Astronomy

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The satellites were seen in the night skies near the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

World Asteroid Day 2025: Watch live views of near-Earth asteroids for free online on June 30

Ron Howard's classic celebrates the mission control geniuses who got the astronauts home.

With the aid of NASA's exoplanet-hunter TESS, citizen scientists have discovered a new gas giant that is cool, literally and figuratively.

NASA was to supply some critical technologies for the mission, which Europe may not be able to readily replace.

As Charles Darwin explored the Galapagos Islands, he discovered how the different islands allowed for different species to thrive. This is very similar to our current exploration of the Solar System; individual worlds, separated by the vacuum of space. The similarities provide a new insight into predictin planetary contamination risks and improve protection methods. A new paper by Daniel J. Brener and Charlesg S. Cockell uses the spread of life to new islands as a powerful model for rethinking how we prevent Earth's microbes from contaminating other worlds, shifting focus from probability calculations to whether microbes can actually survive in alien environments.

Population III stars are the first generation that formed in the Universe, made from pristine hydrogen and helium, without any heavier "metals." They're difficult to find, surrounded by the early cosmic fog and lasting for only a few million years, but a new paper proposes that Webb could detect the pollution from these first stars as they're enriching the gas around them. There would be a hybrid phase when the first galaxies could contain second-generation stars and the polluted gas from the first stars.

An unfolding mystery is how early supermassive black holes got so big, so early. Their high mass is tough to explain through a ladder of mergers; instead, astronomers suggest they could have formed directly from huge clouds of gas. In a new paper, researchers propose the signals these directly-forming supermassive black holes might emit, and how they could even be detectable by James Webb before they collapse.

What methods can be used to identify subsurface oceans on the five largest moons of Uranus: Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon, and Miranda? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address as a team of scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) investigated potentially using radio science on the Uranus Orbiter and Probe (UOP) concept mission, which was designated as a high priority Flagship-class mission by the 2023–2032 Planetary Science Decadal Survey.

How do stars form?

People with PCOS who struggle to conceive tend to have lower levels of a gut microbe that has been linked to endometrial function

People with PCOS who struggle to conceive tend to have lower levels of a gut microbe that has been linked to endometrial function

The Sun and its planets formed out of the solar nebula, around 4.6 billion years ago. But what was the delay between the Sun's formation and the planets? Astronomers have surveyed 78 protoplanetary disks in the Ophiuchus star-forming region and seen examples of every step in the planetary formation process. They found that the planets start forming much earlier than previously believed, when the disk is still filled with gas and dust, growing together with their host stars.

What processes during the formation of Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, potentially led to it having cryovolcanism, and even an internal ocean? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated the formation and evolution of Charon to ascertain whether it once possessed an internal ocean during its history and if this could have led to cryovolcanism based on images obtained by NASA’s New Horizons probe.

The dwarf planet Sedna will reach its closest point to the Sun in 2075, the ideal time to send a mission to study this world that takes 11,000 years to orbit the Sun. In a new paper, researchers consider two exotic propulsion systems for a mission like this: a direct fusion drive, and an enhanced solar sail. Both methods could allow a spacecraft to reach Sedna in under a decade of flight time.

Spielberg's contemporary spin on H. G. Wells would be up there with his best if only he could have nailed the ending.

Blue Origin, the spaceflight company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, launched its 13th crewed New Shepard rocket on a successful suborbital spaceflight on Sunday, June 29, 2025.

Muon Space released the first images from its new wildfire detection satellite, FireSat.

The World Meteorological Organization maintains a list of 21 hurricane names for each year. In especially busy years, a supplemental list is used.