Space archaeology takes aim at Earth A relatively new realm of archaeology uses technology to take the discipline out of the dirt and into the skies. Andrey Armyagov/Shutterstock In 2009, Chris Fisher was in Michoacán, Mexico, studying the ancient Purépecha empire, when his team found remnants of a settlement. He set out to find the […]
Jupiter arrives at solar conjunction on March 5, meaning that thereafter, the five brightest planets will be accessible only in the early morning sky. In actuality, only two — Venus and Mars — are easily available for most skywatchers to see, beginning about two hours before sunrise. Mercury will not be favorable for observation because […]
A visible glow from our sister planet’s nightside sheds new light on a 300-year-old observing enigma dubbed the “ashen light.” The Magellan mission used radar to map the surface of Venus in the 1990s. The images gave the first global view of what was below Venus’ thick clouds. Surface features seen in the WISPR images […]
Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine has far-reaching consequences for spaceflight and the international space community. Update: March 4, 2022: Russia further cut space ties yesterday, when Roscosmos announced that it would stop selling rocket engines to American companies. A Soyuz rocket launches with a batch of satellites. OneWeb As the tragedy of the Russian invasion […]
Astronomers combined forces to confirm that a black hole proposed to lie a mere 1,000 light-years away isn’t really there. A contested candidate for the closest black hole to the solar system has proven to be a mirage, an international team of astronomers has concluded. The putative black hole lay in the stellar binary HR […]
Astronomers have imaged the magnetic field along which gas flows to a galaxy’s central black hole. Gas streams outside and within the starburst ring (inset) of the spiral galaxy NGC 1097 follow the magnetic field, showing that material from the galaxy is feeding the supermassive black hole at its center. NGC 1097: ESO; color scale: […]
The new rocket will launch astronauts to China’s space station and maybe even the moon. A Chinese Long March 2F rocket launches the three Shenzhou 13 astronauts to the country’s Tiangong space station module Tianhe on Oct. 16, 2021 local time. China now wans a reusable rocket for future astronaut launches. (Image credit: CASC) […]
Quasars shine so brightly that they eclipse the galaxies in which the objects are embedded. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)) Some of the James Webb Space Telescope’s first science investigations will probe the role that bright objects called quasars played in early galaxy evolution. Quasars are distant objects powered by black holes […]
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