Friday, July 26With a good dark window between sunset and moonrise, take a look this evening at two famous galaxies: M81 and M82, also known as Bode’s Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy, respectively. Both lie in Ursa Major, visible in the north after sunset. Tonight, the Big Dipper is standing on its bowl with the The post The Sky This Week from July 26 to August 2: Catch the Southern Delta Aquariids appeared first on Astronomy Magazine ..read more

On June 25, 2024, China’s Chang’e 6 mission came to an end when a reentry capsule touched down in the Siziwang Banner Province in Mongolia. The capsule contained truly precious cargo: just under 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of lunar samples from the farside of the Moon. No mission had ever retrieved material from the farside The post How China’s Chang’e 6 mission snagged the first samples of the Moon’s farside appeared first on Astronomy Magazine ..read more

To the shock of the lunar science community, on July 17, NASA cancelled the much-anticipated Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) mission, which was expected to prospect for water ice on the Moon — a critical resource for future explorers. VIPER was one of the highest profile missions in NASA’s ongoing Commercial Lunar Payload Services The post NASA cancels fully built Moon rover, stunning scientists appeared first on Astronomy Magazine ..read more

Our universe is shrouded in mystery, with about 70 percent of it consisting of dark energy. The exact nature of dark energy remains a puzzle that, once solved, could unlock profound insights into the formation of our solar system, the evolution of the Milky Way Galaxy, the origins of life, and even the fate of The post What we do — and don’t — know about dark energy appeared first on Astronomy Magazine ..read more

Summer in the Northern Hemisphere is a frustrating time for many amateur astronomers. The nights never get dark enough to easily see the faint, fuzzy galaxies and nebulae they enjoy looking at through their telescopes, and there are fewer bright stars in the sky too. Occasionally a display of electric-blue noctilucent clouds will decorate the The post Take a summer road trip along the Milky Way appeared first on Astronomy Magazine ..read more

Over Mother’s Day weekend in May, skies as far south as Florida and Texas were filled with the vibrant colors of the aurora borealis. Some of the staff at Astronomy ventured out to score a rare view of the northern lights in southeastern Wisconsin. I traveled out to Wisconsin’s Kohler-Andrae State Park to experience the The post Folklore meets science in this search for the ‘sounds’ of the northern lights appeared first on Astronomy Magazine ..read more

Katelyn Beecroft from London, Ontario, Canada M17 in Sagittarius is popularly called the Swan Nebula or the Omega Nebula, though it also goes by Checkmark Nebula and the Horseshoe Nebula. The resemblance to a swan is much stronger with visual observations, yielding an unmistakable swanlike profile. This SHORGB image was taken over 4.5 hours with The post Bird of many names appeared first on Astronomy Magazine ..read more

NASA’s Curiosity Rover has made an unexpected discovery that one scientist likened to finding an “oasis in the desert.” On May 30, Curiosity traversed the Gediz Vallis channel and drove over a rock that split open to reveal pure yellow sulfur crystals. These crystals, according to a NASA press release, are a first for the The post A lucky break revealed a surprise inside a martian rock appeared first on Astronomy Magazine ..read more

Twenty-five years ago, Eileen Collins became the first woman to command a spaceflight. A test pilot, mathematician, and trailblazer, this soft-spoken Air Force Colonel helmed space shuttle Columbia when it roared into Florida’s post-midnight darkness on July 23, 1999. Her STS-93 crew deployed NASA’s $1.5 billion Chandra X-ray Observatory — at 25 tons, it was The post Eileen Collins burst through the glass ceiling aboard the space shuttle appeared first on Astronomy Magazine ..read more

In April 1961, Galaxy magazine contained an article entitled “The Puzzle Called Gegenschein,” by German-American science writer Willy Ley. Referring to the mystery of who was the first to identify the faint glow of the gegenschein, Ley wrote: “Historians of astronomy are in fair agreement that the first discoverer of the Gegenschein was the Danish The post The mysteries behind the gegenschein appeared first on Astronomy Magazine ..read more