At least two ingredients are needed to make jets — rotation and magnetic fields — and these produce the ubiquitous laserlike jets we see.

Current satellite operational paradigms result in decommissioning spacecraft when they malfunction or run out of fuel, despite potentially functional components, leading to significant financial and ...

On August 8th, the close conjunction of the Moon and Pluto will occur, though Pluto's visibility will be obscured by the Moon's brightness. Observation of the double star Albireo in Cygnus is ...

Three comets (C/1618 Q1, C/1618 V1, and C/1618 W1) were observed in 1618, all visible to the naked eye. C/1618 Q1, first observed in August over Hungary, marks the first known telescopic observation ...

The early universe hides behind the cloak of its Dark Ages, a period of time light can’t seem to pierce. Even the length of those unseen years remains uncertain. As part of its efforts to probe the ...

Stephan's Quintet, discovered in 1877 by French astronomer Edouard Stephan in the constellation Pegasus, exemplifies the enhanced detail observable through larger astronomical apertures. The group ...

The Boomerang Nebula possesses a temperature of approximately 1 Kelvin above absolute zero, significantly colder than other celestial bodies like the dark side of the Moon or Pluto's shadowed craters.

In 1977, a group of marine researchers discovered something they’d only before theorized: cracks in the ocean floor releasing heat, warming up (and often boiling) the ocean around it. They also found ...

A supernova explosion, from a massive star, occurred roughly 2,400 years ago. Its light reached Earth around 10,000 years ago, appearing brighter than Venus. The explosion's remnants are now visible ...

A planet's year length depends on its distance from the Sun. Planets closer to the Sun have shorter years. A planet's rotation speed is unrelated to its year length. Planets' orbital speeds vary ...

Today is a busy day! Mercury passes 2° south of Mars at 2 A.M. EDT — we’ll observe the pair in the evening sky, along with a Titan transit of Saturn. But first, the Orionid meteor shower peaks as the ...

Galileo's 1610 telescopic observations of Venus's phases provided evidence supporting a heliocentric model, as these phases could only occur if Venus orbited closer to the Sun than Earth. Stellar ...