Pedro Duque, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM)
On the 50th anniversary of man’s historic moon landing, Pedro Duque remembers how every child wanted to be an astronaut in 1969.
The low solar corona as viewed in extreme ultraviolet light. Bright regions are where the most energetic solar storms are born. An eruption in action can be seen in the bottom-left.
NASA’s Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO) satellite.
Scientists spend years preparing for the two-minute window of a total solar eclipse.
A view from CSIRO’s Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope antenna 29, with the phased array feed receiver in the centre, Southern Cross on the left and the Moon on the right.
CSIRO/Alex Cherney
For the first time scientists have located the home galaxy of a one-off fast radio burst. Here’s how they did it – and what they learned about the galaxy.
It is always exciting to discover new planets beyond our Solar System. Now a planetary astrophysicist is using a star’s chemistry to predict which ones are likely to host giant planets.
The bright spot in the centre of the image is a new planet forming.
Valentin Christiaens et al./ ESO
Astronomers have found the first observational evidence for a disc of material around a giant young planet at a distant star. It’s a place they think moons can form.
Geminid meteors shower downward on a December night in a remote part of Virginia.
Genevieve de Messieres/Shutterstock.com
Every day about 50 tons of rocks from space fall on Earth. An examination of these meteorites has inspired a new theory about how exactly these rocks formed.
The panel of 60 Starlink satellites just before they were released to go into orbit around Earth.
Official SpaceX Photos
The first 60 satellites from Elon Musk’s planned low orbit internet network have lit up the skies. But with more planned, astronomers say the satellites could ruin their work.
A visualisation of a binary neutron star merger.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab
Tara Murphy, University of Sydney; Eric Thrane, Monash University, and Qi Chu, The University of Western Australia
The signal came in on ANZAC Day, ripples in space-time from the merger of two neutron stars an estimated 500-million light years away. But where it happened is still a mystery.
Searching for planets around nearby stars is like searching for a needle in a field of haystacks.
Trevor Dobson/Flikr
Jonti Horner, University of Southern Queensland and Stephen Kane, University of California, Riverside
Science is full of surprises. While searching for planets orbiting nearby stars, researchers stumbled across the remains of a star that once outshone the Sun.
Artist’s impression of the accretion disk and jets in the black hole system V404 Cygni.
ICRAR
A spinning black hole is pumping vast amounts of energy back into the surrounding universe, but something is causing the jets that transport that energy to wobble very rapidly.
The far side looks a lot like the near side.
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
The far side of the Moon sees its share of sunlight – it’s dark only in the sense that it’s mysterious because it’s never visible from Earth. Here’s why.
What’s left after a star explodes.
NASA/ESA/JHU/R.Sankrit & W.Blair via Wikimedia Commons.
Astronomers say they have “seen what we thought was unseeable” in releasing the first image of a supermassive black hole. So how did we get to this historic observation?
Shooting stars are not stars at all. They are tiny space adventurers who accidentally wander into our sky and get sucked toward us by Earth’s gravity. Here’s the story of a shooting star’s journey.
Jonti Horner, University of Southern Queensland and Tanya Hill, Museums Victoria Research Institute
Moonlight will spoil some of the big meteor showers this year, but still plenty of others to see. So here’s your guide on when and where to look to catch nature’s fireworks.