The mystery of how the sun’s corona, which is its outer atmosphere, reaches millions of degrees could have a surprising explanation: cosmic dust riding the magnetic waves carrying plasma on the solar wind.
“For decades, researchers have focused mainly on how electrons, ions, magnetic fields and plasma waves transport and dissipate energy in the solar atmosphere,” said lead…
PASADENA, California — NASA’s new alien-hunting telescope, the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), will be serviceable out in space (and it will have gamma-ray detectors, to boot).
Do you remember seeing NASA’s space shuttle astronauts working on the Hubble…
Astronomers discover radio signals coming from rare 'Blue Eye Pulsar' after decades of silence
July 7, 2026
Silent neutron stars at the center of supernova blast sites may actually be whispering softly, following the detection of faint radio emissions coming from one such object for the first time. The discovery raises the prospect that there could be many more pulsars in our…
Three years before the skyscraper-size asteroid Apophis makes its very close (but safe) flyby of Earth, scientists have already begun charting exactly when and where billions of people can watch it sweep across the sky.
Speaking at an “Apophis T-3 Years” workshop held earlier this month at the University of Padua in Italy, retired cartographer Michael Zeiler and astronomer Rick…
On July 4, the United States of America celebrates its 250th birthday, marking the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and becoming a sovereign nation.
Today, this relatively young country leads the way in our understanding of the universe. It’s where many…
Want to see Uranus for yourself? Independence Day morning offers one of the best opportunities in decades, as the distant ice giant passes extraordinarily close to Mars in the predawn sky.
Although we often hear that only five planets are visible to the unaided eye, Uranus…
The United States has taken some significant steps into the final frontier during its first 250 years.
The nation has put people on the moon, helped build and operate a long-running space station in low Earth orbit (LEO) and sent fleets of robotic explorers to many corners of the solar system — and even beyond it, into interstellar space.
All of this work has been done relatively recently, as…
The July full moon occurs at 10:36 a.m. EDT (1436 GMT) on July 29, when the lunar disk appears fully lit as it shines opposite the sun in Earth’s sky.
The July full moon is often called the “Buck Moon”, to reflect the time of the year when young male deer…
In 1776, the moon was a clock, a calendar and a streetlight — and it was 31 feet closer to Earth
July 3, 2026
After Americans declared independence on July 4, 1776, a waning gibbous moon rose in the night sky. To the people celebrating the birth of a new nation, it would have looked much the same as the moon we see today. But there was one subtle difference: 250 years ago, the moon…
Heads up aurora chasers! The sun has been very busy.
After unleashing an X1.1 solar flare on June 30, the sun continued its outburst by firing off 10 M-class solar flares in 24 hours! Several of these eruptions were accompanied by coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that appear to be at least partially Earth-directed.
Exactly how many of these solar storms will reach Earth (and how effective they will…
