Astronomy

Some of the Most Beautiful Astronomy Photos That Anyone Has Ever Seen

Our cosmos is freaking wonderful. And a few talented and patient photographers have managed to capture all of its glory. It’s time to celebrate them, by ogling some of their most brilliant photos. Every year, the Royal Observatory Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition picks the best photos by astrophotographers. And now, a new book…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

Here’s More Evidence That Galactic Super-Civilizations Don’t Exist

Earlier this year, a scan of 100,000 galaxies showed no signs of alien mega-civilizations, dashing the hopes of those longing for a close encounter of the extra-terrestrial kind. A follow-up analysis of the data suggests it’s even worse than we thought, concluding that advanced galaxy-spanning civilizations don’t exist in the local universe. ‘Dysonian SETI’ is…

io9 Paul Gilster—Centauri Dreams

This Speeding Exoplanet’s Shock Wave Has Just Been Detected on Earth

Astronomers from Wesleyan University have detected the shock waves produced by a high-speed “hot Jupiter” exoplanet caught in a tight orbit around its host star. It’s a potential indication of an incredibly powerful magnetic field around the planet. Also known as “roaster planets,” hot Jupiters are so named because they have many characteristics in common…

io9 George Dvorsky

This is the Best Footage Yet of an Exoplanet Orbiting its Star

And…it’s literally six seconds of pixelated blob. But before you laugh, know this: Capturing that planetary transit you just witnessed was no easy task. You’re looking at Beta Pictoris b, a gas giant ten to twelve times the mass of Jupiter that orbits a star over 60 light years away. That’s 3.527 × 1014 miles…

Space & Spaceflight Maddie Stone

Fly Low Over Pluto in This Incredible Aerial Tour

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft took hundreds of images of Pluto this summer, and we’ve been getting them all back in one of the most glorious data dumps astro nerds have ever borne witness to. But for some of us, still images simply aren’t enough. We want to fly over Pluto, too, damnit! Thankfully, NASA understands…

Space & Spaceflight Maddie Stone

These Are Some of the Best Astronomy Pictures of the Year

Last night, the Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition announced its winners. The results, as you might expect, are astronomical. Here are a few of our favorites. The image above, by Chap Him Wong from Hong Kong, won the People & Space category. It depicts Sunset Peak, Hong Kong’s third-highest mountain, with star trails…

Space & Spaceflight Jamie Condliffe

Two Black Holes are About to Smash Into Each Other

Three and a half billion light years away in the Virgo constellation, two supermassive black holes are on the verge of smacking into one another. In 100,000 years, their cosmic collision will send ripples across the fabric of spacetime. Merging black holes wield some of the most powerful forces in the universe, and they may…

Space & Spaceflight Maddie Stone

Listen To The Solar System Sing With This Fantastic Simulation

This is a seriously cool visualization of the solar system. What if you turned the planets into a sort of music box? That’s the point of Solarbeat, which turns the movement of the planets into music. Solarbeat actually launched five years ago in 2010, but the designer Luke Twyman decided to revamp the website recently…

io9 Andrew Liptak

Where In Our Galaxy Are All The Aliens?

There may be billions of habitable worlds throughout the Milky Way, but where are the radio-blasting, starship-sailing aliens? Where are our cosmic Snapchat buddies? If they exist, they’re probably thousands of light years away from us, nestled somewhere toward the center of our Galaxy. And they’re likely to be utterly ancient. That, at least, is…

Space & Spaceflight Maddie Stone

A Lava Ocean on Io Could Mean Better Prospects for Alien Life

Jupiter’s moon Io is an eruptive mystery. Based on scientific models, the tiny Jovian moon’s volcanoes flare up in the “wrong” places. How could that be? Well apparently, our models didn’t account for a massive subsurface ocean of lava. That’s right: According to a new NASA study, Io may be hiding an ocean of molten…

Space & Spaceflight Maddie Stone

Saturn Dominates Dione in this Striking New Photo From NASA

Saturn’s satellite Dione is less than half the size of our moon, and it orbits a planet which features a radius nine times that of Earth. It’s a stark contrast in size that’s beautifully conveyed in a picture recently captured by the Cassini space probe. This gorgeous image was taken by Cassini at a distance…

io9 George Dvorsky

World’s Largest Camera Will Show Us the Universe Like We’ve Never Seen It

The U.S. Department of Energy has green-lit the construction of a 3.2-gigapixel digital camera for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). Once complete, the instrument will be used by astronomers to study everything from the Big Bang to the motions of nearby asteroids. The LSST is expected to detect tens of billions of objects over…

io9 George Dvorsky

How to Spot a Black Hole

You don’t need to be a professional astronomer to find black holes. Here’s how you can spot one, using just your laptop or phone. Radio Galaxy Zoo is an online platform that allows cosmically-inclined individuals to make valuable contributions to astronomy, by identifying radio jets from supermassive black holes (SBHs) and matching these features to…

Space & Spaceflight Maddie Stone

This is the Oldest Galaxy We’ve Found So Far

Astrophysicists at Caltech say they’ve detected the oldest, most distant galaxy known so far. It’s 13.2 billion years old — just over half a billion years younger than the universe itself — and the discovery may change what astrophysicists know about the early history of the universe. Adi Zitrin and Richard Ellis first spotted EGS8p7…

Space & Spaceflight Kiona Smith-Strickland

Astronomers Want to Watch Comets Slam Into Distant Planets

If a massive comet struck the Earth, the oceans would boiland the air would catch fire (don’t worry,this isn’t about to happen). But to alien astronomers studying our planet from afar, humanity’s brutal demise would look like nothing more than a faint flicker of light. If we could detect such impacts on distant worlds, we…

Space & Spaceflight Maddie Stone

I Wanna Fly Through This Gate to The Stars

Today’s APOD feature has just left me speechless. What is this astronomical beauty, this celestial rose, this heavenly gate I am staring at in this photo, taken after sunset on September 1, above the cold Chilean highlands? Those reddish petals are not clouds, but luminous glowing air, caused by chemiluminescence, as experts over at APOD…

Space & Spaceflight Attila Nagy

A Really Small Telescope Captured This Gorgeous Galaxy Image

Astronomers say this view of the Andromeda Galaxy is probably similar to what the Milky Way Galaxy would look like from outside. Like the Milky Way, Andromeda is a spiral galaxy, and it’s our nearest galactic neighbor in the cleverly-named Local Group. Of course, “near” in astronomical terms means about 2.5 million light years. But…

Space & Spaceflight Kiona Smith-Strickland

A Double Black Hole Powers a Brilliant Galactic Star Factory

Six hundred million light years away, a pair of black holes spiral furiously about one another at the brilliant core of a starburst galaxy. Black holes are usually lone wolves, devouring light and matter at centers of their galaxies. But when galaxies collide, two black holes can in theory become locked in a gravitational embrace,…

Tech News Maddie Stone

What is Earth’s Average Temperature?

Earth is the only planet in our Solar System where life is known to exist. Note the use of the word “known,” which indicates that our knowledge of the Solar System is still in its infancy, and the search for life continues. However, from all observable indications, Earth is the only place in our Solar…

io9 Matt Williams – Universe Today

Twin Jet Nebula is a Marvelous Cosmic Butterfly

Deep space is a wonderland of strange and awe-inspiring sights, but few astronomical curiosities match the exquisite beauty of the Twin Jet Nebula, a dying, binary star that looks like a pair of iridescent butterfly wings. The image above, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope and released to the public today, shows off the remarkable…

Tech News Maddie Stone

Some of the Most Beautiful Astronomy Photos That Anyone Has Ever Seen

Here’s More Evidence That Galactic Super-Civilizations Don’t Exist

This Speeding Exoplanet’s Shock Wave Has Just Been Detected on Earth

This is the Best Footage Yet of an Exoplanet Orbiting its Star

Fly Low Over Pluto in This Incredible Aerial Tour

These Are Some of the Best Astronomy Pictures of the Year

Two Black Holes are About to Smash Into Each Other

Listen To The Solar System Sing With This Fantastic Simulation

Where In Our Galaxy Are All The Aliens?

A Lava Ocean on Io Could Mean Better Prospects for Alien Life

Saturn Dominates Dione in this Striking New Photo From NASA

World’s Largest Camera Will Show Us the Universe Like We’ve Never Seen It

How to Spot a Black Hole

This is the Oldest Galaxy We’ve Found So Far

Astronomers Want to Watch Comets Slam Into Distant Planets

I Wanna Fly Through This Gate to The Stars

A Really Small Telescope Captured This Gorgeous Galaxy Image

A Double Black Hole Powers a Brilliant Galactic Star Factory

What is Earth’s Average Temperature?

Twin Jet Nebula is a Marvelous Cosmic Butterfly

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