View larger. | Artist’s concept of a magnetar, a type of neutron star but with vastly more powerful magnetic fields. Scientists saw a giant magnetar eruption in the galaxy M82, located only a hop and a skip away at 12 million light-years from Earth. It’s the 1st time we’ve seen such a powerful magnetar burst outside our own galaxy. Image via ESA. Scientists found a massive outburst of gamma rays from the galaxy M82, 12 million light-years away. The observation didn’t fit with typical gamma ray bursts, and astronomers found no afterglow in visible light to X-rays. Plus, they didn’t detect any ..read more

Meet the lunar crater Giordano Bruno. It’s 13 miles (21 km) wide and located on the moon’s far side. This mosaic image of the crater is from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC)/ NASA/ GSFC/ Arizona State University.Something knocked a chunk off the lunar surface For a while, starting in the year 2016, it looked as if Earth might have a second, much-smaller moon. But, after preliminary studies of the object’s orbit, astronomers labeled 469219 Kamo’oalewa as a near-Earth asteroid (NEA) and a quasi-satellite to Earth. So we know that, like our moon, Kamo’oalewa stays close to Earth ..read more

View larger. | Artist’s concept of the brown dwarf W1935. Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have detected emission of methane here. This is the 1st time astronomers have found methane emitting light instead of absorbing it on a brown dwarf. Auroras, as seen here, may create the methane emission in the brown dwarf’s atmosphere. Image via NASA/ ESA/ CSA/ Leah Hustak (STScI). Brown dwarfs are star-planet hybrid objects, too massive to be called ordinary planets, but not massive enough to shine as stars do. Astronomers have detected methane emission from a brown dwarf for the 1st ..read more

View larger. | This image from Hubble shows the barred spiral galaxy UGC 12158. This means a “bar” of stars runs across its center, and the spiral arms extend from either end. Barred spiral galaxies are not uncommon in the universe. The curved segmented line is an asteroid “photobombing” the image. The image shows how researchers and citizen scientists were able to use Hubble for an asteroid hunt. They were looking for previously unknown small asteroids in the main asteroid belt. Image via NASA/ ESA/ Pablo García Martín (UAM). Over 1,000 new small asteroids have been found in Hubble Space Tel ..read more

EarthSky’s Deborah Byrd created this 1-minute video summary for you, on Io‘s volcanoes. Jupiter’s rocky moon Io is the most volcanically active world in the solar system. It has hundreds of volcanoes, some with erupting lava fountains dozens of miles (kilometers) high. Io’s volcanoes have been active for billions of years, a new study says, ever since Io first formed. How do they know? The researchers studied the ratio of different light and heavy sulfur isotopes in Io’s thin atmosphere. The results suggest the volcanoes’ age, and also provide clues about how much sulfur Io has lost since it ..read more

After receiving data about the health and status of Voyager 1 for the first time in 5 months, members of the Voyager flight team celebrate in a conference room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on April 20. Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech. NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has been traveling outward from Earth for 46 years and 7 months, as of today. It is now 15 billion miles (24 billion km) from Earth, making communications with its Earthly controllers nearly a 2-day round trip. In November 2023, Voyager 1 began sending back only gibberish. As of late last month, the Voyager 1 team was trying variou ..read more

Is alien life purple? When we look at Earth from space, the color green means life. It represents trees, grass, crops and everything that grows with the help of chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is a pigment found in nearly all plants that use photosynthesis to absorb energy from the sun and turn light into fuel. Chlorophyll also gives plants their green color. But in some environments on Earth without sunlight or oxygen, life uses infrared radiation for energy. And many of these bacteria are purple. What if life on other worlds uses infrared radiation instead of sunlight? According to a press release ..read more

EarthSky’s Deborah Byrd created this 1-minute video summary for you on Gaia BH3! The most massive stellar black hole in the Milky Way is now Gaia BH3. It has a mass 33 times that of our sun. Gaia BH3 is located 2,000 light-years away in the constellation Aquila, making it the 2nd-closest known black hole to Earth. The discovery challenges previous theories, suggesting that high-mass black holes may form from metal-poor stars, supported by Gaia’s observation of a metal-poor companion star to Gaia BH3. EarthSky needs YOUR help to keep going. Your support, comments, photos, suggestions for sto ..read more

EarthSky’s Deborah Byrd created this 1-minute video summary for you. How Pluto got its heart! New insights on the origin of Pluto’s heart-shaped feature came from scientists using numerical simulations. They said a cataclysmic collision created the western lobe of Pluto’s heart, called Sputnik Planitia. The impacting body was over 400 miles in diameter. It altered Pluto’s inner structure. These scientists now doubt Pluto has a subsurface ocean. Their simulations suggest the heart’s formation and position on Pluto can explained by a local mass excess from the impact, rather than ocean dynamic ..read more

Here’s the image of the large asteroid – 2013 NK4 – that safely passed Earth on Monday, April 15, 2024. The Goldstone Radar in California acquired this image on April 13. Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech.Update! Image of asteroid 2013 NK4 NASA astronomers were able to obtain radar images of the large asteroid that passed Earth safely on Monday, April 15, 2024. They captured an image of the asteroid – named 2013 NK4 – using the Goldstone Radar in California on April 13. NASA said: Radar narrow echoes probably establish that 2013 NK4 rotates very slowly, and the shape is bifurcated. These observatio ..read more