An asteroid ‘the size of 33 armadillos’ might be a flight of fancy, but real astronomers measure celestial objects with units that are just as strange.
‘Earthrise,’ a photo of the Earth taken by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders, Dec. 4, 1968.
NASA/Bill Anders via Wikipedia
The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer and Europa Clipper missions will arrive at Jupiter in the 2030s and provide researchers with unprecedented access to the icy moons orbiting the gas giant.
Elizabeth Campbell operating the Floyd Telescope, 1922 total solar eclipse.
State Library Western Australia 4131B/3/8, enhanced detail
History might give you the impression astronomical discoveries were only done by men. But women were participating in scientific expeditions of eclipses too, even though it wasn’t easy.
A diagram of a lunar eclipse from De Sphaera Mundi by Johannes de Sacrobosco, c. 1240 AD.
New York Public Library
Medieval monks recorded hundreds of lunar eclipses. Centuries later, their descriptions are helping scientists unravel the role of volcanoes in historical climate change.
An artist’s impression of the 30,000 or so space debris orbiting around the Earth.
Flickr
How might the space industry reduce its ecological footprint and better manage the debris it leaves in its wake?
SAURON: radio intensity (purple) from MeerKAT overlaid on an optical image from the Dark Energy Survey.
Michelle Lochner / The Dark Energy Survey Collaboration 2005
A US-led coalition and China are both planning to establish bases on the Moon. How the two nations will navigate actions on the Moon and how other countries will be involved is still unclear.
Tens of thousands of satellites orbiting Earth will hamper astronomers’ efforts to study the Universe and spot dangerous asteroids, as well as brightening the sky and hiding stars from the rest of us.
The central black hole of Messier 87, a massive galaxy in the Virgo cluster.
Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration/ESO
Beyond just looking at black holes, the next-generation Event Horizon Telescope collaboration is the first to bring together perspectives from across the sciences and humanities.
The star system V883 Orionis contains a rare star surrounded by a disk of gas, ice and dust.
A. Angelich (NRAO/AUI/NSF)/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)
Astronomers have long known where water is first formed in the universe and how it ends up on planets, asteroids and comets. A recent discovery has finally answered what happens in between.
Eight planets, including Earth, revolve around our Sun.
Illustration by Tobias Roetsch/Future Publishing via Getty Images
The newly discovered comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS is anticipated to be spectacularly bright late next year. But it’s important to temper our expectations.
The TOI-700 star system is home to four planets, including two in its habitable zone that could host liquid water.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
With more than 5,000 known exoplanets, astronomers are shifting their focus from discovering additional distant worlds to identifying which are good candidates for further study.
Radio observatories like the Green Bank Telescope are in radio quiet zones that protect them from interference.
NRAO/AUI/NSF
Many telescopes use the radio spectrum to learn about the cosmos. Just as human development leads to more light pollution, increasing numbers of satellites are leading to more radio interference.