Astronomy

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a galaxy, NGC 2775, that’s hard to categorize.

The distant universe might be littered with supermassive stars between 1000 and 10,000 times the mass of the sun, which could solve a cosmic mystery about the origins of extremely large black holes

The distant universe might be littered with supermassive stars between 1000 and 10,000 times the mass of the sun, which could solve a cosmic mystery about the origins of extremely large black holes

Spinning vortices of water trapped under the Thwaites glacier ice shelf account for 20 per cent of the ice melt. They’re expected to get worse as the world warms

Spinning vortices of water trapped under the Thwaites glacier ice shelf account for 20 per cent of the ice melt. They’re expected to get worse as the world warms

Satellite megaconstellations are quickly becoming the backbone of a number of industries. Cellular communication, GPS, weather monitoring and more are now, at least in part, reliant on the networks of thousands of satellites cruising by in low Earth orbit. But, as these constellations grow into the tens of thousands of individual members, the strain they are putting on the communications and controls systems of their ground stations is becoming untenable. A new paper from Yuhe Mao of the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and their co-authors hopes to alleviate some of that pressure by offloading much of the control scheme and network decision-making logic to satellites themselves.

Week in images: 17-21 November 2025

Discover our week through the lens

Around 1000 markings on a slab of rock that was once a seafloor during the Cretaceous period may have been made by sea turtle flippers and swiftly buried by an earthquake

Around 1000 markings on a slab of rock that was once a seafloor during the Cretaceous period may have been made by sea turtle flippers and swiftly buried by an earthquake

Andromeda and Friends

Conventional computing devices will play a crucial role in turning quantum computers into tools with real-world application

Conventional computing devices will play a crucial role in turning quantum computers into tools with real-world application

Criminals around the world are increasingly mixing trade in illegal animal parts with trafficking of arms, humans, and more—even exchanging wildlife for drugs

Comets don’t just orbit our sun. “Exocomets” are common around other stars in the galaxy, too

Artist Michael Benson reveals the hidden beauty of snowflakes, radiolarians and lunar rocks through stunning electron microscope images in his new book, Nanocosmos.

Saturn's rings are now the closest to edge on that they'll get. The famous interstellar comet has become higher and easier for amateur telescopes before dawn.

The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, November 21 – 30 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Image: Finding star clusters in the Lost Galaxy

Image: The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over one of Earth’s most extreme environments: the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia.