Space

The most distant ‘black hole star’ yet found, existing in the universe less than 660 million years after the Big Bang, has provided a vital clue as to the origin of the mysterious “little red dots” that populate the James Webb Space Telescope’s images of the early universe. The consensus seems to be that these bizarre objects, which were first discovered in 2022, are…

On Aug. 11, 1960, part of the Discoverer 13 satellite became the first human-made object to be recovered from Earth’s orbit. The United States Department of Defense launched the mission as part of the C.I.A.’s Corona spy satellite program. They wanted to see if they could return a satellite’s instrument package to Earth safely and gently enough to retrieve the object intact. The…

Pluto’s atmosphere appears to be freezing out as the dwarf planet moves ever further away from the sun, according to careful observations of Pluto astronomers made as it was seen passing in front of stars in the sky. Pluto is already cold. Its surface temperature is about –382 degrees Fahrenheit (–230 degrees Celsius), while its upper atmosphere is a little warmer at –333 degrees…

It will be a magnificent day for England’s south coast. From Portsmouth’s Historic Dockyard and Brighton’s Royal Pavilion to Dorset’s Jurassic Coast and Cornwall’s Land’s End, beaches and cliff tops will be plunged into darkness in the day during the U.K.’s first total solar eclipse for almost 91 years. There is, however, a problem — this scenario…