Science

It’s hard to pick a favorite view of space, but many astronomers hold dear the Pillars of Creation, a stunning cloud of interstellar gas and dust that resembles a human hand.  Now NASA scientists have created a narrated 3D tour of this cosmic marvel, a small portion of the enormous Eagle Nebula about 6,500 light-years...

China’s robotic spacecraft has brought back rocks and dust from the lunar far side that may solve enduring mysteries about the interior composition of the moon.  The uncrewed Chang’e-6 mission capsule landed in northern China’s Inner Mongolia at 2:07 p.m. Beijing Time on Tuesday, according to China’s State Council Information Office. Its journey to the...

Earth isn’t the only world in the solar system with active lakes, rivers, and oceans.  About 880 million miles away in space, Saturn’s largest moon Titan is also flush with surface liquid that evaporates, forms clouds in its hazy atmosphere, and rains. Despite this seemingly similar hydrology, the two planetary bodies couldn’t be more different:...

Astronomers are getting their money’s worth. Scientists used the powerful $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope to peer into some of the deepest cosmos, and for the first time captured views of star clusters inside an extremely ancient galaxy. In the images below, you’re viewing these star clusters, which are gravitationally bound groupings of stars,...

The deep sea teems with life. But in the black depths, these organisms remain largely mysterious. Squids in the deep ocean are rarely observed alive, but scientists on an exploration mission used a deep-sea robot to capture footage of a squid clutching a brood of unusually large eggs — twice the size of typical squid...

What if, in 14 years, a newly-discovered asteroid was likely to strike Earth? But that’s not all. This threatening space rock, some 330 to 1,050 feet in diameter (or 100 to 320 meters), has just disappeared behind the sun, making crucial observations impossible for the next seven months. To prepare for such an unsettling scenario,...

Centuries ago, a huge red spot on Jupiter vanished. But years later, a new one was born. Today we know this conspicuous feature as the “Great Red Spot,” a swirling storm wider than Earth. Curiously, earlier astronomers, like Giovanni Domenico Cassini in 1665, also observed a colossal red storm at the same latitude on Jupiter...

Scientists for years thought the galaxy SDSS1335+0728 was about as remarkable as its serial code name.  Then it did something scientists had never seen a galaxy do: Suddenly, this frankly forgettable space neighborhood 300 million light-years away threw the lights on. That happened nearly five years ago, and it’s only gotten brighter since. Astronomers believe...

NASA’s moon-orbiting spacecraft can spot trails left by astronaut boots on the lunar surface. Now, it’s captured a view of China’s most recent moon landing. The China National Space Administration landed its robotic Chang’e-6 mission in the expansive South Pole-Aitken Basin in early June. A week later, on June 7, the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter...

Astronomers continue to discover worlds beyond Earth’s solar system, detecting hundreds of new ones each year in the vastness of space. The number of confirmed exoplanets — planets that don’t orbit the sun — has currently risen to 5,638, according to NASA, with thousands more under review. These worlds exist in our galactic neighborhood, though...