View larger. | Artist’s concept of the rainbow-like glory on giant exoplanet WASP-76b. If confirmed, it will be the 1st glory on an exoplanet that astronomers have ever seen. Glories are common on Earth, but otherwise have only been seen on Venus so far. Image via ESA (ESA Standard License or CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO). Astronomers have detected what appears to be a glory – the same optical phenomenon you sometimes see out the window of an airplane – on on exoplanet, or planet orbiting a distant star. Glories are common on Earth, and spacecraft have seen them on Venus. But, if confirmed, this will be ..read more

Only 5 earthly spacecraft are headed out of solar system, into interstellar space. These are the Pioneers 10 and 11, Voaygers 1 and 2, and New Horizons. This image shows their approximate trajectories. Image (not to scale!) via NASA/ Johns Hopkins APL/ SwRI. The New Horizons spacecraft, launched in 2006, achieved historic flybys of Pluto in 2015 and Arrokoth in 2019, making it the fastest spacecraft ever sent from Earth. Chief scientist Alan Stern here provides an update, highlighting unexpected discoveries of dust impacts, an extended Kuiper Belt or even a second one, and outlines plans for ..read more

Massive dying stars explode in supernovas and emit large amounts of radiation. The radiation would be deadly to nearby planets with life. So what is the threat of supernovas to life on Earth? Image via NASA/ ESA/ Hubble SM4 ERO Team. By Chris Impey, University of Arizona The threat of supernovas to life on Earth Stars like the sun are remarkably constant. They vary in brightness by only 0.1% over years and decades, thanks to the fusion of hydrogen into helium that powers them. This process will keep the sun shining steadily for about 5 billion more years, but when stars exhaust their nuclear f ..read more

View larger. | Titan is well-known for its lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane. This image from Cassini in 2017 shows light glinting off the lakes. But Titan is also thought to have an ocean of liquid water deep underground. Is Titan’s subsurface ocean habitable? Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ University of Arizona/ University of Idaho. Saturn’s large moon Titan teems with liquid. We’ve long known about its liquid methane and ethane lakes and seas. More recent evidence suggests a subsurface ocean of liquid water. Could Titan’s underground ocean be habitable? Earlier t ..read more

These Webb images depict WD 1202-232 (top row) and WD 2105-82 (bottom row). In the 2 images at far left, the white dwarf is at the center. In the other 4 images, the white dwarf has been replaced by a star icon. The images on the far right are with the planetary candidate removed. This technique shows that in both cases the candidate planet came out cleanly, indicating it’s a real “point-source in nature.” The images are evidence for 2 giant planets orbiting white dwarfs, both less than 75 light-years away. Image via Mullally et al./ arXiv. Can a planet survive the death of its star? A new stu ..read more

View larger. | This is H1821+643, a quasar containing a supermassive black hole, captured in a composite image (X-rays and radio waves). The quasar and its black hole are relatively nearby, only 3.4 billion light-years from Earth. The black hole is emitting powerful jets and high levels of radiation. But astronomers expected … more. X-ray image: NASA/ CXC/ U. of Nottingham/ H. Russell et al.; Radio: NSF/ NRAO/ VLA; Image Processing: NASA/ CXC/ SAO/ N. Wolk/ Chandra. Quasars and their embedded supermassive black holes are exceedingly bright. We often see them at very large distances, correspon ..read more

View larger. | Artist’s concept of a brown dwarf. It’s an object that’s too massive enough to be an ordinary planet, but not massive enough to shine as a star. Many brown dwarfs come in binary pairs, where two orbit one another. But a new study shows the less massive and older a brown dwarf is, the more likely it is to be alone. Image via NASA/ ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)/ Hubblesite. Brown dwarfs are star-planet hybrid objects, with a mass in between that of stars and planets. The older and less massive a brown dwarf is, the less likely it is to have a companion brown dwarf. Over time, it ap ..read more

The circled object is the 5,000th sungrazing comet discovered by the sun-observing SOHO spacecraft. It’s seen here moving relative to background stars; that’s how we know the circled object is closer to us than the stars. SOHO’s LASCO instrument acquired the images to create this animation. The images are via NASA/ ESA/ SOHO. By the way, experts believe this comet is related to Comet 96P/Machholz, named for Don Machholz, a beloved member of the EarthSky team until his death in 2022. Don discovered a total of 12 comets that bear his name. We miss you, Don! NASA’s sun-observing SOHO spacecraft ..read more

This is the Corinto crater in Elysium Planitia on Mars. A new study using data from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows the single asteroid impact that created Corinto also created about 2 billion much smaller secondary craters on Mars, up to 1,200 miles (2,000 km) away. Image via NASA/ JPL/ M. Golombek et al. About 2 million years ago, an asteroid hit Mars and created Corinto crater. A massive amount of smaller debris from the impact formed nearly 2 billion other, smaller craters on Mars. The debris created new, small craters as far as 1,200 miles (2,000 km) from the original asteroid im ..read more

The European Southern Observatory released this new image of the Milky Way’s black hole today (March 27, 2024). The newly release image shows the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy in polarized light. Polarized light lets astronomers map a black hole’s magnetic field lines. The discovery also suggests our galaxy’s black hole may be harboring a hidden jet. Image via EHT Collaboration/ ESO. Astronomers used the Event Horizon Telescope to capture the first polarized light image of the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*. This breakthrough suggests that all black ..read more