On September 14, 2015, a signal arrived on Earth, carrying information about a pair of remote black holes that had spiraled together and merged. The signal had traveled about 1.3 billion years to reach us at the speed of light—but... Continue Reading →
The dark, inner shadow of planet Earth is called the umbra. Shaped like a cone extending into space, it has a circular cross section most easily seen during a lunar eclipse. And on the night of September 7/8 the Full Moon passed near the... Continue Reading →
It is one of the largest nebulas on the sky -- why isn't it better known? Roughly the same angular size as the Andromeda Galaxy, the Great Lacerta Nebula can be found toward the constellation of the Lizard (Lacerta). The emission nebula is difficult... Continue Reading →
A small, dark, nebula looks isolated near the center of this telescopic close-up. The wedge-shaped cosmic cloudlet lies within a relatively crowded region of space though. About 7,000 light-years distant and filled with glowing gas and an embedded cluster of young... Continue Reading →
An interstellar expanse of glowing gas and obscuring dust presents a bird-like visage to astronomers from planet Earth, suggesting its popular moniker, the Seagull Nebula. This broadband portrait of the cosmic bird covers a 3.5-degree wide swath across the plane of the Milky... Continue Reading →
Firefly Aerospace's robotic Blue Ghost lander is scheduled to land on the moon on Sunday no earlier than 3:34 a.m. EST (0834 GMT) when it touches down on the vast Sea of Crises (or Mare Crisium). Watch it live here: https://plus.nasa.gov/scheduled-video/firefly-blue-ghost-mission-1-lunar-landing/ The $93.3 million Blue... Continue Reading →
Today, Mars is a chilly desert of rock and dust — but 4 billion years ago, the planet had rivers, lakes and even oceans with sandy beaches. Data from China's Zhurong rover recently revealed the first evidence of one of... Continue Reading →
Rima Hyginus is a spectacular fissure, some 220 kilometers long, found near the center of the lunar near side. Easy to spot in telescopic views of the Moon, it stretches top left to bottom right across this lunar closeup. The image was made... Continue Reading →
Enormous elliptical galaxy Messier 87 is about 50 million light-years away. Also known as NGC 4486, the giant galaxy holds trillions of stars compared to the mere billions of stars in our large spiral Milky Way. M87 reigns as the large central... Continue Reading →