Astronomy

Week in images: 21-25 July 2025

Discover our week through the lens

NASA currently leads the nation's planetary defense efforts, but some are calling for the Space Force to take control.

We can understand how Earth formed by watching other planets form in distant solar systems. Powerful telescopes like the VLT are making that possible. New observations show a baby planet sculpting patterns in the gas and dust around its star.

It is true that crewed missions to the Moon are expensive, difficult, and dangerous.

Stars uncontaminated by heavier elements are thought to have formed very early in the universe, but a galaxy much later in cosmic history might let us see them for the first time

Stars uncontaminated by heavier elements are thought to have formed very early in the universe, but a galaxy much later in cosmic history might let us see them for the first time

The spacecraft streaks through the darkness of space to reenter Earth's atmosphere.

It's no coincidence that a Klingon with a grudge follows the Enterprise's away mission to Kenfori.

NASA employees and allies protested sweeping science cuts they say are gutting the agency from within. As Congress pushes back on NASA leadership, workers warn the damage is already underway — and the future of U.S. space exploration is at risk.

Think: subzero temperatures, bone-rattling storms and mysteries about the future of our planet under the ice.

It's 1961, and four intrepid cosmic explorers journey to space under the leadership of Reed Richards, where they encounter cosmic rays that change them forever. But what are cosmic rays?

The newly waxing Moon passes Mars low in the west, then Spica and Antares while growing more robust. At dawn, Jupiter heads toward Venus.

The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, July 25 – August 3 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

The sixth object in

Image: The turquoise waters southeast of the Kuwaiti island of Failaka are captured in this image acquired by the Φsat-2 mission.

A Russian Soyuz rocket launched the Ionosfera-M 3 and 4 satellites, along with an Iranian spacecraft and 17 cubesats, toward orbit early Friday morning (July 25).

Feeling profound grief years after a loved one has died could affect our own longevity

Feeling profound grief years after a loved one has died could affect our own longevity

It seems the Moon has been protecting itself from cosmic erosion all along! Using Apollo moon dust for the first time, a team of researchers found that the lunar surface's rough, porous texture acts as a natural shield against solar wind bombardment, thus reducing erosion rates by up to ten times more than previously thought. This groundbreaking finding not only solves a long standing puzzle about the Moon's thin atmosphere but also rewrites our understanding of how rocky planets lose material to space, with major implications for upcoming missions to the Moon and Mercury.

Sometimes serendipity happens in science. Whether it’s an apple falling from a tree or a melting chocolate bar, some of the world’s greatest discoveries come from happy accidents, even if their stories may be apocryphal. According to a new paper on arXiv, there’s a new story to add to the archives of serendipitous scientific discoveries - Rubin happened to make observations of interstellar object 3I/ATLAS before its official discovery, while the telescope was still in its Science Validation survey, marking the earliest, high resolution images we will likely get of the comet at that time.