New calculations suggest that a collision between young Mercury and a similarly sized protoplanet may have given it its unusual composition. (Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington) A recent study suggests that Mercury’s mysterious composition…
An image of the Small Magellanic Cloud taken by the Herschel Space Observatory. (Image Credit: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) Astronomers have found startling evidence that one of the galaxies near our own is being destroyed by…
April’s full moon will shine next to Spica, the brightest star in the constellation Virgo. (Photo credit: Catherine Ray Shumakov via Getty Images) On Saturday, April 12, at dusk, look to the east to watch the rise of the next…
A newly discovered pair of white dwarfs will explode as a Type 1a supernova when they get too close to each other in about 23 billion years. (Image credit: University of Warwick/Mark Garlick) A pair of spinning white dwarfs on…
Researchers tracking the motion of Uranus’ auroras have found that its rotation period is 28 seconds longer than previously thought. (Image credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, L. Lamy, L. Sromovsky) A new study shows that a day on Uranus lasts about half…
Bright sprites, or short-lived light phenomena, sparkle above the clouds in video captured by NASA astronaut Don Pettit aboard the ISS. (Image credit: Don Pettit/NASA) NASA astronaut Don Pettit captured fascinating video of a rare atmospheric phenomenon from his position…
NASA’s Perseverance rover captured the moment a small dust devil (front left) collided with and merged with a larger one (right) on January 25. The rover was about half a mile away from the event. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI) NASA’s Perseverance rover…
Newly discovered comet SWAN25F will make its closest approach to the Sun on May 1, but many aspects of the bright object remain unknown. (Photo: Michael Jaeger/Gerald Rehmann) An amateur astronomer has spotted a bright green comet hurtling toward the…
A new study has found that lichens can withstand the high levels of ionising radiation that hits the surface of Mars. (The lichen in this photo is Cetraria aculeata.) (Image credit: Pensoft) A new study suggests that Earth organisms known…
(Image source: Image data: NASA Image processing: Tanya Oleksuik CC BY NC SA 3.0) A powerful solar storm in 2017 compressed Jupiter’s magnetosphere “like a giant squash ball,” according to a new study. The discovery was made thanks to an…
(Image credit: Roscosmos) A trio of secretive Russian satellites launched earlier this year placed a mysterious object into orbit, drawing the attention of space trackers and analysts. The satellites, designated Cosmos 2581, 2582 and 2583, were launched on a Soyuz…
A 146-gram fragment of the Aguas Zarcas meteorite. (Photo credit: Arizona State University/SETI Institute.) The meteorite debris that landed in Costa Rica in 2019 is so unusual that scientists believe it traveled through space virtually unscathed — until it hit…