Betelgeuse (orange) has a newly identified companion star, just visible on the left against a dark blue background. Betelgeuse’s brightness fluctuates in a predictable pattern that has puzzled astronomers for centuries; scientists now say it’s likely due to its companion.…
3I/ATLAS is an interstellar comet currently hurtling toward the Sun on a one-way trip through the Solar System. (Image credit: Darryl Seligman et al.) Comet 3I/ATLAS is approximately 7 miles (11.2 kilometers) wide, making it the largest interstellar object ever…
The massive exoplanet TOI-2109b collides with its star and breaks apart. (Image credit: NASA Weiss) A giant planet caught in a deadly spiral around its star may lift the veil on some of the mysteries of star systems. However, the…
Uranus, the seventh planet from the Sun. (Image courtesy of NASA) Researchers have found that Uranus radiates its own internal heat — even more than it receives from sunlight — a discovery that contradicts data collected by NASA’s Voyager 2…
The Anders Earthrise crater, featured in the famous image, has helped the European Space Agency’s JUICE spacecraft improve its tools for searching for extraterrestrial life. (Image credit: Earthrise image: NASA, annotation added by ESA; RIME radargram: ESA/Juice/RIME) The lunar crater…
An illustration of an exoplanet passing in front of its star. The square grid represents individual pixels taken by NASA’s TESS satellite. (Image credit: Nikolai Berman/University of California, Irvine) The roughly 200 exoplanets outside our solar system discovered by astronomers…
(Image credit: Diana Robinson Photography via Getty Images) The two meteor showers will peak on the night of July 29-30, when the Moon disappears, giving the chance to see about 25 meteors per hour in dark skies. The main event…
Astronomers found 3I/ATLAS on July 1. Less than 24 hours later, its status as an interstellar object was confirmed. (Image credit: ATLAS/University of Hawaii/NASA) The newly discovered interstellar object 3I/ATLAS may be a disguised example of “possibly hostile” extraterrestrial technology,…
A HiRISE image shows the heavily eroded ridge of an inverted riverbed left by a dried-up river billions of years ago. (Image credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona) Mars was a rainier, wetter environment than astronomers thought, according to a new study…
A mini-moon can be defined as an object that is at least temporarily associated with our planet, orbits it at least once, and at some point in its orbit is closer than four times the distance from Earth to the…
The “Battle Dragons of Ara” is a nebula in a vast molecular cloud. From a cat paw print to a space tadpole, humans love recognizing animal shapes in the starry sky, but the ‘Fighting Ara’ dragon may be one of…
The Sun is expected to last another 5 billion years before it becomes unstable and transforms into a red giant. (Image credit: alexandarilich/Getty Images) Our solar system has been around for 4.6 billion years. While that seems like a long…