astronomy

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope arrived June 21, at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, marking the start of final prelaunch preparations before liftoff later this summer. After teams completed integration and testing on the observatory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, they loaded Roman into a protective and environmentally […] The post NASA’s Next …

Earth is like an oasis in space. But this is by no means a given. It took a series of unlikely coincidences for life to originate on Earth.

XI’AN — Chinese scientists have taken a major step toward building a space solar power station, a giant power plant in space that could one day send energy back to Earth or to spacecraft. A research team from Xidian University in Northwest China’s Shaanxi province has made significant progress on the Sun Chasing project, or […]

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying 24 Starlink satellites lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Sunday, June 21, 2026.

A decades-long search has revealed signs of a subtle outflow from the Milky Way’s central black hole. Something has been missing from the Milky Way’s central black hole. For more than half a century, astronomers searched for a telltale wind that theory said must be blowing from Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the supermassive black hole [...]

University of Florida researchers are exploring how lasers could help astronauts build structures on the moon using materials already available there, including lunar soil transformed into glass. The work, led by Victoria M. Miller, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering and researcher with the UF Astraeus Space Institute, recently completed […]

A rare object from another star triggered an unprecedented search for technosignatures, drawing astronomers into one of the most intriguing investigations of the year.

A mysterious light-absorbing substance on Titan and Pluto could reveal hidden chemical processes and prebiotic pathways in the outer solar system.

Approximately 20,000 people descended upon Stonehenge in the early hours of Sunday morning to mark the summer solstice at the ancient Wiltshire monument. The crowd assembled around the prehistoric site's heel stone, which serves as the entrance to the structure, to observe the sunrise at 4.52am on what is the longest day of the year in Britain. The astronomical solstice itself was due to take pla…

Stonehenge, the infamous stone circle on Salisbury Plain, U.K., dates to around 2500 B.C.E. The monument is aligned so that if you are standing at the center of the ring on the summer soltice (which can be June 20, 21, or 22), the Sun rises over the Heel Stone; solstice celebrations are believed to have Continue reading "June 21, ca. 2500 BCE: Summering at Stonehenge" The post June 21, ca. 2500 B…

New research has failed to rule out self-annihilating dark matter as the source of a hotly debated gamma-ray emission known as the Galactic Center Excess radiating from the heart of the Milky Way.

A new James Webb telescope snap shows off the glowing gas, sculpted jets and newborn stars lurking within the giant cosmic cloud OMC-2, located in the Sword of Orion.

Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  June 20: Libra’s Ghost Cluster The summer solstice occurs at 4:25 A.M. EDT. This is the time the Sun reaches its northernmost point in the Northern Hemisphere sky, which also means our star takes its longest path across this hemisphere’s sky on Continue reading "The Sky Today on Sunday, June 21: A summertime lineup" The …

The setup: Two astronauts A and B are in free fall toward a black hole, while an external observer E watches. After A has crossed the event horizon, B (who has not yet crossed it) decides to turn back ...

The Bullet Cluster is one of the most famous objects in astronomy. For years, many scientists have considered it one of the strongest pieces of evidence for the existence of dark matter, the mysterious substance thought to make up most of the matter in the universe. However, a new study suggests there may be another […] The post Iconic cosmic collision challenges long-held ideas about dark matter…

NASA’s Swift space observatory is falling out of orbit. Can a commercial company build a spacecraft in nine months to save it?

Most of the mass in galaxies consists of stuff we cannot see. According to current...

I apologize if I'm posting in the wrong part of the forum, I'm new. I have started find cosmology interesting. I have started to learn about black holes but I don't understand something that might obvious and I'm not getting it. Why is/was there an assumption that things that enter a blackhole... Read more

I plan a hard SF story and a scene where a fleet intends to capture an asteroid mine. AI ruled out, that society completely get rid of anything more advanced than a calculator (and became a tyranny). They still have advanced technology developed before the AI rebellion. Destroy space colonies... Read more