After James Webb Space Telescope officials released a stunning image of a single star, the team is ready to get other telescope parts in line with the observatory’s mirrors. The $10 billion telescope successfully aligned with its near-infrared camera (NIRCam), as the star image showed. But the observatory still has four other instruments that it … Read more
China’s Tianwen-1 lander and Zhurong rover touched down on the Martian plain Utopia Planitia on May 14, 2021 after spending about three months orbiting the Red Planet. While the Chinese Space Agency has shared images of the rover and lander (including a cute family portrait taken by a wireless remote camera), NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter … Read more
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has completed another critical mirror alignment step and has released the highest resolution infrared image ever taken from space. Less than two months ago, the James Webb Space Telescope took its first photos in space. The images were taken of the star HD84406 in the constellation Ursa Major and displayed … Read more
Scientists found themselves working from home along with just about everyone else when universities shut down in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. The closure of research laboratories posed a unique challenge for experimentalists, in particular. That’s how physicists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) found themselves casting about for experiments that could … Read more
The American space agency NASA has extended flight operations on Mars for its Ingenuity helicopter. Ingenuity landed on Mars a little over a year ago along with NASA’s Perseverance explorer, or rover. At first, NASA officials described Ingenuity as a demonstration mission. It was designed to see whether the small aircraft could take off, fly … Read more
An asteroid around the size of a refrigerator was spotted hours before it hit Earth’s atmosphere, and while it wasn’t dangerous, it marked the fifth time in history an asteroid was detected right before hitting our planet. On March 11, astronomer Krisztian Sarneczky noticed an asteroid at the Piszkéstető Observatory in Hungary. Sarneczky reported it … Read more
UNLV physicists pioneered a new laser-heating technique in a diamond anvil cell (pictured here) as part of their discovery of a new form of ice. Credit: Chris Higgins Findings could have implications for our understanding of distant, water-rich planets. NLV researchers have discovered a new form of ice, redefining the properties of water at high … Read more
At the Space Telescope Science Institute (STSI) in Baltimore, Maryland, NASA engineers are busy aligning the mirrors and instruments on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). In the meantime, the mission team has provided us with another glimpse of what this observatory – a successor to the venerable Hubble Space Telescope – will see once … Read more
UNLV physicists pioneered a new laser-heating technique in a diamond anvil cell (pictured here) as part of their discovery of a new form of ice. Credit: Chris Higgins UNLV researchers have discovered a new form of ice, redefining the properties of water at high pressures. Solid water, or ice, is like many other materials in … Read more
Astronomers have detected at least three small stars masquerading as exoplanets, new research shows. The three, possibly four, stars were originally discovered by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. At the time, they were classified as exoplanets. However, a new study suggests their original classification may be a case of mistaken identity, according to a statement from … Read more