"When beggars die, there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes."

— William Shakespeare
Julius Cæsar

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Space and Astronomy News from Universe Today
Updated: 8 hours 28 min ago

Colliding Galaxies Tearing at Each Other with Gravity and Radiation

Sat, 06/14/2025 - 7:20pm

Astronomers recently used a pair of powerful telescopes to zero in on a cosmic battle going on some 11 billion light-years away from us. The combatants are a pair of galaxies charging at each other over and over again, at velocities upwards of 500 kilometers per second. According to one of the scientists studying the scene, one galaxy is cutting into the heart of the other with a blast of radiation.

Categories: Astronomy

Martian Supervolcano Peeks Through the Cloudtops

Sat, 06/14/2025 - 7:20pm

NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter captured this incredible image of the giant shield volcano Arsia Mons, poking through the cloud tops at Martian dawn. Arsia and the other megavolcanoes on Mars are so tall they're often surrounded by water ice clouds in the early morning. Odyssey is normally staring straight down, so to capture this unique angle, it had to rotate 90 degrees while in orbit so that it could capture a side perspective view of the volcano.

Categories: Astronomy

Surviving the Neptunian Desert

Fri, 06/13/2025 - 3:48pm

As astronomers found more and more exoplanets in recent years, they've discovered an unusual gap in the population. It's called the Neptunian Desert, a curious scarcity of Neptune-sized exoplanets orbiting close to their stars. Researchers just discovered an exoplanet in the Neptunian Desert around a Sun-like star. Can it help explain the Desert?

Categories: Astronomy

NASA's Top 5 Technical Challenges Countdown: #1: Survive the Lunar Night

Fri, 06/13/2025 - 3:48pm

Now I know this sounds like a low-budget knockoff of Five Nights at Freddy's, but it's the real deal

Categories: Astronomy

The Martian Atmosphere is Sputtering

Fri, 06/13/2025 - 3:48pm

The Earth's atmosphere is protected by a magnetosphere, but Mars lacks this protective shield and lost its atmosphere to space long ago through interactions with the solar wind. In a new paper, scientists report that they have directly observed this process of "atmospheric sputtering," watching how incoming ions from the solar wind directly cause neutral atmospheric particles to escape. They found the process is stronger than anticipated, especially in solar storms.

Categories: Astronomy

The Sun's Identity Crisis Solved

Fri, 06/13/2025 - 6:38am

The Sun's surface has unveiled a new secret: ultra fine magnetic "curtains" that create striking patterns of bright and dark stripes across the solar photosphere. Thanks to groundbreaking observations from the NSF Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii, scientists have captured the sharpest ever images of these previously unseen structures, revealing magnetic field variations at scales as small as 20 kilometres.

Categories: Astronomy

The Nuclear Option: Europe's Plan for Faster Space Travel.

Thu, 06/12/2025 - 7:38pm

Whilst NASA funding has been slashed by the Trump administration with no allocation for Nuclear Thermal Propulsion or and Nuclear Electric Propulsion, scientists at the European Space Agency (ESA) have been studying nuclear propulsion.

Categories: Astronomy