In the middle of Mauritania’s Sahara Desert, surrounded by an ocean of sand, lies a colossal stone spiral that seems almost too perfect to be natural. From orbit, in a recent image taken by the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite mission, it looks like a target etched into the desert: the Richat Structure, better known as the Eye of the Sahara.
What is it?
The…
December's 'Cold Moon' rises: See breathtaking images of the final full moon of 2025
December 8, 2025
The final full moon of 2025 treated stargazers to a high-flying lunar spectacle as the “Cold Moon” glowed among the stars of the constellation Taurus on Dec. 4.
December’s full moon was the third in a string of “Supermoons” — full moons that…
A team of international researchers say they’ve uncovered new data on the world’s first recorded solar eclipse using a surprising source — ancient Chinese texts. These findings could help us understand more about the progression of the Earth’s rotation…
See the metal guts of a satellite in this wild X-ray view | Space photo of the day for Dec. 4, 2025
December 5, 2025
In a hangar outside Zurich, a veteran of low Earth orbit lay under a kind of medical scanner no spacecraft was ever designed for. The patient was the European Retrievable Carrier mission, or EURECA, a 16.-4-foot-long (5 meters) European satellite that flew on the space shuttle Atlantis in early 1992 and, unusually for a satellite, actually came home. Instead of engineers with wrenches, its exam…
Why is the universe made of matter? These 'ghost particle' experiments could help us find out
December 5, 2025
Scientists have inched a step closer to solving an enduring mystery in physics — why the universe contains any matter at all — thanks to a newly combined analysis from two of the world’s leading neutrino experiments.
By pooling nearly 16 years of measurements, the…
Don't miss the last full moon of 2025 as the 'Cold Supermoon' takes to the autumn sky on Dec. 4
December 5, 2025
Get ready stargazers, the final full moon of 2025 rises tonight! Here’s what to expect when the “Cold Supermoon” looms large over the eastern horizon at sunset on Dec. 4.
The exact moment of December’s full moon phase will take place at 8:13 p.m. EST…
A 'super-puff' exoplanet is losing its atmosphere, and the James Webb Space Telescope had a look
December 4, 2025
Astronomers have spotted a distant world “shedding” its atmosphere into space in real time, creating a giant companion cloud of gas that travels ahead of the planet as it orbits its star.
Observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have revealed an unprecedented view of helium gas evaporating from a distant, giant exoplanet called WASP-107b. The escaping gas stretches…
Northern lights may be visible in 15 states tonight
December 4, 2025
The northern lights could light up skies across the U.S. tonight, as a high-speed solar wind stream from a coronal hole and an incoming coronal mass ejection (CME) are forecast to hit Earth, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA)…
NASA discovers 'space gum' and sugars 'crucial to life' in asteroid Bennu samples brought to Earth (video)
December 4, 2025
Scientists have detected several sugars essential for life in the samples brought back from asteroid Bennu, NASA announced on Tuesday (Dec. 2).
Analyzing pristine fragments of the asteroid delivered to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft in 2023, a team led by…
I watched scientists track interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS leaving the solar system in real-time: 'This is some prime-time science'
December 3, 2025
It was 4 a.m. on Nov. 25 at the top of Hawaii’s dormant Maunakea volcano. The process to view the comet took less time than expected.
On the main screen, the subject at hand, interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS was a small, fuzzy blob drifting through a crowded field of stars. On another, its light had been stretched into a barcode of rainbow lines, some brighter than others, each corresponding to a…
