Science & Discovery
curiosity and research reveals our universe
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Feature: Losing Silence
Near-Earth space isn't just getting brighter and more crowded. Invisible to the unaided eye, radio pollution is overpowering faint signals from the cosmos and threatening radio astronomy's "quiet zones."
News: NASA Revising Its Mars Sample Return Plan
The space agency has reached out to industry partners and individual NASA centers to investigate innovative technologies and designs that could reduce mission costs and speed up the timeline.
News: Chandra X-ray Observatory on Cutting Block
Earlier this month, NASA released its 2025FY budget, which dramatically reduces funding for the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the premiere X-ray astrophysics facility.
From the Archives: Observing the Sun During Eclipses
It is rare for the track of a total eclipse to pass over sizable townships, and it is even more rare when it passes over a working observatory. Yet both of these circumstances came together February 16, 1980.
News: New Horizons Mission Has Led to Discovery of 89 Kuiper Belt Objects
A new paper describes the discovery of dozens of objects in the Kuiper Belt, thanks to the New Horizons mission and its related searches to better understand this region in the outer solar system.
Feature: Vatican Astronomers Aid the Search for Solar System Origins
To measure the physical properties of asteroid Bennu's sample material, NASA is using an instrument provided by a scientist who is employed by a different government: the Vatican.
News: A Commercial Craft Sticks its Landing
The Odysseus spacecraft, built and operated by Texas-based company Intuitive Machines, successfully touched down at the lunar south polar region on February 22.
Feature: Satellite Constellations are a Colossal Threat to Astronomy
The problem of light pollution — the unwanted presence of artificial light at night — isn’t a new concept. Now, however, even the most remote night skies are getting brighter and murkier, threatening our ability to learn about and connect with the cosmos.
News: Solar Gamma Ray Oddities
The solar polar regions emitted more gamma rays at times that seemed to coincide with the Sun’s 11-year magnetic cycle.
Feature: Searching Hubble’s Archive for Hidden Gems
Because of its data collection and archival system, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed how — and who — can do science.
News: New Views from Old Images
Planetary scientists applied a complex computational algorithm to archived Voyager 2 images to improve the views of Titania, one of Uranus' moons. They also mapped its geologic surface features.
News: Our Galaxy's Crowded Core
A new near-infrared image captured using NASA's JWST observatory, reveals some 500,000 stars near the dense center of the Milky Way Galaxy.
News: Euclid's First View
With the new European Euclid telescope, scientists will track how structure grew and changed through time, to learn about the universe's invisible components: dark matter and dark energy.
Feature: Discovering the Dark Universe
Most of the universe is undetectable, and yet astronomers have learned an incredible amount about this invisible and mysterious part of the cosmos in the past five decades.
News: Light Pollution at Observatories
Some two-thirds of the largest professional astronomy observatories across the world have already surpassed “acceptable” light pollution levels — meaning, scattering light greater than 10 percent over natural levels.
News: Satellites Streak Images
Astronomers have calculated how much of an effect communication satellites have on images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.
News: Venus Hosts Active Volcanism
Researchers say in the time between two images of Venus' surface were captured in 1991, magma oozed at the planet's surface. This would be the first time active volcanism has been directly observed at the toasty planet next door.
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