• Pic of the Week: Stellar Tantrum

    This week’s image is from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. While it may look like an enormous interstellar stingray, it actually shows gas streaming from a newly-formed star. Here is the story from the European Space Agency (ESA): An energetic outburst from an infant star streaks across this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.…

  • Space Stories: Venusian Balloons, Sun Observations, and a Private Moon Trip

    Here are some recent stories of interest. —NASA.gov: “JPL’s Venus Aerial Robotic Balloon Prototype Aces Test Flights“ A scaled-down version of the aerobot that could one day take to the Venusian skies successfully completed two Nevada test flights, marking a milestone for the project…The shimmering silver balloon ascended more than 4,000 feet (1 kilometer) over Nevada’s…

  • NASA Confirms Success of DART Mission

    NASA has saved the Earth, or it would have had the asteroid Dimorphos and its partner been heading towards us. That is the news from earlier today from the space agency. NASA’s Administrator Bill Nelson made the following comments regarding the results of the impact by the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft: This mission…

  • Starlink Having Problems in Ukraine

    As if Elon Musk doesn’t have enough problems with his Twitter purchase and declining shares at Tesla, now the Ukranians are reporting that SpaceX’s Starlink internet service failed to work during a critical point in their battle to push the Russians out of Ukranian territory. This problem has been going on for weeks, but we…

  • Have You Heard of Super-Mercuries?

    I often here of super-Earths among the spotted expolanets, but super-Mercuries? They are less common, with only eight spotted to date, including two recently found around exoplanet using the Echelle SPectrograph for Rocky Exoplanet and Stable Spectroscopic Observations (ESPRESSO) spectrograph on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. The two super-Mercuries were spotted…

  • Space Quote: The Russians Are All In on the Space Station

    “We are going to keep flying [to the] International Space Station as long as our new infrastructure [is being] buil[t]. We don’t know yet how it’s going to be built and what kind of modules we will have, but I’m sure that we will stay in international partnership when we fly [to the] ISS and…

  • Book Review: Starry Messenger Starring Neil deGrasse Tyson

    Neil deGrasse Tyson has put out quite a few popular astronomy books over the years, including: One Universe: At Home in the Cosmos (2000); The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist (2004); Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries (2007); The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Planet (2009); and Astrophysics…

  • Pic of the Week: Juno and Europa

    This week’s image is from NASA’s Juno spacecraft orbiting Jupiter and its moons. It is a beautiful image of Europa from the spacecraft’s Junocam. Europa is one of 80 known moons orbiting its host planet. Here is a little more from NASA about this image: JunoCam took its closest image at an altitude of 945…

  • Successful Start to NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission

    Earlier today, SpaceX Crew-5 successfully departed from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on their way to the International Space Station (ISS). The four members on this flight are NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina. The population of the ISS will increase…

  • Space Stories: JWST, a Galaxy Catalog, and a Stellar Graveyard

    Here are some recent stories of interest. —Nature.com: “‘Bit of Panic’: Astronomers Forced to Rethink Early Webb Telescope Findings“ Astronomers have been so keen to use the new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) that some have got a little ahead of themselves. Many started analysing Webb data right after the first batch was released, on 14…