 2010. WISE was later renamed to NEOWISE in 2013. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Near-Earth asteroids, also known as Near Earth Objects (NEOs), are some of the best studied space rocks in the Solar System, primarily due to the fact that […]
Illustration showing the central region of our galaxy as seen by NuSTAR (magenta circle). The smaller circle shows where the image was taken. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
It sounds like something from a bad sci-fi movie, but a NASA space telescope has detected what might be the X-ray “screams” from dead (zombie) stars. The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope […]
This illustration shows the unusual orbit of planet Kepler-413b around a close pair of orange and red dwarf stars. The planet’s 66-day orbit is tilted 2.5 degrees with respect to the plane of the binary star’s orbit. The orbit of the planet wobbles around the central stars over 11 years, an effect called precession. […]
The amazing mirrors that will fly aboard NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will allow the James Webb Space Telescope to see farther away and further back in time to detect the light from the very first and most distant stars and galaxies. In this photo, an engineer’s crystal clear reflection is seen on the […]
Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/UMass/D.Wang et al., IR: NASA/STScI
Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have taken a major step in explaining why material around the giant black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy is extraordinarily faint in X-rays. This discovery holds important implications for understanding black holes.
Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/K. Poppenhaeger et al; Illustration: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss
For the first time since exoplanets, or planets around stars other than the sun, were discovered almost 20 years ago, X-ray observations have detected an exoplanet passing in front of its parent star.
Image Credit: Planetary Resources
After a month-long campaign, Planetary Resources, Inc., a company with its eye on mining asteroids, reached its goal on Sunday, June 30 of raising $1.5 million through crowdfunding. The money, pledged by 17,600 supporters through the Kickstarter website, will go toward launching the world’s first public-use space telescope—Arkyd. Due to […]
The Andromeda galaxy, M31, observed by the now-retired ultraviolet space telescope GALEX. This composite image is false-colored, with blue representing far ultraviolet and orange representing near ultraviolet. Image Credit: NASA/JPL – Caltech.
GALEX, the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, was recently decommissioned by NASA after more than 10 years of operation. GALEX was a space telescope with […]
Astronomers have found some of the youngest stars ever seen thanks to the Herschel space observatory, a European Space Agency mission with important NASA contributions. Dense envelopes of gas and dust surround the fledging stars known as protostars, making their detection difficult until now. The discovery gives scientists a window into the earliest and […]