Astronomy

How a Finnish physicist named Karl Lemström once became obsessed with recreating the aurora borealis from scratch – and may have ended up creating something even more intriguing

How a Finnish physicist named Karl Lemström once became obsessed with recreating the aurora borealis from scratch – and may have ended up creating something even more intriguing

As far as annual meteor showers are concerned, 2025 has saved the best for last. This year’s Geminids are not to be missed

Space-based computing offers easy access to solar power but presents its own environmental challenges

At the same time that Vera Rubin was turning cosmology upside down with conclusive evidence for the existence of dark matter, Stephen Hawking was doing…Stephen Hawking things.

A type of chaos found in everything from prime numbers to turbulence can unify a pair of unrelated ideas, revealing a mysterious, deep connection that disappears without randomness

These miniature displays can be the size of your pupil, with as many pixels as you have photoreceptors—opening the way to improved virtual reality

Engineers can be split into two camps - those who just release whatever they’re building and try to fix whatever might be wrong with it as they get feedback on it, and those who test their product in every possible way before releasing it to the public. Luckily, NASA engineers are in the latter camp - it wouldn’t look great if all of the probes we send throughout the solar system failed because of something we could have easily tested for here at home. However, finding analogues for the places we want to send those probes remains a challenge for some NASA projects, so they make due with the best Earth has to offer. For Mars, that means testing technology in the desert’s rolling sand dune and rocky outcrops, and this year several different NASA technologies were tested in deserts throughout the country, as reported in a press release from the agency.

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Watch the replay of the media briefing held ahead of the 14th operational launch of the Galileo programme. The briefing covers the mission details for the launch of two Galileo satellites, which are set to lift off on 17 December aboard Ariane 6 from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.

From machine learning to voting, the workings of the world demand randomisation, but true sources of randomness are surprisingly hard to find. Now quantum mechanics has supplied the answer

From machine learning to voting, the workings of the world demand randomisation, but true sources of randomness are surprisingly hard to find. Now quantum mechanics has supplied the answer

Leading X-ray space telescopes XMM-Newton and XRISM have spotted an extraordinary blast from a supermassive black hole. In a matter of hours, the gravitational monster whipped up powerful winds, flinging material out into space at eye-watering speeds of 60 000 km per second.

Mean temperatures this year approached 1.5°C above the preindustrial average, making it the second hottest year after 2024

Mean temperatures this year approached 1.5°C above the preindustrial average, making it the second hottest year after 2024

Europe’s climate agency said 2025 is likely to be the second or third hottest on record

Astronomers have captured images of two nova explosions only days after they exploded. The detailed images show that these explosions are more complex than thought. There are multiple outflows and, in some cases, delayed ejection of material.

In a new study, sustainability and space scientists discuss how the principles of reducing, reusing, and recycling could be applied to satellites and spacecraft.

It’s December and that means one of the best celestial events will grace the skies. The Geminid meteor shower should peak between Saturday night and Sunday morning, December 13–14.

The post Get Ready for the Geminids appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Astronomers have acquired evidence that Omega Centauri, the largest-known globular cluster in the Milky Way, hosts an intermediate mass black hole (IMBH). These elusive objects should exist, according to theory, but have been difficult to verify. The IMBH in Omega Centauri is considered a candidate black hole, and new research examined the region with the JWST for any conclusive evidence.

New research and observations with the VLT's ERIS instrument show that some stars are following predictable orbits near Sagitarrius A-star, the Milky Way's supermassive black hole. This goes against the established idea that the black hole's enormous gravity destroys stars and gas clouds. Even a binary star system in the region seems to go about its business unaffected.