Astronomy

You might think galaxies can’t ever find each other in our runaway cosmos, but it turns out gravity can sometimes overcome even the stretching of space itself

A new study suggests king cobras may be accidentally boarding trains across India

Why psychiatry’s diagnostic system may undergo major changes, and what the scientific debates over how mental illnesses should be defined are

The Winter Hexagon encompasses the brightest winter stars. Near Orion, the Big Dog prances and the Hare crouches. And the moonless dark this week opens telescopic deep-sky depths.

The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, February 6 – 15 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Image: With the 2026 Winter Olympics officially opening today, the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission brings us a striking view of northern Italy, highlighting several key Olympic venues.

Video: 00:03:58

ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot is preparing to launch to the International Space Station for her first space mission: εpsilon.

After years of intensive training — from emergency procedures to spacewalk simulations — the countdown has begun. Flying alongside astronauts from NASA and Roscosmos, Sophie will join an international crew living and working together in space.

Aboard the ISS, Sophie will live and work in microgravity, conducting scientific research and performing a range of European- and French-led experiments that advance knowledge for life on Earth and in space.

Join us live on YouTube to watch the launch of Sophie Adenot.

By matching uterine contractions up with the body’s natural circadian rhythms, inducing labour in the early morning is linked to shorter labour and fewer emergency C-sections

By matching uterine contractions up with the body’s natural circadian rhythms, inducing labour in the early morning is linked to shorter labour and fewer emergency C-sections

With fewer cars on the road, planes in the air and factories running, the skies seemed cleaner during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, while there was a decline in pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide, scientists were surprised to see that methane surged in the early 2020s and then dropped – and now they know why.

Artemis I: Flight Day 13

NGC 1333 is seen in visible light as a

A review of the evidence suggests that statins are no more likely than a placebo to cause most of the side effects listed on their labels

A review of the evidence suggests that statins are no more likely than a placebo to cause most of the side effects listed on their labels

The discovery by JWST of a substantial population of compact "Little Red Dots" (LRDs) presented astronomers with a major mystery. By reproducing their spectra with simulations, a team argued that they were Direct Collapse Black Holes (DCBHs).

The FLRW metric is a model. And you know the saying, all models are wrong, but some are useful.

In 2023, a subatomic particle called a neutrino crashed into Earth with such a high amount of energy that it should have been impossible. In fact, there are no known sources anywhere in the universe capable of producing such energy—100,000 times more than the highest-energy particle ever produced by the Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator. However, a team of physicists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently hypothesized that something like this could happen when a special kind of black hole, called a "quasi-extremal primordial black hole," explodes.

This famous ape may have understood pretend actions—suggesting he had the capacity to imagine

An otherworldly coral, a very cute moth and an intricately beautiful mushroom are among the winners in the prize this year

An otherworldly coral, a very cute moth and an intricately beautiful mushroom are among the winners in the prize this year

Pesticides are becoming more toxic and just about every country is using more of them year after year, despite a UN target to halve the overall risk by 2030