Space.com

The world of science fiction started with the written word, long before it hit the silver screen. Stories of man-made life, Martians, and other marvelous subject matter were being read long before the first sci-fi movie was released in 1902: Georges Méliès' "A Trip to the Moon". Some of these stories became classic tales that have been repeatedly adapted for Hollywood and television, think Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" and H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds."

This isn't by any means an exhaustive list but these are the sci-fi books that inspired some of our favorite movies and shows. We have big names like Project Hail Mary and Dune, as well as more obscure titles like the haunting Under the Skin and Stalker. We have included links to the best streaming services to watch each adaptation on right now, but for those of you who are tired of endless subscriptions, we have provided the 4K and Blu-ray releases so you can physically own your favorite media again.

Jeff VanderMeer Annihilation

4K Steelbook Annihilation

Annihilation:

Seven day free trial, then $7.99/month after trial.View Deal

Mary Shelley Frankenstein

4K UltraHD Frankenstein (Guillermo Del Toro)

Frankenstein:

Plans start at $8.99/monthView Deal

Ted Chiang Stories of Your Life and Others

4K Steelbook Arrival

Own it on 4K Blu Ray Steelbook

Arrival:

Plans start at $8.99/monthView Deal

Emily St. John Mandel Station Eleven

4K UltraHD Station Eleven

Station Eleven:

Plans start at $10.99/month

Max, Disney Plus and Hulu bundle plans start at $19.99/monthView Deal

Andy Weir Project Hail Mary

4K UltraHD Project Hail Mary

Project Hail Mary:

Free 30-day trial for new Prime members with plans starting at $8.99/month for Prime Video or $14.99/month for Amazon Prime. View Deal

Ernest Cline Ready Player One

4K UltraHD Ready Player One

Ready Player One:

Plans start at $10.99/month

Max, Disney Plus and Hulu bundle plans start at $19.99/monthView Deal

Frank Herbert Dune

4K UltraHD Dune 2-Film Collection

Dune:

Plans start at $10.99/month

Max, Disney Plus and Hulu bundle plans start at $19.99/monthView Deal

H.G. Wells The War of the Worlds

4K UltraHD + Digital War of the Worlds

War of the Worlds:

Plans start at $8.99/monthView Deal

Michael Faber Under the Skin

Blu-ray Under the Skin

Under the Skin:

Plans start at $8.99/monthView Deal

Andy Weir The Martian

4K UltraHD + Digital The Martian - Extended Edition

The Martian: $8.99

Free 30-day trial for new Prime members with plans starting at $8.99/month for Prime Video or $14.99/month for Amazon Prime. View Deal

Edward Ashton Mickey7

4K UltraHD + Digital Mickey 17

Mickey 17:

Plans start at $10.99/month

Max, Disney Plus and Hulu bundle plans start at $19.99/monthView Deal

Margaret Atwood The Handmaid's Tale

Blu-ray Handmaid's Tale, The: Season 1 (bd) [blu-Ray]

The Handmaid's Tale:

Disney Plus and Hulu bundle plans start at $11.99/month — the same price as Hulu alone.

Hulu, Disney Plus and Max bundle plans start at $19.99/monthView Deal

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky Roadside Picnic

Blu-ray Stalker

Stalker:

Plans start at $10.99/month

Max, Disney Plus and Hulu bundle plans start at $19.99/monthView Deal

Books are often sidelined in today's visual-obsessed world, but I think they deliver a stronger experience that movies and shows just can't replicate. Now don't get me wrong, I love the movie adaptation of Annihilation, but I have a very special connection to the book. I read it multiple times before the movie release and it made me feel immersed in the inherent weirdness of the natural world and think about how alien our own planet is. The book always came to mind when taking a walk out in the forest and seeing the hypnotic curl of a fern or a bird alighting on a branch inches away from me.

Top 5 things to see in the night sky with binoculars — ranked by an expert

Beyond simple naked-eye observing, a pair of the best binoculars are the most accessible way to experience the night sky. They are affordable (although pricier models are available), very easy to use compared to telescopes and they offer a wide range of celestial sights, from our solar system neighbors to distant deep-sky objects. They are great for both beginners, casual observers and even veteran stargazers who want to grab a quick look or spend time sweeping through the Milky Way.

So what are the best night-sky targets for binocular users? There are so many, but we’ve done our best to whittle them down to five of the best that provide a good sense of what can be seen through binoculars. We’ve also accounted for different apertures and magnifications to make sure there’s something for everyone, even kids

The moon

Binoculars can get you great views of the moon. (Image credit: Getty Images)

The moon is the ideal starting point for observing with binoculars. As a large target full of intricate features that appear differently depending upon the illumination, the moon rewards return visits, and you’ll never grow bored.

Even low-magnification, smaller-aperture binoculars will show some interesting details. Small 8x40 or 7x50 binoculars are sufficient; you certainly wouldn’t want to go as low as, say, 8x25 because the moon would appear small. While larger magnifications can improve the view, unless you have the binocular mounted on a tripod, the shake from jittery hands can look like moonquakes. If you don’t have a tripod, an alternate solution is to use image-stabilized (IS) binoculars, where the binoculars’ internal electronics are able to remove the jitter from the image, making the view more static.

The illumination on the moon changes across a 29.5-day cycle as the sun rises and sets over the lunar landscape, with phases cycling from new to first quarter, then to full and last quarter and finally back to new again. Often, the best time to observe a particular feature on the moon is when it is dawn or dusk at that location, and the sun angle is low, casting stark shadows. Otherwise, it is difficult to see the relief when the sun is overhead.

Jupiter’s moons

Jupiter and (some) of its moons in orbit. Through binoculars views will be less detailed and smaller, but the moons are still visible. (Image credit: Getty Images)

Earth’s moon isn’t the only moon in the solar system that can be seen through binoculars.

A simple pair of 8x40s or 10x50s will be sufficient to watch the four largest moons of Jupiter — Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto — circle around the Jovian giant. Unfortunately, these binoculars won’t be enough to show you the belts of Jupiter or its Great Red Spot, but its four large moons, known as the Galilean moons, because they were discovered by Galileo, will appear as pinpricks of light on either side of Jupiter.

It’s fun to follow in Galileo’s footsteps and watch the moons orbiting Jupiter, sometimes disappearing from view as they move behind the giant planet, or pass in front of it. Binoculars will not be powerful enough to show the moons transiting against the face of Jupiter, though — Jupiter is too bright, and the contrast is not great enough. The other 91 moons of Jupiter are far too small and faint to be seen in binoculars.

Mizar and Alcor

The Big Dipper constellation houses the stars Mizar and Alcor. (Image credit: Spike Silvernail/Getty Images)

In the handle of the pan-shaped Big Dipper (part of Ursa Major) is the pair of stars called Mizar and Alcor. They make a lovely visual double, easily seen with the naked eye, and they really pop when viewed through 10x50 binoculars, with Mizar the brightest at magnitude 2 and Alcor a little fainter at magnitude 4.

Some double stars are just visual doubles, meaning they are many light-years apart and unrelated, but they just happen to be very close to each other on the night sky as seen from our line of sight. Not so with Mizar and Alcor, which are physically bound by gravity as they orbit each other. However, view Mizar and Alcor through binoculars, and you will get a glimpse of the true magnificence of this system. Large binoculars will show that Mizar is also a double star. Resolving Mizar as two stars is probably pushing it in 10x50s, but a pair of 20x80 binoculars will give you a better chance of splitting them, with image-stabilized binoculars, if you have them, giving you the edge.

There’s even more in the Mizar and Alcor system than what binoculars can show. Both stars in the Mizar system are also doubles, as is Alcor, making this a six-star system in total! Sadly, these extra companions are so close together that not even telescopes can split them. But there are plenty of other doubles for you to hunt down with binoculars. The trick is to find double stars that have a wide enough separation to be resolvable by 10x50 binoculars. Try also Epsilon Lyrae and Alpha Librae, also called Zubenelgenubi, meaning ‘southern claw’, as it was once associated with the constellation Scorpius the Scorpion, before being moved into Libra the Scales.

Auriga’s open clusters

The tadpole nebula, IC 410, in the constellation Auriga. Averted vision, powerful magnification and a tripod are a must to see this with binoculars. (Image credit: Getty Images)

Auriga the Charioteer is a constellation famed for two things: its brilliant yellow star Capella (the sixth brightest in the entire night sky), and its array of magnificent open clusters, notably Messier 36, 37 and 38.

Open clusters are young clusters of stars that were born together and are now gradually dispersing, and Auriga’s open clusters are some of the best and brightest of their kind in the night sky.

A pair of 10x50 binoculars can have a field of view between 5 and 7 degrees, depending upon the model. For the larger field, it’s possible to squeeze all three of Auriga’s open clusters into the same view!

To find the clusters, first drop down from Capella to alight on the bright star Elnath, which is actually Beta Taurii in the constellation of Taurus the Bull. You can find Elnath easily with the unaided eye. Switching to binoculars, look about three-quarters of the way along the line between Capella and Elnath. You should see six fainter stars of magnitude 6 forming a curve. Follow that curve west, and you’ll come across two other magnitude 6 stars close to M38, which appear as a hazy patch whose diffuse light is made from a multitude of faint stars. This is the case for all three clusters. Most of M38’s stars are not resolvable in binoculars, but some certainly are in 10x50s, and switching to larger aperture binoculars or an image-stabilized model will help to reveal more.

Just 2.5 degrees to the south-east is the next cluster, M36, which overall is brighter than M38. Through 10x50s look for eight or ten stars; again, large binoculars will reveal more.

Finally, M37 is located a little further away. The constellation of Auriga has an obvious five-sided shape marked by its main stars and Elnath. Draw an imaginary line between Elnath and Auriga’s bright star at its lower left, magnitude 2.6 Theta Aurigae. Messier 37 is found about halfway along and just outside of this line. Another hazy patch, it is the densest of the three clusters, but most of its individual stars are fainter than in M36 and M38, so M37 will need larger binoculars, say 25x100, to get the best out of it.

After spending time looking at the three clusters, sweep your binoculars along the splendor of the winter Milky Way, in which Auriga sits. Through binoculars, the vast star fields of the Milky Way are spellbinding.

The Andromeda Galaxy M31

This is a typical view of the Andromeda galaxy (M31) that you can easily achieve with binoculars, but dark skies and averted vision aid detail. (Image credit: Omid Qadrdan)

The Andromeda Galaxy (Messier 31) is the closest large spiral galaxy to our Milky Way galaxy, located 2.5 million light-years away. That means it is large and relatively bright in our night sky, making it a great target for binocular users. If you are observing from a dark site away from city lights, you will probably be able to see it with the naked eye.

If you can’t or are having trouble knowing where to look:
- Use the stars of the nearby constellation Cassiopeia to find it. Cassiopeia has the shape of the letter ‘W’. Use the bottom star on the right of the W — the brightest star in Cassiopeia, Alpha Cassiopeiae or Schedar — to...
- Point down towards Andromeda and its bright star Beta Andromedae, or Mirach.
- Now using 10x50 binoculars, move north-west until Mirach is at the bottom-left of your field of view and the star Mu Andromedae is at the top-right.
- Then move your binoculars the same distance in the same direction again, and you should find the Andromeda Galaxy.

While you won’t be able to resolve its spiral arms, you will see a smudge of light that is its disk, and a brighter core. Also look out for its two companion galaxies, M32 beneath it and M110 to the top-right. Both appear as fuzzy stars and, depending on how dark your observing site is, you may need to use averted vision to see them (looking at them out of the corner of your eye). Larger binoculars, say 25x100, will show M31 and its companions much more easily, though you’ll need a tripod to take their weight.

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover saw a solar eclipse from the Martian surface. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU)

People around the world enjoyed stellar views with last week's total solar eclipse.

And the day after we looked up to see the moon obscuring out sun, NASA's Perseverance Mars rover looked up to see its own Martian solar eclipse.

What is it?

Solar eclipses aren't unique to Earth. In theory, any planet with at least one orbiting moon would have times where that moon might eclipse some part of its sun to anyone looking up from the planet's surface.

On Aug. 13, 2026, one day after Earth's total solar eclipse in which our moon temporarily blocked out our sun for skywatchers in some locations, Mars saw its own solar eclipse.

Looking up with its left Mastcam-Z camera, Perseverance snapped this image of one of Mars' two moons, Phobos and Deimos, partially eclipsing the sun. This appears to be Phobos — the larger of the pair — eclipsing the sun.

Why is it incredible?

So far, we humans have only directly had vantage points on Earth, in Earth orbit and on the moon. We have not yet landed humans on Mars, and it remains unclear how long it might be before that happens.

But robotic explorers like Perseverance allow us to travel where we can't go ourselves. Such travelers have taken us into interstellar space and all throughout our solar system. From Saturn's rings to Neptune's distant, icy neighborhood, robotic probes have allowed humanity's reach to stretch far through the cosmos.

And thanks to Perseverance and its two "eyes," the two Mastcam-Z cameras located high on its mast, we can travel right to the surface of Mars, look up and see an alien solar eclipse. What an amazing thing that is.

On Aug. 19, 1997, the Philippines' first satellite launched into space. Before then, the country's only communications satellite was one that had been purchased from Indonesia after it was already in orbit.

But 29 years ago today, the Mabuhay Philippines Satellite Corporation sent its own satellite into orbit using a Chinese Long March 3B rocket. The new satellite was named Agila-2 in honor of the great Philippine eagle. To this day, it provides the most powerful satellite coverage in Asia and the Pacific, though its ownership has change: In 2009, the Philippines sold it to the Asia Broadcast Satellite company.

Artist's illustration of the Filipino satellite Agila-2. (Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)Why it mattered

International collaboration is a key enabler of progress in space. For example, astronauts from around the world work together to stay safe and push scientific progress forward on board the International Space Station (ISS). And more and more nations are getting involved in the final frontier these days. Over 70 different nations have signed the Artemis Accords, a U.S.-backed set of guiding principles for responsible space exploration.

The Agila-2 launch was a major breakthrough for Filipino progress in the space sector. It was followed up almost two decades later with the Diwata-1 microsatellite, which launched to the ISS on April 27, 2016. And the momentum kept growing from there, as the Philippine Space Agency was formalized in 2019. Since then, the Philippines has collaborated with NASA and JAXA (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) to develop and launch two more satellites, Diwata-2 and Maya-1.

I woke up on the morning of Aug. 12 and looked out of the window to something I hadn't dared hope for: blue sky.

After days of scrutinizing weather models that seemed determined to test the nerves of everyone aboard the HX Expeditions ship MS Spitsbergen, somehow, against the odds, the clouds had cleared. Even then, I didn't trust it (especially after my 2024 eclipse experience). We had traveled thousands of miles, crossed the Greenland Sea and ventured deep into Scoresby Sund to put ourselves in the path of the moon's shadow. Now there was nothing to do but wait — and hope the sky stayed clear.

The wind howled across the deck, but nobody seemed to mind. If anything, it was helping us, keeping the clouds at bay. The atmosphere aboard felt like Christmas Eve with a ship full of overexcited children. Some guests had chased eclipses across the world; for others, this would be their first. Either way, Aug. 12 was the date we'd been waiting years for.

But by the time we reached Scoresby Sund, something had shifted.

I had traveled all this way to look up. Instead, I found myself looking around. I'd come here for 2 minutes and 14 seconds of darkness. Instead, Greenland had spent the previous days relentlessly demanding my full attention.

This trip was made possible by travel and accommodation provided by HX Expeditions.

After a couple of days at sea during the crossing from Svalbard to East Greenland, our first sight of land appeared almost like a mirage on the horizon. Soon, icebergs were drifting past the ship and the scale of the landscape became increasingly difficult to comprehend. We could sail for hours through Northeast Greenland National Park without seeing a single sign of human civilization beyond our own ship. At times, moving through those immense geological landscapes felt less like traveling across Earth and more like exploring some distant, icy-covered moon.

The East Coast of Greenland is one of the most remarkable environments I have ever experienced. (Image credit: Daisy Dobrijevic/Future)

Yet, the more otherworldly Greenland appeared, the more it made me appreciate our own planet.

At times it felt as though I'd stepped into a geology textbook. Processes and structures I'd previously seen reduced to diagrams were suddenly towering above me. And amongst all the enormity were the tiniest signs of life: lichens and miniature Arctic plants hugging the ground beneath vast mountains and glaciers.

The scale and contrast were overwhelming at times, and no view stayed the same for long.

An iceberg viewed from one side could morph into a completely different form as the ship sailed past it. A break in the clouds could transform a gray mountainside in seconds. In Scoresby Sund, even the ice seemed to echo the landscape around it as jagged peaks, flat-topped slabs and sculpted ridges rose from the water like miniature versions of the colossal mountains behind them.

A landscape dominated by giants. (Image credit: Daisy Dobrijevic/Future)

The Greenland scenery was a gift that kept on giving, and I found myself increasingly reluctant to go inside. I began meticulously scanning for wildlife, because I'd learned how quickly something extraordinary could appear.

On an impromptu evening walk in Longyearbyen before we set sail, beluga whales had suddenly surfaced in the bay. Later, in Greenland, while I was distracted by a spectacular circumzenithal arc and sundogs overhead, one of a handful of people still standing on deck spotted two tiny white shapes in the water. I thought they were birds bobbing along.

Then I lifted my camera and zoomed in.

Polar bears.

Two unexpected visitors. (Image credit: Daisy Dobrijevic/Future, captured with Sony A7RV and FE 400-800mm F6.3-8 G OSS lens)

It became something of a lesson for the expedition: stay curious, keep your eyes open and remember to look both up and down.

That curiosity seemed to unite everyone aboard. Guests had traveled from around the world for this eclipse opportunity. There were seasoned eclipse chasers looking to experience totality somewhere extraordinary, first-timers who had no idea how they would react and people drawn as much by the adventure and wildlife, as the eclipse itself.

HX Expeditions' onboard science and education programme gave that shared enthusiasm somewhere to go. Our days were filled with nature landings, lectures, citizen-science projects and conversations with experts, helping us do more than simply travel through Greenland. The programme encouraged us to pay closer attention — not merely to see the landscape, but to understand and truly experience it.

Conversations jumped from eclipses to wildlife, travel, geology and perhaps, inevitably for a ship full of skywatchers, clouds. We took part in the GLOBE Observer cloud citizen science project and found ourselves happily studying them — while collectively hoping they would be nowhere near the sun on eclipse day.

The eclipse had brought us together, but the journey had quickly become about much more.

MS Spitsbergen poised and ready for the total solar eclipse on Aug. 12, 2026. (Image credit: Daisy Dobrijevic/Future)

Then, on Aug. 12, our attention returned to the sky.

When the moon took its first tiny bite from the solar disk, excitement rippled across the deck. For the next hour, it steadily consumed more of the sun.

As totality approached, the quality of the light began to change.

It became strangely yellow and dull, yet at the same time the landscape seemed almost unnaturally sharp. It was eerie — familiar enough to still resemble daylight, but wrong enough that your brain knew something extraordinary was happening.

Poised and ready for the eclipse. I captured the image of totality with a Sony A7RV and FE 400-800mm F6.3-8 G OSS lens and a makeshift solar filter using Baader AstroSolar Safety Film. (Image credit: Daisy Dobrijevic/Future)

What amazed me most was how long that daylight persisted.

Even when only the tiniest sliver of sun remained, Greenland was still illuminated. I knew scientifically how intensely bright the solar photosphere is, but knowing it and watching that minuscule fraction of sunlight continue to illuminate an entire landscape were two very different things.

Then the final fraction disappeared.

The world around me plunged into twilight.

And there it was.

Totality.

The total solar eclipse viewed from the deck of HX Expeditions' MS Spitsbergen. (Image credit: Daisy Dobrijevic/Future)

I knew exactly what I was supposed to see. I've written about eclipses for years. I understand the science. I had seen thousands of photographs of the corona, prominences, Baily's beads and diamond rings.

None of it prepared me for the feeling of actually seeing one.

The first thing that struck me was how large the eclipsed sun appeared to the naked eye. Photographs had never prepared me for that sense of scale, nor how much detail I could see with my own eyes.

The giant pink prominence on the lower left limb was bright enough to see with the naked eye. (Image credit: Daisy Dobrijevic/Future, captured with Sony A7RV and FE 400-800mm F6.3-8 G OSS lens)

The moon itself looked impossibly dark — a black void punched into the sky — surrounded by the pearly white corona. Long streamers stretched away from the sun and around the moon's edge I could see bright pink prominences.

I was so surprised to see this vivid pink color with my own eyes. For 2 minutes and 14 seconds, I saw the sun as I had never seen it before.

But even then, I couldn't just look up.

I looked around. Jupiter and Mercury shone clearly off to one side of the eclipsed sun, with Mercury far brighter and easier to spot than I had expected. Venus blazed on the other side.

Then I looked down. Below the eclipsed sun were icebergs. Beside us rose the immense walls of Scoresby Sund. Glaciers carved their path through the landscape.

Above it all hung that black disk and its enormous, delicate corona. My brain simply couldn't take it all in.

There was too much beauty. Too much scale. Too much happening at once.

People use words such as "mind-blowing" and "speechless" so often that they begin to lose their meaning.

But my mind was really blown. And I really was speechless. Perhaps the best way I can describe it is that my mind felt full, but quiet. Full because there was almost too much to comprehend, but quiet because for those fleeting moments, there was room for nothing else.

I was astonished by how much of the corona you could see with the naked eye. (Image credit: Daisy Dobrijevic/Future, captured with Sony A7RV and FE 400-800mm F6.3-8 G OSS lens)

The intensity of the experience surprised guests who had originally joined the voyage for different reasons.

"My husband and I came to see the wildlife, and we were actually in awe of what we saw in relation to the solar eclipse," Kenya Haupt, from Colorado, told Space.com. "Truly an emotional experience"

The reasons for joining the expedition varied, but beneath the moon’s shadow, the experience became a collective one.

For Shubhada Maitra, from India, it was her first total solar eclipse.

"When I looked around me, I just had a feeling that we were one community, taking part in one of the most spectacular, perhaps once-in-a-lifetime celestial events," Maitra said. "Although we came from different countries, different nationalities, genders, all of that, that solar eclipse just bound us together."

"Without saying anything, we were just so connected in that experience."

Lisa Marie Morse, from Rhode Island, described the eclipse as both "joyous and melancholy."

"In that moment of darkness, I felt a powerful connection with all living things, to an infinite ancient rhythm locking us together for 134 seconds of shared awareness, then releasing us back into our daily slumber," Morse said. "It was magical."

Then, almost as quickly as totality had arrived, it was ending.

The first brilliant beads of sunlight appeared from behind the moon.

They were beautiful, but there was a sadness in seeing them too. The corona, prominences and extraordinary black void that had dominated the sky were about to disappear once more into the overwhelming glare of the sun.

Two minutes and 14 seconds had somehow felt both packed with experience and impossibly brief. I had just enough time to look with my naked eye, search for planets, check it out through binoculars and try to absorb the reactions around me.

Then it was gone.

For seasoned eclipse chaser Roy Tillcock from the Isle of Wight, the clear view had come as a genuine surprise.

"This was one of the most unexpected eclipses I've seen," he said. "I did not have high hopes of seeing it, and there it was. Brilliant."

And, as if to underline just how fortunate we had been, the clouds rolled in shortly after totality. A few minutes later, and this could have been a very different story.

Some skywatchers were emotional. Others were exhilarated. Many, like me, seemed to be struggling to find words big enough for what had happened.

Perhaps that is part of why eclipse chasing becomes so addictive. We can explain the science of totality in extraordinary detail. We can calculate the path of the moon's shadow years in advance, travel thousands of miles to stand beneath it and know exactly when and where darkness will fall.

But knowing what to expect is not the same as experiencing it.

The following morning, Greenland was still there, still demanding my undivided attention. Icebergs drifted past the ship. Mountains towered above the fjord. The sunlight shifted and the landscape transformed once again. I had traveled all this way to look up.

There was never a bad view as we journeyed through Scoresby Sund aboard MS Spitsbergen. (Image credit: Daisy Dobrijevic/Future)

But somewhere along the journey, I had learned to truly look around. Here I was, standing on a planet of glaciers, oceans, wildlife and ancient rock, watching its moon pass perfectly across its star at a moment in Earth's history when their apparent size in our sky happened to match. How lucky are we to experience any of this? Luck, ultimately, is something no eclipse chaser can ignore.

We could calculate where the shadow would fall. We could sail into its path. We could scrutinize forecasts, prepare our equipment and position ourselves as carefully as possible.

But we couldn't command the clouds to cooperate.

Nature always has the final say. And on Aug. 12, 2026, in a remote fjord in East Greenland, nature said yes.

Greenland was full of surprises. (Image credit: Daisy Dobrijevic/Future, captured with Sony A7RV and FE 400-800mm F6.3-8 G OSS lens)

Editor's note: This trip was made possible by travel and accommodation provided by HX Expeditions.

Astronomers have discovered an unusually massive, dense exoplanet that challenges conventional ideas about how rocky planets form.

Called GJ 523b, the exoplanet is about 2.5 times wider than Earth but packs roughly 23 times our planet's mass into that relatively compact size. Worlds this large and dense are sometimes referred to as "mega-Earths," an informal term for unusually massive, predominantly rocky planets. GJ 523b's high density suggests it contains relatively little atmosphere despite being large enough that astronomers would normally expect it to have accumulated a substantial gaseous envelope, according to a statement from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

"This isn't what we expected at all," Max Kroft, lead author of the study, said in the statement. "Dense planets like this aren't uncommon, but they're usually small rocky planets similar to Earth or Mercury. This planet is two and a half times bigger than the Earth."

GJ 523b was initially identified as a candidate by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which searches for periodic dips in starlight caused when planets cross, or transit, their host stars. Researchers followed up with observations from the ground-based WIYN 3.5-meter Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, using a spectrograph to measure the planet's gravitational tug on its star.

Combining those observations, the team calculated that GJ 523b has a mass about 23.5 times that of Earth, a radius 2.55 times larger and a density of about 126.82 grams per cubic inch. It circles its star every 17.75 days. The planetary system is also relatively young, at an estimated nearly 170 million years old, according to the study.

That combination of size, mass and youth poses a puzzle for planet formation models. Planets begin by building cores of rock and metal, which can then pull in hydrogen and helium from the disk of gas and dust surrounding a young star. In our own solar system, giant planets such as Jupiter and Saturn are thought to have begun rapidly accumulating their massive gaseous envelopes once their growing cores reached roughly 20 times Earth's mass.

GJ 523b is already about 23 times Earth's mass, putting it beyond that threshold. Yet instead of developing into a gas-rich world, its unusually high density suggests it has relatively little gas and remains predominantly rocky — raising the question of why it followed such a different path.

"The question is, why didn't this planet do that, if it's 20 times the size of Earth?" Kroft said in the statement.

One possibility is that GJ 523b initially formed with a thick atmosphere that was later stripped away. Another is that it formed through a collision between two planets, creating a larger rocky world while blasting much of their gaseous envelopes into space, according to the statement.

Astronomers have used the term "mega-Earth" for more than a decade to describe exceptionally massive rocky worlds, though it has never represented a formally established class of exoplanets. Finding more examples like GJ 523b could help reveal whether these unusual worlds are rare exceptions or part of a broader population.

"It's hard to infer things about planet formation in general from a sample size of one," Kroft said in the statement. "We're not going to get to 10,000 of these overdense planets, but if we can get to 20 or 30, maybe some trends might pop out."

The findings have been submitted to The Astronomical Journal and are currently available on the preprint server arXiv and have not yet been peer reviewed.

China just notched another big spaceflight milestone.

The Beijing startup LandSpace successfully landed the first stage of its Zhuque-3 rocket this evening (Aug. 18), becoming the first Chinese company ever to do so during an orbital launch.

It was just the second Chinese orbital rocket touchdown overall. The first was pulled of on July 10 by a Long March 10B, which is built by the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC).

The first stage of Landspace's Zhuque-3 rocket rests on its landing pad shortly after its historic touchdown on Aug. 18, 2026. (Image credit: LandSpace)

The Long March 10B had some help returning to Earth, settling softly into a net-like device affixed to a ship at sea. But Zhuque-3 came down on terra firma and stayed upright thanks to a set of landing legs, like those sported by SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket.

"This mission marks China's first-ever successful recovery attempt of the first stage of an orbital-class launch vehicle using landing legs, and China's first successful booster recovery on land," LandSpace said via X this evening.

"It is a pivotal flight test for Zhuque-3 as it transitions from the technological demonstration and verification phase toward the engineering application phase of reusability," the company added. "This mission further verified the design correctness and reliability of the Zhuque-3 reusable launch vehicle system, validated its first-stage recovery capability and engineering maturity."

Zhuque-3 broadly resembles the Falcon 9, which made its first landing way back in 2015 and now has more than 600 of them under its belt. Both feature a reusable booster and an expendable upper stage, and they're about the same height — 230 feet (70 meters) for the Falcon 9 and 216 feet (66 m) for Zhuque-3.

Their lifting power is similar as well. Zhuque-3 can haul about 40,350 pounds (18,300 kilograms) to low Earth orbit, while the Falcon 9's LEO payload capacity is 50,265 pounds (22,800 kg).

The two rockets use two very different fuels, however — a combination of liquid oxygen (LOX) and rocket-grade kerosene for the Falcon 9, compared to LOX and liquid methane for Zhuque-3. This "methalox" mixture is also used by Starship, the fully reusable megarocket that SpaceX is developing to help humanity settle the moon and Mars, among other spaceflight tasks.

LandSpace's Zhuque-3 rocket launches on its second-ever mission on Aug. 18, 2026. The flight was a success, and Zhuque-3's first stage returned to Earth for a landing — the first ever for a private Chinese orbital rocket. (Image credit: LandSpace)

Today's launch — which occurred from the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Pilot Zone in northwest China at 7:35 p.m. EDT (2335 GMT; 7:35 a.m. on Aug. 19 Beijing time) — was the second overall for the Zhuque-3. The rocket first flew on Dec. 2, 2025, on a mostly successful debut; Zhuque-3's upper stage reached orbit as planned, which is rare for a first flight.

LandSpace tried to bring the booster back for a touchdown that day as well, but the attempt failed. Zhuque-3 suffered "an abnormal combustion" as it neared the ground, according to the state-run outlet Xinhua (translation by Google), and ended up exploding near the designated landing pad.

Today's mission, however, was an unqualified success for the Zhuque-3: The rocket's upper stage delivered a satellite called Honghu 03, which was developed by Hongqing Technology, to its designated orbit, LandSpace wrote in another X post today.

MISSION SUCCESS | ZhuQue-3 Y2 Reusable Launch Vehicle Achieved Full Success in Orbital Insertion and First-Stage RecoveryOn August 19, 2026, at 07:35 (UTC+8), the ZhuQue-3 (ZQ-3) Y2 reusable launch vehicle lifted off from the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Pilot Zone.… pic.twitter.com/fshijOxgtcAugust 19, 2026

Zhuque-3 is part of a concerted Chinese push toward rocket reusability, an efficiency-boosting feature that has helped make the Falcon 9 the world's leading launcher by far. (The SpaceX rocket flew 165 times in 2025, roughly equalling the activity of all other orbital launchers combined.)

For example, CASC isn't just working on the Long March 10 line (which includes the 10A crew-carrying variant); its Long March 12A and 12B rockets will also have reusable first stages. The Long March 12A has lifted off once to date, in December 2025, and its debut was similar to that of Zhuque-3: The Long March 12A second stage reached orbit successfully, but its booster failed to stick the landing.

And then there are the private rockets. A number of Chinese companies in addition to LandSpace are working on vehicles with reusable first stages, including CAS Space, Deep Blue Aerospace, Galactic Energy, iSpace, Orienspace and Space Pioneer. So Chinese rocket landings may not be a novelty for much longer.

Ringed worlds seem to be a fertile source of science fiction material, whether it be in sci-fi master Larry Niven's circular alien constructs in his "Ringworld" novels, the spherical megastructures of "Halo's" video game universe — which just launched its "Campaign Evolved" remake of the original game for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S on July 28 — or the ringed orbital habitat for the ultra-rich depicted in director Neill Blomkamp's 2013 sci-fi flick, "Elysium."

Leave it to the funny folks at Hulu's "Futurama" to tap into that popular trope in the latest episode titled "Lords of the Ring," where the Planet Express crew crash-lands on a strange world whose shape resembles a colossal space ring.

This weird location is inhabited entirely by super-smart rats, and it's not long before Fry, Leela, Amy, Bender, Hermes, Zoidberg and Professor Farnsworth are embroiled in a mission to figure out how this all came to be. "Futurama" Season 14 just blasted off Aug. 3, so there's plenty of time to catch up with the zany far-future antics.

A scene from the new "Futurama" season 14 episode, "Lords of the Ring" (Image credit: Hulu)

"'Lords of the Ring' is absolutely loaded up with references and inspirations from classic sci-fi, even by our standards," showrunner David X. Cohen tells Space. "To begin with, the setting of the episode is a massive 'space ring' that creates its own artificial gravity as it rotates. I am a huge fan of space rings.

"The classic influence, of course, is the novel 'Ringworld' by Larry Niven, often cited as a prime example of the 'Big Dumb Object' genre of science fiction. It's a very memorable book, but the part you remember is the ring. If you have to pick one or the other, I'd recommend the 'Futurama' episode for more action."

Exclusive concept art for "Futurama's" latest episode, "Lords of the Ring" (Image credit: Hulu)

Another influential ring for series executive producer Cohen, and a particular favorite of episode writer Bill Odenkirk, is the elegant orbiting space station seen in Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" from 1968.

"I think in our earliest discussion of the episode he proposed something more like that, but it evolved as we pitched out the story from a small orbiting ring into a medium-sized big dumb space ring," he adds. "I need to mention that both Bill and I played a lot of 'Halo' back in the early 'Futurama' days and that surely lurked in the back of our minds.

"Aside from rings, the episode draws influence from 'Planet of the Apes.' If not for the whole ring aspect, we could have called it 'Planet of the Rats.' Several aspects of the episode, including the idea of forbidden ancient relics and the non-human mammal civilization, take inspiration from 'Planet of the Apes.' I guess it's an example of convergent evolution… all mammals in science fiction eventually evolve to run their own terrifying Planet-of-the-Whatever. And lastly... I'll mention there are some Easter-Egg references to the classic 'Rats of NIMH.' Keep an eye out!"

Gorgeous space imagery from this week's "Lords of the Ring" episode (Image credit: Hulu)

Spectacular visuals presented in this seriously geeky episode are another standout for Cohen, who claims it's one of his favorites of the new season.

"The director, Crystal Chesney Thompson, actually had pet rats, and she really brought this insane world to life," he notes. "The rat acting as they switch between animal and human behaviors is hilarious, the ring itself is one of the most glorious things ever seen in the series, and the stylized section depicting the mysterious backstory of the ring world is a classic. I hope our nerding out over the details comes through!"

"Futurama" Season 14 currently airs on Hulu, with new episodes arriving each Monday through Sept. 28, 2026. "Lords of the Ring" aired on August 17, so it's available to watch right now.

Two astronauts — including the first French woman in history to perform a spacewalk — worked outside of the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday (Aug 18), becoming temporary TV repairpersons. Just like what frequently happens on Earth, the work required more time than the "appointment" allowed, requiring a second visit to be scheduled.

NASA astronaut Anil Menon and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Sophie Adenot were tasked with the removal and replacement of a Space-to-Ground antenna that since November had ceased being able to track NASA's data relay satellites, rendering it unusable. A second antenna has been in use since, continuing the transmission of critical data and enabling high-speed communications with Mission Control Houston.

Spacewalk planners had allocated about six and a half hours for the work to be completed. The two Expedition 75 crewmates were successful in removing the failed Space-to-Ground antenna from its mount on the station's truss but ran into delays disconnecting its electrical connections and and locking down gimbal bolts, or pins, to secure the large dish assembly during its transport to its temporary stowage location.

"We got into this with the mindset that we wanted everything to go perfectly," said Menon as the spacewalk came to an end. "Things were a lot different than expected, but what I would say that I am really impressed with is that all of those contingencies were well thought out."

As such, flight controllers had the astronauts tether the failed antenna to the truss and waived them off installing the replacement antenna, leaving it for a future extravehicular activity (EVA) still to be scheduled. Mission managers will decide whether to add that task to a spacewalk already planned for next Tuesday (Aug. 25) or to leave it for a later outing.

"We are looking at times," radioed Mission Control to the spacewalkers. "We are going to go directly to the long-duration tie-down of this SGANT on the Z-1 truss."

NASA astronaut Anil Menon is maneuvered outside of the International Space Station by the Candarm 2 robotic arm, Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026. (Image credit: NASA)

Menon and Adenot began the spacewalk at 8:29 a.m. EDT (1229 GMT) when they switched their spacesuits to battery power. Their EVA ended once they were back inside the U.S. Quest airlock and re-pressurization began at 2:52 p.m. EDT (1852 GMT).

Their total time logged on this spacewalk was 6 hours and 23 minutes.

Tuesday's spacewalk was the 282nd in support of ISS assembly, maintenance and upgrades. It was Menon's second EVA since making his first outing with fellow NASA astronaut Jessica Meir on Aug. 6, increasing his total spacewalking time to 12 hours and 50 minutes.

It was the first time that Sophie Adenot ventured into the vacuum of space, making her the first female and fifth citizen of France to perform a spacewalk after Jean-Loup Chrétien, Jean-Pierre Haigneré, Philippe Perrin, and Thomas Pesquet.

"What a day!" said Adenot. "My deepest gratitude to everyone who made this possible — the pioneers who came before us, but also the incredible teams working behind the scenes today."

This was the fifth spacewalk conducted out of the International Space Station this year, the second for Expedition 75 and the 97th using U.S. extravehicular mobility unit (EMU) spacesuits at the space station.

The seas have been kind, or at least kinder than expected, to SpaceX's Starship spacecraft, as it's been tugged through the Indian Ocean to friendlier tides.

Ship 40, the upper stage that flew on Starship's Flight 13 test launch, performed the vehicle's first successful intact ocean splashdown at the end of its mission on July 24, after lifting off from SpaceX's Starbase facility in South Texas. The spacecraft landed in the Indian Ocean as planned and has since become the focus of the SpaceX Recovery team, tasked with hauling it to port.

Over the past 24 days, that team faced "challenging conditions and increasingly rough seas," SpaceX said in an Aug. 7 post on X, and at one point was not expected to be successful in its efforts to haul Ship 40 safely to shore. Despite the odds, however, they have now reached calmer waters. The massive, 171-foot-tall (52 meters) spacecraft now floats just offshore of Christmas Island, awaiting inspection. "A team of SpaceX engineers is on their way to conduct additional analysis on the vehicle in calmer waters before attempting to return it to Starbase," the company said in an Aug. 18 update.

SpaceX Ship 40 from Starship's 13th test flight to calm waters off the shore of Christmas Island. (Image credit: SpaceX)SpaceXSpaceX

Christmas Island is an Australian territory about 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) northwest of Broome. Most of the island is a national park, and it's famous for its 40 million or so red land crabs, which migrate en masse to the sea to spawn in one of the world's great wildlife spectacles.

Flight 13 was the second launch for the Version 3 (V3) design of SpaceX's towering Starship rocket. V3's debut on Flight 12 in May didn't quite go as planned — engine issues after stage separation caused the vehicle's Super Heavy booster to crash into the Gulf of Mexico instead of splashing down softly as intended. Ship 39 executed its landing burn above the Indian Ocean just like Ship 40 did, but Ship 39 exploded after toppling into the water — the expected outcome for Ship during Starship test flights. Ship 40 was the first one to survive the splashdown intact.

The fact that Ship 40 didn't explode has given SpaceX the unexpected opportunity to study the spacecraft up close. The company's iterative design process has led to the introduction of incremental improvements for each progressive Starship launch. Ship 40 is the first upper stage that has flown in space and returned in one piece, and it therefore provides a previously unstudied article for evaluation as SpaceX works to perfect the spacecraft's aerodynamics, hydraulics, heat tile efficiency and overall design.

After approx. 24 days at sea, the SpaceX Recovery team successfully guided Starship to a location just off the coast of Christmas Island. A team of SpaceX engineers is on their way to conduct additional analysis on the vehicle in calmer waters before attempting to return it to… pic.twitter.com/h6YYWb0LT5August 18, 2026

Starship is SpaceX's super heavy-lift launch vehicle designed to be the world's most powerful rocket, and the first capable of full reusability. Starship's expected readiness for operational missions has been a shifting goalpost since its first test launch in April 2023, and there are still some big milestones that SpaceX needs to reach in order to avoid rippling delays through other parts of the space industry.

NASA has contracted SpaceX to build a version of Starship to land astronauts on the moon as a part of the Artemis IV mission in 2028, and to fly a compatible V3 Starship to practice rendezvous and docking maneuvers with the Orion spacecraft in Earth orbit on Artemis III next year. Starship still has several boxes to check on NASA's qualifications list before it will be certified to fly astronauts, and a significant one of the those, reaching orbit, may be just on the horizon.

SpaceX is already preparing Ship 41 and its Super Heavy booster for Flight 14. During that flight, the company plans to not only deliver the upper stage to orbit but also to return Ship to Starbase for recovery using the "Mechazilla" launch tower's chopstick arms — a major step toward Starship's full reuse capability. SpaceX hopes to launch Flight 14 before the end of August, CEO Elon Musk said during the company's first earnings call earlier this month.

SpaceX has hit the century mark for the third year in a row.

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base on Wednesday (Aug. 19) at 12:01 a.m. EDT (0401 GMT; 9:01 p.m. on Aug. 18 local time).

It was the 97th Falcon 9 launch of the year and the 100th mission of 2026 overall for SpaceX.

The Falcon 9's first stage rests on the deck of a drone ship after its successful landing on Aug. 19, 2026. (Image credit: SpaceX)

The mission is carrying 24 of SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites to low Earth orbit. If all goes according to plan, the Falcon 9's upper stage will deploy them there 61.5 minutes after liftoff.

The rocket's first stage, meanwhile, came back to Earth about 8.5 minutes into flight as planned, landing in the Pacific Ocean on the drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You." It was the 12th mission for this particular booster, which is designated B1097.

B1097 is no stranger to milestone flights. During a Starlink launch this past April, for example, the booster performed the 600th landing of an orbital rocket in SpaceX's illustrious history.

Previous Booster B1097 launches

Sentinel-6B | Twilight | NROL-172 | Transporter-17 | 7 Starlink missions

The vast majority of SpaceX's launches this year — at the moment, 74 of them — have been devoted to building out the Starlink megaconstellation, which currently consists of nearly 11,000 operational satellites.

One of SpaceX's three non-Falcon 9 launches of 2026 was performed by its Falcon Heavy rocket. The other two were suborbital test flights of Starship, the giant, fully reusable vehicle that SpaceX is developing to help humanity settle the moon and Mars, among other tasks.

SpaceX first topped 100 launches in 2024, when it conducted a total of 138 missions (132 by Falcon 9, two by Falcon Heavy and four by Starship). In 2025, the company flew a total of 170 times (165 by Falcon 9 and five by Starship).

Such numbers will jump dramatically in the coming years, if all goes to plan. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has said the company wants to launch Starship multiple times per day, boosting annual tallies to 1,000 or so. Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy aren't part of this longer-term picture; SpaceX wants to phase them out and have Starship shoulder the load.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 12:20 a.m. ET on Aug. 19 with news of successful launch and rocket landing.

Is it a rocket car? Tearing across the Utah desert at over 400 mph (644 kph), a hydrogen-powered car has set a new land speed record.

Wing Commander Andy Green, a retired British Royal Air Force fighter pilot, just set a new world land speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats in the JCB Hydromax vehicle. On two different runs on Aug. 11, the car went 400.623 mph (644.740 kph) and then 412.135 mph (663.267 kph), which averages out to 406.320 mph (653.909 kph).

That's the fastest that any car with a hydrogen internal combustion engine has traveled. "It was an amazing experience," Green told Space.com on Aug. 12 about his record-breaking drives.

"Anything above about 350 miles an hour [563 kph], we'd have gone away really pleased," he added. "It is performing better. It was more reliable than we expected, and it has blown away the hydrogen record. It's in every way a real thrill for all of us yesterday to see that happen."

Green is no stranger to breaking records. In 1997, he drove a jet-powered car 763.035 mph (1,227.985 kph, or Mach 1.02), setting a new land speed record while also becoming the first person to break the sound barrier on land.

About 20 years ago, Green also set the land speed record for a diesel-powered vehicle, going over 350 mph (563 kph). Until now, the fastest hydrogen-powered vehicle didn't come close to that, topping out at 303 mph (488 kph). But this new record shows the promising capability of hydrogen-powered engines on land.

The hydrogen engine doesn't produce carbon dioxide like a traditional gasoline or diesel engine does. And while it's not the most traditional car engine on Earth, hydrogen has powered some rocket engines for decades. For example, NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) launcher, which has two successful Artemis moon mission liftoffs under its belt, burns liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. (The SLS core stage employs RS-25 engines, which also powered NASA's now-retired space shuttle.)

The JCB Hydromax isn't exactly a rocket on wheels, but it does demonstrate an incredible technological feat. And the "rocket car" probably has more in common with an actual rocket than we might think. For example, while it's not as fast as a rocket, pushing a vehicle to its limits requires many of the same preparations.

"There is a countdown and a checklist," Green told Space.com. "And several times we've had to stop the countdown, reheat something, adjust something, restart the countdown and launch it off the start line."

However, despite its speed, hydrogen-powered engine and countdown clock, this "rocket car" isn't going to space anytime soon.

"These are built for the construction industry," Green said about the engines. "They normally kick out 74 horsepower," he added, so they put "two of them in a race car to show how tough, how adaptable [and] how capable they are."

On Aug. 18, 1868, a French astronomer named Pierre Jules César Janssen discovered helium while observing a total solar eclipse in India.

During the eclipse, Janssen was using a spectroscope to look at the spectrum of light emitted by the sun. This tool allows scientists to determine what elements they're looking at. While observing solar prominences during the eclipse, Janssen noticed a bright yellow line that didn't correspond to any elements that was not yet discovered on Earth.

In the months that followed, English astronomer Norman Lockyer independently observed the same spectral line and concluded that it came from a previously unknown element, which was named helium after Helios, the Greek god of the sun.

Thirteen years later, the Italian physicist Luigi Palmieri found the first evidence of helium on Earth, in the lava of Mount Vesuvius.

Totality during the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024 (composite image). (Image credit: Space.com / Josh Dinner)Why it mattered

The detection of helium during the 1868 eclipse was the first time spectroscopy revealed an element in an astronomical object that had not yet been discovered on Earth, and highlights why spectroscopy is one of astronomy’s most powerful tools.

Like every other element on the periodic table, helium has innumerable applications, including some that are especially important to space and spaceflight. Scientists eventually learned that helium is the second-most abundant element in the universe (after hydrogen). And the fusion of hydrogen into helium is the process that powers stars like our sun. Helium gas is commonly used to pressurize and purge rocket propellant systems, and liquid helium is often used to cool sensitive scientific instruments on spacecraft.

The periodic table of the elements. (Image credit: Humdan/Shutterstock)

The "Black Eye Galaxy" is captured in this new composite image from the Hubble Space Telescope and JWST. (Image credit: NASA, CSA, ESA, F. Belfiore (European Southern Observatory – Germany), J. Lee (Space Telescope Science Institute), A. Leroy (The Ohio State University), and D. Thilker (The Johns Hopkins University); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America))

Sometimes, incredibly powerful space telescopes work together to accomplish amazing things. Recently, observations made by both the James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble were combined in a composite image that shows the incredible nature of the "Black Eye Galaxy," more formally known as Messier 64.

What is it?

The Black Eye Galaxy is a strange spiral galaxy located 17 million light-years from Earth, in the constellation Coma Berenices, a name that means "Berenice's Hair" in Latin.

Discovered in 1779, the Black Eye Galaxy is fairly isolated from other galaxies and is known for its hypnotizing "stare." This look is created by the galaxy's internal, swirling motion. However, unlike many other spiral galaxies, the gas in the outer reaches of this one rotates in the opposite direction to the gas and stars closer to its center, creating an especially unusual motion.

To capture this incredible composite view of the galaxy, astronomers combined near and mid-infrared wavelength observations made by JWST and ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared observations made by Hubble.

Why is it incredible?

As we look forward to observations from NASA's upcoming flagship space observer, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, this collaborative effort shows how such powerful instruments don't replace one another; rather, they bring different capabilities to the table and can complement each other.

And, while this new image is the result of a team effort of cutting edge-technology, the Black Eye Galaxy is also a favorite target for backyard astronomers because it can often be spotted in small telescopes.

The night sky is not an impenetrable “blanket of stars.” There is depth and detail that can be navigated and known, probed and plundered for rewards — and the best way to do all of that is with a manual telescope. Sure, you can get a motorized computerized “go-to” telescope and even one of the best smart telescopes that self-align and do all the work for you. Arguably, they also take much of the reward and leave you none the wiser. Can users of smart telescopes find Polaris, the North Star? Probably not. Do they know where the fabulous images of nebulae they produce actually come from? It’s doubtful.

Manual telescopes don’t find celestial objects for you — you find them yourself. However, it’s the only way to build sky literacy. Observing manually connects you to a long tradition of stargazers who learned the patterns of the sky by heart.

The learning curve can be steep, even with one of the best beginner telescopes. Knowing where to point a manual telescope is a challenge for beginners. With narrow fields of view, it’s easy to miss even bright targets unless you understand where objects are, how to navigate the sky and how to move your telescope.

All telescopes use lenses and/or mirrors to collect and focus light. There are several types of telescope — the main two being refractors and reflectors — as well as Dobsonians and catadioptrics (Schmidt-Cassegrains and Maksutov-Cassegrains). Let’s assume you already have one of the best telescopes. How does it move? There are two mount types — alt-azimuth and equatorial — each of which moves differently and has its own learning curve.

To lessen any confusion, here’s everything a beginner needs to know about observing the night sky with a manual telescope, and a glossary of telescope terms.

1. Understand the night sky

A reflector telescope is ideal for observing deep-sky objects. (Image credit: Getty)

The night sky is not static. Thinks of it as a celestial sphere surrounding a rotating globe; as Earth rotates, the stars appear to move across the sky — rising in the east and setting in the west, just like the sun — which is why objects drift out of a telescope’s field of view over time.

Since it’s not static, the celestial sphere requires two coordinate systems to help you understand this movement and find objects in the night sky:

Altitude and azimuth: typically shortened to Alt-Az, these describe where something is based on your position, with altitude meaning how far up in the sky an object is, and azimuth, where it is from left to right.

Right ascension and declination: typically shortened to RA/Dec, these are fixed coordinates that rotate with the celestial sphere, similar to longitude and latitude on Earth.

2. Manual telescope mounts and how to use them

This Skywatcher 200P is a powerful tool for surveying the night sky. (Image credit: Josh Dury)

A mount allows you to manually move and position a telescope. They come in two primary flavors: alt-azimuth (alt-az) and equatorial (EQ). However, pointing a telescope at the night sky and hoping you hit on something will not work because a telescope’s narrow field of view makes even very bright objects hard to see unless they’re precisely centered. Here’s why both mounts exist and how best to use them.

Alt-Azimuth mounts: Best for beginners and found on almost all low-cost models, these are simple (alt-az) mounts that move a scope up and down and left and right. Intuitive, easy to use and quick to set up, the constant adjustments required to track an object make it less accurate. That said, you could easily use an alt-az mount your entire life and never notice.

Locate a bright object, such as the moon, a planet or a bright star like Rigel, Vega or Arcturus, then use the finder scope or red-dot finder to roughly align the telescope.

Begin with your lowest magnification eyepiece‚ typically 25mm on a beginner’s model, for the widest field of view. Once your target is centered, you can switch to higher magnification, such as 10mm.

Move the telescope ever so slightly every few minutes to keep the object centred. If the object is drifting through the field of view from left to right, place it on the far left to keep it in view for as long as possible.

Use a manual telescope as a stargazing tool. (Image credit: Getty Images)

Equatorial mounts: A step-up choice, EQ mounts follow the sky’s natural motion. With one axis tilted to align with Polaris, the North Star (in the Northern Hemisphere), an EQ mount hence moves in sync with Earth’s rotation. While EQ mounts allow smoother tracking, particularly at high magnification, they are nevertheless complicated (and somewhat intimidating) to set up and typically include a counterweight, making them heavy and more expensive.

Understand that perfect polar alignment is not necessary for visual observing — getting as close as you can is fine.

In the Northern Hemisphere, point the telescope mount roughly north and set the mount’s tilt to match your location's latitude, using Polaris, the North Star, as a rough guide to true north.

Once aligned, track objects with a single slow-motion control, which keeps them centered for much longer and makes high-magnification viewing much easier.

3. Using a manual telescope for the first time

Once you've mastered viewing the night sky, astrophotography could be your next step. (Image credit: Getty Images)

Taking a telescope outside for the first time is as much about learning about the night sky as it is about your telescope. Assemble it indoors in daylight and test your finder scope or red dot finder on a distant object. Once it’s dark, place the lowest-power eyepiece (say, 25 mm) on your telescope, which will give you the widest field of view. Here is what — and what not — to do:

Standing still is how to get cold, so you’ll likely need to dress more warmly than you think.

Let your eyes adjust to the dark (which takes about 20 minutes), then preserve your night vision by using a red flashlight and avoiding smartphone screens (though some stargazing apps have a red light mode).

Be unambitious: Set aside a few hours to learn the absolute basics of using your finderscope, pointing the scope and centering and tracking objects.

Be patient, resisting the temptation to use too much magnification too quickly.

Don’t give up on faint objects, using the averted vision technique (looking to the side of an object) to help your eyes collect more light.

4. How to find objects with a manual telescope

You can minimise light pollution by seeking out countryside, fields and other less inhabited areas. (Image credit: Damian Peach)

You’re a stargazer interested in the night sky, not telescopes. Look at the night sky. Find a bright anchor star or constellation — maybe the moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Vega, Sirius, Orion’s Belt or the Big Dipper — then, using a simple star chart or astronomy app in night mode, trace a visual path to your target. Don’t feel bad about just stargazing for 15 minutes while you figure out where you are — that’s why you’re here. Know where you’re going to move the telescope before you touch it. Navigating from bright stars to fainter objects is how to be a successful manual observer. With practice, even the faint fuzzies will be within your reach; many manual observers with moderate experience can tell you exactly where, say, the Andromeda Galaxy is in the night sky, even though they can’t actually see it with their own eyes.

With just a few sessions, your skills will improve quickly, and you’ll recognize stars, constellations and patterns more easily — and every object you get in the crosshairs of your manual telescope will feel like your own discovery.

A quick telescope glossary

There are some terms every telescope user needs to know to appreciate how they work and why they’re designed as they are.

Term

Description

Aperture

The diameter of a telescope’s primary lens or mirror. A larger aperture means more light.

Eyepiece

The lens you look through; swap between them to change magnification.

Field of view

The visible area in the eyepiece; wider is better for finding objects.

Finder scope

The small, low-power scope mounted on the side of the telescope tube, which helps aim your telescope (also called a red dot finder).

Focal length

The distance light travels inside the telescope, which affects magnification.

Magnification

The mistaken obsession among beginners. Technically, it’s the focal length of the telescope divided by the focal length of the eyepiece. However, higher magnification isn’t always better, especially when you’re trying to locate and track an object. Start wide, then zoom in.

Slow-motion controls

Knobs or cables that let you finely adjust the telescope’s aim once you’ve roughly located an object.

Astronauts have long struggled with constipation in space. Now, scientists may finally understand why.

A new study of 52 astronauts who lived aboard the International Space Station (ISS) suggests that microgravity may slow the movement of food through the intestines, changing how gut bacteria break down nutrients. The findings could ultimately help researchers develop dietary strategies to keep astronauts' digestive systems running smoothly during future missions to the moon and Mars — while offering new clues about digestive problems here on Earth, according to a statement from the University of Copenhagen.

Constipation is a common problem among astronauts, but exactly what happens inside the gut during spaceflight has remained less clear. To investigate, researchers from the University of Copenhagen and NASA analyzed blood samples collected from astronauts before, during and after missions aboard the space station.

"We see changes in astronauts' blood samples that indicate that the gut bacteria begin to ferment protein to a greater extent than usual within weeks after the astronauts arrive in space, and this change continues until they are back on Earth," Giorgia La Barbera, co-lead author of the study and associate professor at the Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, said in the statement.

The team used a technique called metabolomics to measure small molecules circulating in the blood, providing a biochemical snapshot of how the astronauts' bodies — and the microbes living inside them — were responding to spaceflight.

In total, the researchers analyzed 488 plasma samples from 52 astronauts who spent between two and nine months aboard the orbiting lab between 2006 and 2018. They identified changes in around 40 circulating compounds during spaceflight, including several metabolites produced when bacteria in the colon ferment proteins. Those compounds increased while the astronauts were in space, suggesting food was spending more time moving through their intestines, according to the statement.

Normally, bacteria in the colon ferment fiber and carbohydrates for energy. But when digestion slows, those carbohydrates can become depleted, causing microbes to break down more proteins instead and produce different metabolites that can enter the bloodstream. The changes appeared shortly after astronauts entered space and largely subsided within days of their return to Earth, providing biochemical evidence that digestion slows in space. Differences in diet, including caffeine, fish and fat intake, accounted for less than one-third of the metabolic changes, suggesting diet alone couldn't explain the effect.

"The lack of gravity in space probably causes food to move more slowly through the intestine, and this fits with the fact that we are seeing signs of increased protein fermentation," Henrik Roager, co-author of the study and also an associate professor at the Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, said in the statement. "This may also help explain constipation in astronauts."

However, while the researchers did not directly measure how quickly food moved through the astronauts' digestive systems, the metabolic changes they observed suggest that it moved more slowly through the gut.

The findings could become increasingly important as astronauts spend months — or eventually years — away from Earth. Beyond the discomfort of constipation, increased protein fermentation can produce compounds such as ammonia and hydrogen sulfide, and the researchers say some of the metabolites associated with this process have been linked to other negative health effects.

One potential countermeasure may be relatively simple: more fiber. The team suggests increasing astronauts' intake of slowly fermented carbohydrates, which could give gut microbes more carbohydrates to consume and reduce their reliance on protein fermentation.

Understanding how microgravity affects digestion and gut bacteria could help keep astronauts healthy on increasingly long missions to the moon and Mars, while also offering new clues for treating digestive problems on Earth by revealing how slower movement through the gut changes microbial activity.

Similar studies of astronaut health in microgravity have also yielded insights for people back on Earth. Bone loss is one prominent example. Astronauts lose bone density much faster in microgravity than people typically do on Earth, and efforts to prevent that loss have helped scientists better understand osteoporosis and age-related bone loss. Spaceflight research has also offered insights into muscle loss, cardiovascular health and immune-system changes associated with aging and disease.

Their findings were published June 29 in the journal Nature Communications.

The Aug. 12 total solar eclipse didn't only plunge millions of people across Greenland, Iceland and Spain into a false twilight — a fleet of spacecraft orbiting our planet managed to capture the magic, too.

August's total solar eclipse occurred as the moon passed directly between the sun and Earth during its monthly new moon phase. Those lucky enough to be in the path of totality watched on in awe as the moon progressively swallowed the light of the sun, ultimately revealing our star's tenuous atmosphere against a prematurely darkened evening sky.

It was a show of truly epic proportions — and maybe one whose scale can be particularly appreciated when viewed through the mechanical eyes of NASA and European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft that observe our planet and sun from afar. Read on to see some breathtaking views of the Aug. 12 total solar eclipse from orbit.

The Aug. 12 total solar eclipse, seen from space

Our first view comes courtesy of NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, who captured the moon taking a bite out of the sun from the Russian segment of the International Space Station (ISS) on Aug. 12.

The partially eclipsed sun as photographed by NASA astronaut Jessica Meir from the Russian segment of the International Space Station on Aug. 12. (Image credit: NASA/Jessica Meir via X)

"Given the location of the @Space_Station at the time of the total solar eclipse today, we saw only a partial eclipse, with a peak of around 18% sun coverage," Meir said in an X post accompanying the photographs.

Given the location of the @Space_Station at the time of the total solar eclipse today, we saw only a partial eclipse, with a peak of around 18% sun coverage. Here’s how it looked from a window in the Russian segment about 45 minutes ago. Photo of the sun taken with a Nikon Z9,… pic.twitter.com/BUrMQVR808August 12, 2026

Around the same time, photographer Joel Kowsky managed to line up a beautiful shot of the ISS as it passed across the face of our eclipsed star in the skies over Hodgdon, Maine.

This gif shows the ISS' silhouette moving across the sun's face during a partial solar eclipse on Aug. 12, 2026. (Image credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky)

The dual spacecraft of the European Space Agency's Proba-3 mission also captured a lovely (though largely redundant) view of the moon moving to occult the sun's disk, which, in this case, was already perfectly hidden behind the lead spacecraft's coronograph!

Both Proba-3 spacecraft are designed to fly in perfect formation in line with the sun. The "Occulter" spacecraft, closest to the sun, is equipped with a large sunshield, or coronagraph. This coronagraph blocks the sun's disk for the more distant member in the Proba-3 formation, allowing that spacecraft to image our star's atmosphere in incredible detail.

The sun's disk is pictured hidden behind the coronograph of the lead Proba-3 spacecraft with the moon's silhouette above, just hours before the Aug. 12 total solar eclipse. (Image credit: ESA/Proba-3/ASPIICS under CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO, alterations made in Canva by Anthony Wood.)

Thanks to their unique setup, for a brief moment on Aug. 12, the Proba-3 spacecraft recorded a rare double eclipse, as the moon and its artificial mimic simultaneously hid light emanating from our parent star.

Sitting about 22,370 miles (36,000 kilometers) above Earth's surface, ESA's Meteosat Third Generation Imager Satellite (MGT-I1) caught a spectacular view of the moon's shadow darkening our planet.

Solar eclipse as seen from space! From its vantage point in space, the Meteosat Third Generation Imager satellite (MTG-I1) captured the Moon’s dark shadow as it passed over Earth’s surface – converging with the advancing twilight shadow as dusk fell over Europe.… pic.twitter.com/dAQVyuXiIPAugust 13, 2026

The moon's shadow can be seen arcing south in the satellite imagery, before eventually combining with the advancing terminator line, which heralded the transition from day to night wherever it passed.

That same shadow was observed on Aug. 12 by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's GOES-19 satellite as it kept watch over Earth from its perch in geostationary orbit.

This #FullDiskFriday, we revisit the #totalsolareclipse that @NOAA’s #GOESEast (#GOES19)

Sophie Adenot will make spaceflight history today (Aug. 18).

The European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut will become the first French woman ever to conduct a spacewalk, an activity she'll undertake with NASA astronaut Anil Menon.

The duo are scheduled to step outside the International Space Station (ISS) for a 6.5-hour excursion today at around 8:35 a.m. EDT (1235 GMT). You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA. Coverage starts at 7 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT).

Sophie Adenot is part of the European Space Agency's 2022 astronaut class. (Image credit: ESA)

Adenot and Menon will "replace a space-to-ground antenna on the orbital complex," NASA officials wrote in a spacewalk preview.

"The antenna is a critical communications link NASA uses to transmit data, enabling high-speed communications between the Mission Control Center in Houston and the space station," they added.

This will be the second spacewalk for Menon; his first one, conducted with fellow NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, occurred on Aug. 6. During that extravehicular activity (EVA), a carbon dioxide sensor on Menon's spacesuit gave "an unexpected data reading," NASA officials wrote in an Aug. 7 update.

The sensor returned to normal after Menon doffed the suit, but NASA took some extra time to make sure there was no serious issue. As a result, the agency pushed his second spacewalk back a few days — from the originally planned Aug. 13 to today.

Today's spacewalk will be the 282nd overall in the long history of the ISS. Menon, who reached orbit on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on July 14, will be "crewmember 1" on the EVA. Adenot — a member of SpaceX's Crew-12 mission, which reached the orbiting lab in February — will be "crewmember 2."

Adenot won't be the first French person overall to conduct an EVA. That distinction goes to Jean-Loup Chrétien, who performed a spacewalk outside the then-Soviet Union's Mir space station in 1988.

Other male French astronauts, including Philippe Perrin and Thomas Pesquet, later spacewalked outside the ISS. Pesquet also became the first French person to command an ISS mission, taking the reins in October 2021.

The Hubble Space Telescope has discovered evidence that our galaxy experienced a significant collision and merger with a dwarf galaxy 11.8 billion years ago.

Mergers between galaxies are one of the main ways in which galaxies can grow. However, while we can witness mergers taking place in other galaxies, figuring out our Milky Way galaxy's history requires painstaking detective work. Even now, the story is only partly known.

"Our home is the Milky Way galaxy, but we do not know how our house was built," Davide Massari of the Astrophysics and Space Science Observatory of Bologna in Italy said in a statement. Massari is lead author of a paper describing the discovery of an ancient galactic merger. "In this paper we discover where the first significant batch of bricks came from: a dwarf galaxy that we call LKH."

LKH stands for Low-energy–Kraken–Heracles, which is an obtuse reference to three earlier research papers that tangled with the idea of mergers early in our galaxy's history.

In recent years, one other significant merger has come to light, which is a collision with a galaxy referred to as the Gaia–Sausage–Enceladus (GSE) galaxy about 10 billion years ago. The GSE had its own family of globular star clusters that became integrated with the Milky Way's own globular clusters during the collision.

Now, Massari's team have discovered a third population of globular clusters that do not seem to be native to the Milky Way, nor to have belonged to the GSE galaxy. Instead, they seem to have arrived 11.8 billion years ago, which is before the GSE merger.

"Thanks to the high resolution and depth of Hubble imaging, we could measure the age and the metal content of these clusters with unprecedented precision," said astronomer Chiara Zerbinati of the University of Bologna, who is a co-author on the paper. Metals are astronomer-speak for elements heavier than the hydrogen and helium that formed in the Big Bang, so they include the likes of oxygen and carbon as well as iron and aluminum.

"Coupled with measurements from [the European Space Agency mission] Gaia, this made it possible to distinguish a population of globular clusters that are different from the others," said Zerbinati. "These are the clusters that were born in LKH and they tell us when that galaxy was devoured by ours, and how massive it was."

Based on the number and mass of imported globular clusters, the team calculated that LKH had a total mass of 500 million times the mass of our sun. This is only slightly more massive than the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy (approximately 400 million solar masses), which the Milky Way is currently cannibalizing and an order of magnitude less massive than the Small Magellanic Cloud. However, 11.8 billion years ago, which is just two billion years after the Big Bang, our Milky Way galaxy was much smaller and LKH would have contributed a sizable chunk of mass, in terms of stars, gas and dark matter, to the Milky Way.

The discovery of the merger adds an important new event to the Milky Way's history, one that would have undoubtedly influenced the evolution of our galaxy. For example, the collision could have spurred a fresh burst of star formation, helping the Milky Way to grow, while the chemistry of the stars from LKH will have impacted the Milky Way's overall chemical evolution as those stars died and passed their remains into the interstellar medium to be reborn in new stars.

"Some past studies have argued that the earliest phases of our galaxy's evolution were defined by stars born only in our galaxy," said Massari. "Here, we have shown that stars born in external galaxies also need to be considered."

The discovery of the merger with LKH was reported on Aug. 17 in the journal Nature Astronomy.

China just completed not one but two space missions, less than a week after a Long March 7A rocket explosion briefly grounded its fleet.

The state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) returned to flight with the launch of a Long March 12 rocket from the Hainan Commercial Space Launch Site in Wenchang. The rocket lifted off on Aug. 16 at 12:10 a.m. EDT (0410 GMT; 12:10 p.m. local time in China) and delivered a stack of 24 internet-beaming satellites into low Earth orbit (LEO).

It was the first launch since China's Long March 7A exploded mid-flight on Aug. 10. Footage of that mission showed the Long March 7A's fairing section and the upper portion of the launch vehicle bending backward about 85 seconds after liftoff, resulting in the total loss of the rocket and its payload, the Zhongxing-4B communications satellite.

China's Long March 12 rocket lifted off with a stack of 24 internet satellites on Aug. 16, 2024. (Image credit: CASC/Hu Zhipeng)

Less than 24 hours after the successful Long March 12 mission, and about 1,300 miles (2,100 kilometers) north of the Wenchang launch site, a Long March 2C rocket lifted off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, in Shanxi province. The launch occurred on Aug. 16 at 11:02 p.m. EDT (0302 GMT and 11:02 a.m. local time in China on Aug. 17), and delivered the "SEO" satellite for the United Arab Emirates to its planned orbit, according to the China National Space Administration.

Of the pair launched over the weekend, the Long March 12 is much more similar to the Long March 7A; the two stand 203 feet (62 meters) and 197 feet (60 m) tall, respectively. But the two rockets are designed with different purposes. The slightly wider Long March 12 is a two-stage rocket optimized for delivering relatively heavy payloads to LEO and sun-synchronous orbits, while the three-stage Long March 7A is designed for higher-altitude missions to geostationary transfer orbit and beyond.

In contrast, the Long March 2C stands only about 141 feet (43 m) tall. The two-stage rocket is used primarily for smaller payloads to LEO, with a lifting capacity of only about 3.9 tons, and has a long list of launches dating back to 1982. The newest of the three, the Long March 12, was introduced in 2024 and has now launched seven missions — all successful. Last week was the Long March 7A's second failure in a total of 18 launches since the rocket's debut in 2020.

CASC hasn't provided an update on the Long March 7A incident, other than a statement indicating that the cause is under investigation. As that continues, China has more launches on the horizon.

The second flight of the Zhuque-3 rocket, a launch vehicle designed for reusability from Chinese company Landspace, is scheduled to launch Tuesday evening (Aug. 18), and a Long March 5 rocket carrying the Chang'e 7 robotic mission to the moon's South Pole is expected to lift off on Sunday (Aug. 23).