Dark sky sites can inspire new generations of stargazers, but a better long-term solution would be connecting people with the night sky where they live.
This artist’s impression shows a view of the planet Proxima b orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the solar system.
ESO/M. Kornmesser
Beyond the outer edge of the Solar System, mysterious, unknown worlds await by the thousands. Astronomers can now finally find them and explore them - but will we find another Earth?
Artist impression of the exoplanet 51 Pegasi b.
ESO/M. Kornmesser/Nick Risinger
Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz thought it would take years to find a planet outside the solar system – they did it in months.
This Hubble Space Telescope image of Saturn and a few of its moons shows how hard it can be to spot the gas giant’s tiny orbiting companions.
NASA / ESA / Hubble
A giant exomoon hundreds of times the size of Earth is revealing secrets about how giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn formed. They might also help astronomers find planets where life may thrive.
In the future, people may be able to go to Mars.
Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock.com
The first ever Canadian-led large project on one of the world’s leading telescopes will investigate how the birth and death of galaxies are affected by their environment.
A composite image showing the distribution of dark matter, galaxies and hot gas in a merging galaxy cluster taken with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii.
NASA
The Canadian Long Range Plan 2020 for astronomy and astrophysics builds on Canadian research’s previous success to extend Canada’s role.
The universe is home to a dizzying number of stars and planets. But the vast bulk of the universe is thought to be invisible dark matter.
Illustris Collaboration
Why do astronomers believe there’s dark matter when it cannot be directly detected? Let’s look at the evidence, and see what dark matter’s presence means for our universe.
Galileo thought Saturn looked a bit like the head of a teddy bear with two big ears. He thought it may be made of three planets.
www.shuttershock.com
Most people think that many millions of years ago, Saturn didn’t have rings at all. Instead, it had a big moon moving around it. Eventually, the moon burst and broke into pieces.
The Milky Way: a pattern of stars, or a pattern of gaps?
Luke Busellato/Wikimedia Commons
Around the world and throughout history, we find remarkably similar constellations defined by disparate cultures, as well as strikingly similar narratives describing the relationships between them.
With giant Saturn hanging in the blackness and sheltering Cassini from the Sun’s blinding glare, the spacecraft viewed the rings as never before.
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Vahe Peroomian, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Although the rings of Saturn may look like a permanent fixture of the planet, they are ever-changing. New analyses of the rings reveal how and when they were made, from what and whether they’ll last.
Dr. Burbidge is presented with the “Woman of the Year” award in 1976, while professor at UC San Diego.
Annie Gracy/Wikipedia
Matt Agnew is on the hunt for love as star of the new Bachelor Australia series. But whoever he picks (and he already has, apparently) will have to compete with TESS. So who, or what, is TESS?
Another reason you don’t want to get too close to a black hole is because of something we call ‘spaghettification’. If this happened to Earth it would be… unpleasant.
Shutterstock
If you got too close to a black hole, it would suck you in and you’d never be able to escape, even if you were travelling at the speed of light.
This point of no return is called the event horizon.
Near-Earth asteroids such as Bennu, and 2019 OK which passed close to Earth this week, pose a potential threat to our planet.
NASA
A 100-metre-wide asteroid passed just 70,000km from Earth on Thursday, and we had little warning it was about to happen. What threat is posed by asteroids and how do we find them?
A Sept. 20 citizen “raid” on Area 51, a secretive military installation long fancied to hold alien remains, has drawn worldwide interest.
Fer Gregory/Shutterstock.com
As more than a million people have indicated plans to partake in a citizen ‘raid’ on the famed Area 51 to ‘see them aliens,’ a scholar on the search for extraterrestrial life weighs in on the hype.
People do live outside Earth – on the International Space Station! But humans have had to find a way to make the conditions there more like what we’re used to at home.
Flickr/NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center
The first humans to land on the Moon, and the team that got them there, get all the glory. But what about the people who laid the foundation for this effort by mapping the Moon? Who were they?