The exoplanet census continues to grow. Currently, 5,819 exoplanets have been confirmed in 4,346 star systems, while thousands more await confirmation. The vast majority of these planets were detected in the past twenty years, owing to missions like the Kepler Space Telescope, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), the venerable Hubble, the Convection, Rotation and … The post NASA is Building a Space Telescope to Observe Exoplanet Atmospheres appeared first on Universe Today ..read more

On Thursday, January 16th, at 02:03 AM EST, Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket took off on its maiden flight from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. This was a momentous event for the company, as the two-stage heavy-lift rocket has been in development for many years, features a partially reusable design, and … The post New Glenn Reaches Orbit, but Doesn't Recover the Booster appeared first on Universe Today ..read more

Six or seven billion years ago, most stars formed in super star clusters. That type of star formation has largely died out now. Astronomers know of two of these SSCs in the modern Milky Way and one in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), and all three of them are millions of years old. New JWST … The post Astronomers are Watching a Newly Forming Super Star Cluster appeared first on Universe Today ..read more

The Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) at the heart of the Milky Way holds a lot of gas. It contains about 60 million solar masses of molecular gas in complexes of giant molecular clouds (GMCs), structures where stars usually form. Because of the presence of Sag. A*, the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole (SMBH), the CMZ … The post Sticks and Stones: The Molecular Clouds in the Heart of the Milky Way appeared first on Universe Today ..read more

DwarfLab’s new Dwarf 3 smartscope packs a powerful punch in a small unit. In the past decade, amateur astronomy has witnessed nothing short of a revolution, as smartscopes have come to the fore. In half a century of skywatching, we’ve used just about every iteration of GoTo system available, starting with the now almost prehistoric … The post Review: Dwarf Lab’s New Dwarf 3 Smartscope appeared first on Universe Today ..read more

The wildfires raging around Los Angeles have made plenty of headlines lately, though they are slowly starting to get under control. NASA was a part of that effort, tracking the fire’s evolution via the Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer-3 (AVIRIS-3) as they raged through southern California. As they were doing so, they likely realized that these … The post The Los Angeles Fires Got Extremely Close to NASA’s JPL Facility appeared first on Universe Today ..read more

Dark matter may have to go on a diet, according to new research. By now we have a vast abundance of evidence for the existence of dark matter. That’s because cosmological observations just aren’t adding up. All our measures of luminous matter fall far short of the total gravitational effects we see in galaxies, clusters, … The post Dark Matter Can’t Be Too Heavy appeared first on Universe Today ..read more

According to new research, the earliest seeds of structures may have been laid down by gravitational waves sloshing around in the infant universe. Cosmologists strongly suspect that the extremely early universe underwent a period of exceptionally rapid expansion. Known as inflation, this event expanded the universe by a factor of at least 10^60 in less … The post Space Itself May Have Created Galaxies appeared first on Universe Today ..read more

Researchers have discovered how to make a new kind of metamaterial reconfigure itself without tangling itself up in knots, opening up the possibility of a broad array of space applications. Metamaterials are a hot topic in engineering. These are materials inspired from biological systems. Many living structures start from simple, repeatable patterns that then grow … The post A Flexible, Adaptable Space Metamaterial appeared first on Universe Today ..read more

SpaceX’s seventh flight test of its massive Starship launch system brought good news as well as not-so-great news. The good news? The Super Heavy booster successfully flew itself back to the Texas launch site and was caught above the ground by the launch tower’s chopstick-style mechanical arms. That’s only the second “Mechazilla” catch to be … The post SpaceX Catches Booster But Loses Ship in Starship Test Flight appeared first on Universe Today ..read more