Astronomy
‘Woolly Devil’ Sunflower Shows the Beauty of Strange Botany
A tiny, woolly flower found hiding in Texas’s Big Bend National Park shows the intriguing strangeness of sunflowers
Euclid opens data treasure trove, offers glimpse of deep fields
On 19 March 2025, the European Space Agency’s Euclid mission released its first batch of survey data, including a preview of its deep fields. Here, hundreds of thousands of galaxies in different shapes and sizes take centre stage and show a glimpse of their large-scale organisation in the cosmic web.
Euclid is back – 26 million galaxies and counting
The European Space Agency’s Euclid mission has scouted out the three areas in the sky where it will eventually provide the deepest observations of its mission.
In just one week of observations, with one scan of each region so far, Euclid already spotted 26 million galaxies. The farthest of those are up to 10.5 billion light-years away.
In the coming years, Euclid will pass over these three regions tens of times, capturing many more faraway galaxies, making these fields truly ‘deep’ by the end of the nominal mission in 2030.
The first glimpse of 63 square degrees of the sky, the equivalent area of more than 300 times the full Moon, already gives an impressive preview of the scale of Euclid’s grand cosmic atlas when the mission is complete. This atlas will cover one-third of the entire sky – 14 000 square degrees – in this high-quality detail.
Explore the three deep field previews in ESASky:
Read more: Euclid opens data treasure trove, offers glimpse of deep fields
Euclid space telescope's 1st results reveal 'a goldmine of data' in search for dark matter and dark energy (images, video)
What You Should Know before Your First Colonoscopy
A colonoscopy can save your life, but misinformation keeps many people from getting one. A gastroenterologist sets the record straight.
Dolphins welcome SpaceX's Crew-9 astronauts home after splashdown (video)
The world's climate is in uncharted territory, warns major report
The world's climate is in uncharted territory, warns major report
Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore Finally Get to Come Home to Earth
After an unexpectedly long mission in orbit, astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore finally arrived home. Their SpaceX Dragon capsule detached from the International Space Station early Tuesday morning, beginning the de-orbiting process. Nick Hague and Aleksandr Gorbunov are also on board and, following a nail biting descent, finally at 7.58pm EDT today.
Can Any Nearby Supernova Cause a Mass Extinction?
The most dangerous parts of a supernova explosion are the outputs like X-rays and gamma rays. Even though they only share a small fraction of a supernova’s power, they are extremely dangerous.
SpaceX launches 23 Starlink internet satellites to orbit from Florida's Space Coast (video, photos)
Never-'stuck’ Starliner astronauts return to Earth at last with Crew-9 duo in SpaceX Dragon splashdown
After 286 Days in Space, NASA Astronauts Return to Earth with a Splash
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams had been “stuck” at the International Space Station since June 6, 2024, after Boeing’s Starliner, the vehicle they rode to get there, ran into multiple hardware problems
The Square Kilometre Array Releases its First Test Image
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) remains under construction with completion still a few years away. However, engineers recently provided an exciting preview having installed 1,024 of the planned 131,072 antennas and capturing a test image of the sky. The image covers about 25 square degrees and reveals 85 of the brightest known galaxies in the region. Once fully operational, the complete array is expected to detect more than 600,000 galaxies within this same area!
Astronomers Used Meteorites to Create a Geological Map of the Main Asteroid Belt
More than one million asteroids larger than 1 km exist in the main asteroid belt (MAB) between Mars and Jupiter. Their roots are in a much smaller number of larger asteroids that broke apart because of collisions, and the MAB is populated with debris fields from these collisions. Researchers have created a geological map of the MAB by tracking meteorites that fell to Earth and determining which of these debris fields they originated in.
Watch the sun set over the moon in epic video from private Blue Ghost lunar lander
JWST Cycle 4 Spotlight, Part 3: Supermassive Black Holes and Cosmic Noon
Welcome back to our five-part examination of Webb's Cycle 4 General Observations program. In the first and second installments, we examined how some of Webb's 8,500 hours of prime observing time this cycle will be dedicated to exoplanet characterization and the study of galaxies that existed at "Cosmic Dawn" - ca. less than 1 billion years after the Big Bang.
Best-Yet ‘Baby Pictures’ of the Universe Unveiled
The final results from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope offer the sharpest, most sensitive view of the early cosmos that anyone has ever seen