This article was originally featured on The Conversation.

Spring, summer, fall and winter–the seasons on Earth change every few months, around the same time every year. It’s easy to take this cycle for granted here on Earth, but not every planet has a regular change in seasons. So why does Earth have regular seasons when other planets don’t?

I’m an astrophysicist who studies the movement of planets and the causes of seasons. Throughout my research, I’ve found that Earth’s regular pattern of seasons is unique. The rotational axis that Earth spins on, along the North and South poles, isn’t quite aligned with the vertical axis perpendicular to Earth’s orbit around the Sun.

That slight tilt has big implications for everything from seasons to glacier cycles. The magnitude of that tilt can even determine whether a planet is habitable to life.

Seasons on Earth

When a planet has perfect alignment between the axis it orbits on and the rotational axis, the amount of sunlight it receives is fixed as it orbits around the Sun–assuming its orbital shape is a circle. Since seasons come from variations in how much sunlight reaches the planet’s surface, a planet that’s perfectly aligned wouldn’t have seasons. But Earth isn’t perfectly aligned on its axis.

This small misalignment, called an obliquity, is around 23 degrees from vertical for Earth. So, the Northern Hemisphere experiences more intense sunlight during the summer, when the Sun is positioned more directly above the Northern Hemisphere.

Then, as the Earth continues to orbit around the Sun, the amount of sunlight the Northern Hemisphere receives gradually decreases as the Northern Hemisphere tilts away from the Sun. This causes winter.

The planets spinning on their axes and orbiting around the Sun look kind of like spinning tops–they spin around and wobble because of gravitational pull from the Sun. As a top spins, you might notice that it doesn’t just stay perfectly upright and stationary. Instead, it may start to tilt or wobble slightly. This tilt is what astrophysicists call spin precession.

Because of these wobbles, Earth’s obliquity isn’t perfectly fixed. These small variations in tilt can have big effects on the Earth’s climate when combined with small changes to Earth’s orbit shape.

The wobbling tilt and any natural variations to the shape of Earth’s orbit can change the amount and distribution of sunlight reaching Earth. These small changes contribute to the planet’s larger temperature shifts over thousands to hundreds of thousands of years. This can, in turn, drive ice ages and periods of warmth.

Translating obliquity into seasons

So how do obliquity variations affect the seasons on a planet? Low obliquity, meaning the rotational spin axis is aligned with the planet’s orientation as it orbits around the Sun, leads to stronger sunlight on the equator and low sunlight near the pole, like on Earth.

On the other hand, a high obliquity–meaning the planet’s rotational spin axis points toward or away from the Sun–leads to extremely hot or cold poles. At the same time, the equator gets cold, as the Sun does not shine above the equator all year round. This leads to drastically varying seasons at high latitudes and low temperatures at the equator.

When a planet has an obliquity of more than 54 degrees, that planet’s equator grows icy and the pole becomes warm. This is called a reversed zonation, and it’s the opposite of what Earth has.

Basically, if an obliquity has large and unpredictable variations, the seasonal variations on the planet become wild and hard to predict. A dramatic, large obliquity variation can turn the whole planet into a snowball, where it’s all covered by ice.

Spin orbit resonances

Most planets are not the only planets in their solar systems. Their planetary siblings can disturb each other’s orbit, which can lead to variations in the shape of their orbits and their orbital tilt.

So, planets in orbit look kind of like tops spinning on the roof of a car that’s bumping down the road, where the car represents the orbital plane. When the rate–or frequency, as scientists call it–at which the tops are precessing, or spinning, matches the frequency at which the car is bumping up and down, something called a spin-orbit resonance occurs.

Spin-orbit resonances can cause these obliquity variations, which is when a planet wobbles on its axis. Think about pushing a kid on a swing. When you push at just the right time–or at the resonant frequency–they’ll swing higher and higher.

Mars wobbles more on its axis than Earth does, even though the two are tilted about the same amount, and that actually has to do with the Moon orbiting around Earth. Earth and Mars have a similar spin precession frequency, which matches the orbital oscillation–the ingredients for a spin-orbit resonance.

But Earth has a massive Moon, which pulls on Earth’s spin axis and drives it to precess faster. This slightly faster precession prevents it from experiencing spin orbit resonances. So, the Moon stabilizes Earth’s obliquity, and Earth doesn’t wobble on its axis as much as Mars does.

Exoplanet seasons

Thousands of exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system, have been discovered over the past few decades. My research group wanted to understand how habitable these planets are, and whether these exoplanets also have wild obliquities, or whether they have moons to stabilize them like Earth does.

To investigate this, my group has led the first investigation on the spin-axis variations of exoplanets.

We investigated Kepler-186f, which is the first discovered Earth-sized planet in a habitable zone. The habitable zone is an area around a star where liquid water can exist on the surface of the planet and life may be able to emerge and thrive.

Unlike Earth, Kepler-186f is located far from the other planets in its solar system. As a result, these other planets have only a weak effect on its orbit and movement. So, Kepler-186f generally has a fixed obliquity, similar to Earth. Even without a large moon, it doesn’t have wildly changing or unpredictable seasons like Mars.

Looking forward, more research into exoplanets will help scientists understand what seasons look like throughout the vast diversity of planets in the universe.

Disclaimer: Gongjie Li receives funding from NASA.

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As satellite constellations and space junk continue crowding orbital zones above Earth, researchers are searching for ways to prevent adding to the growing problem. According to one team of researchers, one solution may involve using the physical rocket to fuel its own launch.

Collaborators from the University of Glasgow say they have debuted the first successful, unsupported autophage (Latin for “self-eating”) rocket engine prototype. Revealed earlier this week during the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics SciTech Forum, the Ouroboros-3—named after the ancient Egyptian symbol of a snake eating its own tail—utilizes its own body as an additional fuel source. In a video of the tests, the Ouroboros-3 can be seen shrinking in length as its body is burned away during a simulated launch.

Today’s conventional rocketry stores its fuel in separate stages that are ejected once depleted, either to burn up during atmospheric re-entry or to become yet another piece of orbital space junk. Ouroboros-3 leaves very little trace once it completes its duties, given that it would only be tasked with launching and delivering a small, unpiloted payload into orbit.

After a first ignition using a main propellant composed of gaseous oxygen and liquid propane, Ouroboros-3’s high-density polyethylene plastic tubing encasement subsequently adds to the propulsion as the rocket continues its burn. Much like a candlestick flame consuming its wax, the case provided as much as one-fifth the total necessary propellant. In test-firings, Ouroboros-3 generated as much as 100 newtons of thrust.

“A conventional rocket’s structure makes up between five and 12 percent of its total mass. Our tests show that the Ouroboros-3 can burn a very similar amount of its own structural mass as propellant,” University of Glasgow engineering professor and project lead Patrick Harkness said in a statement earlier this week. “If we could make at least some of that mass available for payload instead, it would be a compelling prospect for future rocket designs.”

Subsequent tests also demonstrated how the team can control their autophage rocket’s burn, allowing it to restart, pulse in an on/off pattern, or be throttled.

“These results are a foundational step on the way to developing a fully-functional autophage rocket engine,” Harkness continued.

[Related: The FCC just dished out their first space junk fine.]

Although still an early prototype, the team hopes to scale future iterations of Ouroboros-3 enough to support the delivery of payloads, such as nanosatellites, into orbit without further cluttering the atmosphere. Speaking with Gizmodo on Thursday, Harkness intends to strengthen their autophage rocket by around two orders of magnitude—any more than that is probably unnecessary, since deliveries will likely be restricted to comparatively small payloads.

Still, autophage rockets could one day provide the space industry with an alternative to existing designs’ costly, cluttering problems. And besides, anything that helps avoid instigating a Kessler cascade is certainly good news.

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Even the brilliant minds at NASA sometimes have trouble opening up a tightly-sealed container. Engineers and scientists from Johnson Space Center finally opened a container of asteroid sample material, after two fasteners had been stuck for about 3.5 months. 

[Related: NASA’s OSIRIS mission delivered asteroid samples to Earth.]

On September 24, 2023, the agency received roughly 2.5 ounces of rocks and dust collected from a 4.5 billion year-old near-Earth asteroid named Bennu. The regolith was dropped off by OSIRIS-REx in a Utah desert. This is the first United States mission to collect samples from an asteroid. The spacecraft traveled 1.4-billion-miles from Earth, to the asteroid Bennu, and then back again to drop off the asteroid dust. However, NASA announced in October that some of the material was out of reach in a capsule inside a robotic arm with a storage container called the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM). 

The asteroid samples must be analyzed in a specialized glovebox with a flow of nitrogen to prevent them from becoming contaminated. According to NASA, 35 fasteners were holding the sampler shut and two of the fasteners were too difficult to open with any of the pre-approved ways to access containers of such precious samples. They initially managed to collect some black dust and debris l from the TAGSAM head when the aluminum head was first removed and could access some of the material from inside the canister with tweezers or a scoop, while the TAGSAM head’s mylar flap was held down. 

To pry open the stuck fasteners, NASA needed to develop new materials and specialized tools that minimize the risk that the precious space rock samples will be damaged or contaminated. These new tools include custom-fabricated bits built from a specific grade of surgical, non-magnetic stainless steel. This is the hardest metal approved for use in the container’s pristine curation gloveboxes. These techniques enabled the team to open the stuck fasteners. 

“In addition to the design challenge of being limited to curation-approved materials to protect the scientific value of the asteroid sample, these new tools also needed to function within the tightly-confined space of the glovebox, limiting their height, weight, and potential arc movement,” Johnson Space Center OSIRIS-REx curator Nicole Lunning said in a statement. “The curation team showed impressive resilience and did incredible work to get these stubborn fasteners off the TAGSAM head so we can continue disassembly. We are overjoyed with the success.”

After a few additional disassembly steps, the remainder of the sample will be fully visible. Image specialists will be able to take ultra-high-resolution pictures of the sample while it is still inside TAGSAM’s head. After imaging, this portion of the sample will be removed, weighed, and the team will determine the total mass of the asteroid material captured by the mission. 

Bennu dates back to the crucial first 10 million years of the solar system’s development. Its age offers scientists a window into what this time period looked like. The space rock is shaped like a spinning top and is about one-third of a mile across at its widest part–slightly wider than the Empire State Building is tall. It revolves around the sun between the orbits of Earth and Mars.

An analysis of Bennu’s dust conducted last fall revealed that the asteroid had a lot of water in the form of hydrated clay minerals. The team believes that signs of water on asteroids support the current theory of how water arrived on Earth.

[Related: NASA’s first asteroid-return sample is a goldmine of life-sustaining materials.]

OSIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta told PopSci in October that asteroids like Bennu were likely responsible for all of Earth’s oceans, lakes, rivers, and rain. Water likely arrived when space rocks landed on our planet about 4 billion years ago. The asteroid Bennu has water-bearing clay with a fibrous structure, which was the key material that ferried water to Earth, according to Lauretta.

The Bennu sample also contained about 4.7 percent carbon. According to Daniel Glavin, the OSIRIS-REx sample analysis lead at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, this sample has the highest abundance of carbon that a team from the Carnegie Institution for Science have measured in an extraterrestrial sample. Glavin told PopSci that when the team opened it, “There were scientists on the team going ‘Wow, oh my God!’ And when a scientist says that ‘Wow;’ that’s a big deal.”

In the spring, the curation team is scheduled to release a catalog of the OSIRIS-REx samples for the global scientific community to study. OSIRIS-REx is now renamed OSIRIS-APEX and is currently on its way to study a potentially asteroid named Apophis. That rendezvous is scheduled for sometime in 2029.

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Following a successful launch aboard a Vulcan Centaur Rocket on Monday January 8, private space company Astrobotic has abandoned its attempt to land its Peregrine spacecraft on the moon. In an update from the Pittsburgh-based company, Astrobotic reported that Peregrine sent back a few images from the earlier parts of its journey. One of the images showed what Astrobotic described as a “curved sliver” that appears to be Earth. 

[Related: Peregrine lunar lander experiences ‘critical loss of propellant’ following successful launch.]

“Our flight dynamics team has confirmed that the curved sliver in this image taken on our first day of operations is, in fact, Earth! This image from our spacecraft simulator shows the camera’s view of Earth at the time the photo was taken,” the company wrote in the January 10 update.

Astrobotic also has gathered data from the payloads that were designed to communicate with the lander. “All 10 payloads requiring power have received it, while the remaining 10 payloads aboard the spacecraft are passive,” Astrobotic wrote in a January 11 update. “These payloads have now been able to prove operational capability in space and payload teams are analyzing the impact of this development now.”

What went wrong?

About seven hours after launch, Peregrine was unable to shift its solar panels towards the sun so that its batteries could charge. While the engineering team was able to turn the panels, more problems developed. 

Astrobotic believed that the root of the problem was a failure in the vehicle’s propulsion system that was causing a critical loss of propellant. The company shared the first image of the lander in space, with its outer insulation appearing very crinkled. 

By Monday evening, Astrobotic announced that this fuel leak was causing the thrusters in the spacecraft’s attitude control system to “operate well beyond their expected service life cycles to keep the lander from an uncontrollable tumble.” The mission’s priority also became maximizing the data and scientific information that Peregrine could capture and send back to Earth. 

On Tuesday January 9 Astrobotic said that the leak meant that “there is, unfortunately, no chance of a soft landing on the moon. By January 10, Peregrine was roughly 192,000 miles from Earth. The spacecraft was “stable and fully charged” and gathering “valuable data.” They estimated that it will likely shut down at around sometime on Friday January 12.

[Related: Inside NASA’s messy plan to return to the moon by 2024.]

What will happen to Peregrine?

Peregrine will join the estimated 29,000 pieces of space debris larger than 10 centimeters (3.9 inches). The spacecraft will also be a floating gravesite. Its payload contained DNA samples and portions of cremated remains of three former United States presidents, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, and several members of the original cast of the groundbreaking sci-fi series. 

What is next for public-private lunar exploration?

With this mission, Astrobotic hoped to become the first private business to successfully land on the moon. This is a feat only four countries–Russia, China, India, and the United States–have accomplished. 

A second lander from Houston-based Intuitive Machines is scheduled to launch in February. NASA has given both of these companies millions of dollars to construct and fly their own lunar landers, so that the privately owned landers can explore landing sites before astronauts arrive and deliver critical technology and experiments. Astrobotic’s contract with NASA for the Peregrine lander was $108 million with more to come. 

[Related: NASA delays two crewed Artemis moon missions.]

This week, NASA leadership announced that it is delaying future missions to the moon, citing safety issues and delays in developing lunar landers and spacesuits. Originally scheduled to launch in November of this year, the Artemis II mission that will send four astronauts around the moon has been postponed to September 2025. Meanwhile, the moon-landing mission Artemis III will now aim for September 2026 instead of late 2025. The Artemis IV mission remains on track for September 2028.

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Best overall		Celestron NexStar 8SE		SEE IT	It offers powerful magnification and a useful Go-To mount for finding celestial objects.
Best smart		Unistellar Equinox 2		SEE IT	Ponder the heavens and take photos of space from the comfort of your couch.
Best budget		Sky-Watcher 8" Flextube 200P		SEE IT	A budget-friendly option with plenty of magnification and light-gathering capabilities.

Telescopes for deep space allow you to gaze at the wonders of our universe in a way that wouldn’t be possible with other telescopes. These powerful devices use larger apertures to gather loads of light, illuminating what would be too dim to see otherwise. Many even offer motorized mounts to move to the celestial objects you want to admire automatically. Whether you are a new astronomer or a seasoned pro, the best telescopes for deep space will broaden your horizons.

• Best overall: Celestron NexStar 8SE
• Best smart: Unistellar Equinox 2
• Best splurge: Celestron Advanced VX 8 Edge HD
• Best compact: Vaonis Vespera
• Best budget: Sky-Watcher 8″ Flextube 200P

How we chose the best telescopes for deep space

Telescopes for deep space have more specific requirements than general telescopes. Because of this, we selected powerful scopes with large apertures and plenty of magnification. Beyond those two factors, we also looked for options with and without motorized mounts. Finally, we assessed the quality of the optics, build quality, mount type, and any extra features. We selected based on a mix of hands-on telescope experience, expert insight, editorial reviews, and user feedback. 

The best telescopes for deep space: Reviews & Recommendations

If you want to see beyond planets and our moon, you’ll need a telescope for deep space. These powerful scopes will open up the ability to gaze at deep sky objects (DSOs), such as star clusters, nebulas, and galaxies, providing new opportunities for epic stargazing sessions.

Best overall: Celestron NexStar 8SE

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Specs

• Optical design: Schmidt-Cassegrain
• Mount: Computerized alt-azimuth  
• Aperture: 203mm (8 inches)
• Focal length: 2032mm
• Eyepiece: 25mm (81x) Plössl
• Weight: 24 pounds
• Dimensions: 42.01 x 23.66 x 12.99 inches

Pros

• Computerized mount makes tracking easy
• Very sharp across entire field of view
• Large aperture
• Portable

Cons

• Slewing results in some lag

Our best overall pick comes from one of the most trusted telescope manufacturers. The Celestron NexStar 8SE is a relatively portable Schmidt-Cassegrain scope. It weighs 24 pounds but is quite compact, so you can bring it to dark-sky locations if needed. 

This telescope for deep space offers a minimum useful magnification of 29x and a maximum useful magnification of 480x, making it a versatile tool for viewing a wide range of celestial objects, including planets. Plus, the eight-inch aperture captures plenty of light for DSOs. Provided you don’t have much light pollution, you’ll be able to see nebulas, galaxies, and more clearly.  

This type of telescope requires collimation, but Celestron’s SkyAlign makes it quick and easy, even for beginners. Another plus for beginners and pros alike is the included alt-azimuth mount, a fully automated Go-To mount. You can select from a database of 40,000 objects, and the telescope will automatically find it and track it across the sky for you. It also comes with a 25mm eyepiece, StarPointer finderscope, visual back, and mirror star diagonal. The NexStar 8SE is pricey, but you get a lot of value for that price that is hard to beat.

Best smart: Unistellar Equinox 2

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Specs

• Optical design: Newtonian reflector
• Mount: Computerized alt-azimuth  
• Aperture: 114mm
• Focal length: 450mm
• Eyepiece: Not applicable (no eyepiece)
• Weight: 19.8 pounds
• Dimensions: 18.6 x 11.2 x 30.4 inches

Pros

• Very easy to use
• Can be used from a distance
• Filters out light pollution 
• Portable
• Good battery life

Cons

• Expensive
• Lack of an eyepiece isn’t for everyone

For those who want to gaze into the heavens from the comfort of their couch, the Unistellar Equinox 2 is the way to go. This smart telescope is unique in that it doesn’t feature an eyepiece. Instead, you pair the scope with the easy-to-use Unistellar app and view from there. This won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but it makes deep space observation easier for groups and kids. It also came in handy for those mosquito-ridden Florida nights, as my husband and I could stargaze from inside.

The Equinox 2 features a sturdy base with a computerized alt-az mount. After an easy alignment process, you can search a database of 5,000 objects, including DSOs. Then, the telescope will automatically find and track them across the night sky. Or, you can use the in-app joystick to browse on your own. 

One of the best features of the Equinox 2 is its Deep Dark Technology, which filters out light pollution. This opens up stargazing even to those living in cities. Though I don’t live in a large city, there is a lot of light pollution, and it was remarkable what I was able to see with this setting turned on. Should you want to travel to dark sky locations, the telescope is relatively compact and portable, and you can even purchase a bundle with a backpack for easier transportation. Want an even more up-to-date (but also more expensive) model? Check out the newly announced Odyssey Pro.

Best splurge: Celestron Advanced VX 8 Edge HD

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Specs

• Optical design: Schmidt-Cassegrain
• Mount: Computerized equatorial mount 
• Aperture: 203mm (8 inches)
• Focal length: 2032mm
• Eyepiece: 12mm (150x) and 40mm (38x)
• Weight: 61 pounds (full kit)
• Dimensions: ‎9.1 x 9.1 x 9.1 inches

Pros

• Very compact
• Accurate Go-To mount
• Extremely high-quality optics
• Excellent for both astrophotography and observation

Cons

• Mount isn’t sturdy enough for long-exposure astrophotography
• Expensive

Our splurge pick is also one of the best telescopes for astrophotography. It features high-quality optics that fully correct for coma and field curvature, resulting in a truly flat field. Plus, the StarBright XLT coatings provide better light transmission for bright, sharp images. 

The included equatorial mount makes tracking objects easy, so you can make long observations or take long-exposure photos. It is computerized with Go-To functionality, making it easy to find and automatically track objects of interest. The mount even features ports for hand control, an autoguider, and two AUX ports for optional accessories. All those ports make it an ideal option for seasoned pros or for beginners who want something to grow into. 

Adding to the versatility of this scop is the ability to use three different f-stop configurations. You can attach a camera to the scope for f/10 or attach the eight-inch EdgeHD focal reducer to shoot at f/7. Finally, the EdgeHD is Fastar/Hyperstar compatible, making it possible to shoot at f/2. It is also quite compact, albeit fairly heavy, making it feasible to travel with. This is an expensive telescope for deep space, but you won’t be disappointed if you want something to last a long time or are looking for extremely high-quality optics.

Best compact: Vaonis Vespera

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Specs

• Optical design: Apochromatic (APO) quadruplet refractor
• Mount: Computerized alt-azimuth  
• Aperture: 50mm (2 inches)
• Focal length: 200mm
• Eyepiece: Not applicable
• Weight: 11 pounds
• Dimensions: 15 x 8 x 3.5 inches

Pros

• Very compact and portable
• Helps remove light pollution
• Sleek, futuristic design
• Ideal for group observations

Cons

• Images aren’t very high-quality

The Vaonis Vespera is one of the best options If you love to travel and want a telescope for deep space to take along. Weighing only 11 pounds and measuring 15 by 8 by 3.5 inches,  the Vespera is very compact for what it provides. It also features a futuristic design, which will look nice sitting in your home. 

Like the Unistellar telescope, this option doesn’t offer an eyepiece. It can pair with up to five smartphones or tablets via the Singularity app, making it a fun way to stargaze with friends. Also like the Unistellar, it can filter out light pollution so that you can view DSOs even in cities. The telescope and app are both easy to use, so you’ll have no issues if you are a complete novice. 

The Vespera uses a Sony IMX462 image sensor to produce images. Unfortunately, this isn’t a great option if you want high-quality images of celestial objects. It only offers a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels, and users report that images are a little on the soft side. But it uses your phone’s GPS to calibrate yourself and automatically tracks objects, taking the work out of stargazing.

Best budget: Sky-Watcher 8″ Flextube 200P

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Specs

• Optical design: Newtonian reflector
• Mount: Dobsonian
• Aperture: 203mm (8 inches)
• Focal length: 1200mm
• Eyepiece: 10mm (120x) and 25mm (48x)
• Weight: 52 pounds (full kit)
• Dimensions: Base: 29.5 x 20 inches

Pros

• Included mount is very sturdy
• Very large aperture for the price
• Comes with two eyepieces and an eyepiece tray
• Smooth movements for manual tracking

Cons

• Not motorized Go-To functionality

Telescopes for deep space are not cheap; there’s no getting around it. But the Sky-Watcher 8” Flextube 200P offers a much more budget-friendly option for deep sky observation. Coming in well below $1,000 when writing, this device provides a large eight-inch aperture for plenty of light gathering. 

The Flextube 200P comes with two eyepieces, offering more versatility. It also includes an eyepiece tray to keep your accessories organized. The 1200mm focal length offers plenty of reach for deep space viewing, with a maximum useful magnification of 400x. The high-quality mount allows for smooth movements as you scan the sky.

This is not a lightweight device at 52 pounds (the base and scope combined). But it is relatively compact so that it will fit well in smaller spaces. Should you need to transport the scope, it comes apart in two pieces to make it easier. The Flextube 200P also doesn’t feature a motorized mount, meaning it requires manual input for finding and tracking objects. Purists will appreciate that, but it may take some getting used to for novices. It comes with a 50mm finder, though, which makes it easier to find what you are after.

What to consider when buying the best telescopes for deep space

Telescopes for deep space have some specific requirements beyond most scopes. Add to that all the highly technical jargon that goes along with telescopes, and it can be extremely confusing what to actually pay attention to when shopping. Below are some key features you’ll need to consider when choosing your new telescope to look out at the cosmos’ wonders. 

Aperture

The aperture is the most important aspect of a telescope for deep space (yes, this is even more important than magnification). A telescope’s aperture controls how much light is let in. It is measured in millimeters or inches. If you want to check out deep-space objects, you’ll need a telescope with a large aperture to gather as much light as possible. Broadly speaking, your best bet is to choose the largest aperture you can afford. 

The exact type of object you want to check out could also guide your decision. Celestron suggests a minimum of 5 inches (120mm) for open star clusters and at least 8-11 inches (200-280 mm) for galaxies. 

Focal length & magnification

The focal length of your telescope is a measurement (measured in millimeters) of the distance between the primary lens or mirror and where the light comes in to focus at the other end. Focal length matters because it is part of what determines its magnification. 

While it might be somewhat counterintuitive, you don’t need crazy high magnification to view deep-space objects (DSOs). In fact, too much magnification may prevent you from seeing the object in the best light. Depending on what exactly you hope to check out, a focal length of 800 to 1250mm or so is best. 

Eyepiece

The other piece of the magnification puzzle is the eyepiece. Most telescopes will come with two eyepieces, providing different levels of magnification for better versatility. You can also purchase eyepieces separately if you want more options. 

Keep in mind that each telescope will have a minimum and maximum useful magnification. If you choose an eyepiece with too much magnification for your telescope, you will see objects larger, but it won’t be any sharper, so you may not get a very clear image. On the other hand, if you go with too little magnification, there will be a vignette around your view, and you won’t see the entire field of view. 

Without getting too into the weeds, there are also multiple types of eyepieces, each with its pros and cons. The most common ones that you’ll find are Barlow and Plössl eyepieces. Barlow lenses feature optical elements that increase magnification by either twice or triple as you step up. Plössl eyepieces offer a wider field of view, which makes them ideal for deep sky viewing. 

Optical design

There are many types of telescopes, but broadly speaking, there are three categories for consumers: Refractor, reflector, and catadioptric.

Refractor telescopes use lenses (typically made of glass) to allow the light to travel in a straight path from the front objective lens to the eyepiece at the back of the telescope. These are easy to use, reliable, and require little to no maintenance. However, if you want a large aperture, they are quite long. They also get expensive, especially for high-quality refractors, since the glass lenses are pricey to produce well. 

Reflector telescopes, including Newtonian and Dobsonian types, use mirrors to bounce light inside the device, allowing for a shorter design than refractor scopes. Mirrors are cheaper to make than glass lenses, so reflector telescopes are generally more affordable when compared to the same aperture as refractor scopes. They can, however, be quite bulky and heavy and need to be collimated (the process of aligning the mirrors), which adds a step before you can use your scope. 

Finally, catadioptric telescopes use both mirrors and lenses, allowing for a compact, portable design. Schmidt-Cassegrains and Maksutov-Cassegrains are two types of catadioptric telescopes that you’ll encounter. 

Mount type

The type of mount your telescope uses will impact how you can use it. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, there are three primary types you’ll encounter: Dobsonian, alt-azimuth, and equatorial.

Alt-azimuth mounts (also called alt-az) are the simplest and, therefore, most affordable. They allow for altitude (vertical) and azimuth (horizontal) adjustments. High-quality alt-az mounts also provide smooth tracking abilities; some even feature a motor for automated tracking. 

Dobsonian mounts use a platform much like a lazy susan. As a result, they need to be placed on sturdy, flat surfaces, such as a table. They provide excellent stability, as long as you have a good place to put it. They are not very portable, though, so these are best suited for homes where you can set it up and leave it. 

Finally, equatorial mounts counteract the Earth’s rotation, allowing you to focus on a single object and track it across the night sky. As a result, they are the preferred choice for serious astrophotography and long observations of single celestial objects. 

FAQs

Final thoughts on the best telescopes for deep space

• Best overall: Celestron NexStar 8SE
• Best smart: Unistellar Equinox 2
• Best splurge: Celestron Advanced VX 8 Edge HD
• Best compact: Vaonis Vespera
• Best budget: Sky-Watcher 8″ Flextube 200P

Telescopes for deep space have specific requirements that make them more expensive than basic scopes. But, if there’s room in your budget, they allow for epic stargazing, opening up new discoveries. And although they may be more advanced than cheap telescopes, most are still very beginner-friendly.

Why trust us

Popular Science started writing about technology more than 150 years ago. There was no such thing as “gadget writing” when we published our first issue in 1872, but if there was, our mission to demystify the world of innovation for everyday readers means we would have been all over it. Here in the present, PopSci is fully committed to helping readers navigate the increasingly intimidating array of devices on the market right now.

Our writers and editors have combined decades of experience covering and reviewing consumer electronics. We each have our own obsessive specialties—from high-end audio to video games to cameras and beyond—but when we’re reviewing devices outside of our immediate wheelhouses, we do our best to seek out trustworthy voices and opinions to help guide people to the very best recommendations. We know we don’t know everything, but we’re excited to live through the analysis paralysis that internet shopping can spur so readers don’t have to.

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On January 9, NASA leadership announced that it is delaying future missions to the moon. Originally slated to launch November 2024, the Artemis II mission that will send four astronauts around the moon has been postponed to September 2025. Meanwhile, the moon-landing mission Artemis III will now aim for September 2026 instead of late 2025. The Artemis IV mission remains on track for September 2028. 

[Related: Inside NASA’s messy plan to return to the moon by 2024.]

The agency cited safety concerns with its spacecraft and development issues with the lunar landers and spacesuits, both of which are being made by private industry. The announcement came within hours of private space company Astrobotic abandoning its attempt to land a spacecraft on the moon due to a fuel leak. Peregrine Mission One launched on January 8 as part of NASA’s commercial lunar program and the lander was intended to serve as a support scout for Artemis astronauts. 

When it eventually launches, Artemis II will not enter orbit around the moon the way that Apollo missions did. Instead, the Orion capsule will swing around the moon and use lunar gravity to sling the spacecraft back towards the Earth. The entire trip is expected to take about 10 days. In April 2023, NASA announced that the crew will be three of its astronauts—Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Reid Wiseman—and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen. 

NASA plans to land two astronauts on the moon near its south pole for the first time in its now rescheduled Artemis III mission. If successful, it will mark humanity’s first return to the lunar surface in over 50 years. 

“Safety is our top priority, and to give Artemis teams more time to work through the challenges with first-time developments, operations and integration, we’re going to give more time on Artemis II and III,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in the live streamed briefing. 

The officials cited several technical issues for the delay, including the electronics in the life support system that will need to sustain the astronauts inside the Orion and the heat shield on the capsule. 

According to deputy associate administrator for NASA’s Moon to Mars program Amit Kshatriya, the heat shield issues that the Orion capsule experienced during the uncrewed Artemis 1 test flight around the moon in November and December 2022 have been a major concern while the data from that mission has been analyzed. They’ve found that while Orion’s heat shield sufficiently protected the capsule, a large amount of the shield was burned away from the spacecraft. 

[Related: Before the Artemis II crew can go to the moon, they need to master flying high above Earth.]

“We did see the off-nominal recession of some char that came off the heat shield, which we were not expecting,” Kshatriya said in the briefing. “Now, this heat shield is an ablative material—it is supposed to char—but it’s not what we were expecting, with some pieces of that char to be liberated from the vehicle.”

Over the past 10 years, NASA’s moon-landing effort has been delayed repeatedly. In December 2023, the Government Accountability Office reported that Artemis III’s targeted December 2025 lunar landing was unlikely. The accountability office cited an optimistic schedule for developing Space X’s Starship lunar lander and the spacesuits necessary for walking on the moon. In 2023, two Starship test launches failed to reach orbit. 
These delays have added billions of dollars to the cost of the program. According to the Associated Press, recent government audits project that it will cost $93 billion through 2025.

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It may officially be Hollywood awards season, but NASA is also rolling out a red carpet of its own. On January 12 at 4pm EST, the agency will livestream the official public debut of its highly anticipated X-59 QueSST experimental aircraft. Designed alongside Lockheed Martin’s secretive Skunk Works division, the currently one-of-a-kind X-59 QueSST (short for Quiet SuperSonic Technology) is intended to demonstrate its potentially industry-shifting ability for human air travel at supersonic speeds sans sonic boom.

A sonic boom’s trademark thunderclap has long been associated with vehicles traveling faster than Mach 1. As a plane’s velocity surpasses the speed of sound, the shockwave formed by its wake results in a percussive noise capable of startling nearby humans and animals, as well as shattering windows if loud enough.

[Related: This experimental NASA plane will try to break the sound barrier—quietly.]

While sonic booms are permitted by certain military aircraft, commercial flights above the US have been prohibited from generating them since the Concorde jet’s retirement in 2003. The cutting edge X-59, in contrast, is designed to travel around 938 mph while only creating a “sonic thump” that is supposedly much quieter than an average sonic boom’s 110 decibels. NASA representatives previously estimated the X-59 will generate around 75 decibels of sound, or about as loud as slamming a car door.

Engineers have spent years creating and honing the X-59’s state-of-the-art design. The experimental craft to be showcased on Friday is much smaller and more elongated than similar planes, measuring roughly 95-feet-long and less than 30-feet-wide. As New Scientist points out, that’s narrower than an F-16, but twice as long. The nose alone comprises nearly half plane’s length to ensure shockwaves generated near the front do not merge with waves created in the rear and thus emit a deafening boom. Because of this, the plane’s pilot will rely on 4K video screens inside the cockpit for their visuals to guide the aircraft.

It’s highly unlikely that X-59 will publicly take to the skies on Friday. Instead, the ceremony is meant to mark the beginning of a multiyear testing phase that will see the X-59 speed above “several US communities” selected by NASA’s QueSST team, who will then gather data and assess public reactions to the supposedly “gentle” sonic thump.

“This is the big reveal,” Catherine Bahm, manager of NASA’s Low Boom Flight Demonstrator project overseeing the X-59’s development and construction, said in a separate announcement. “The rollout is a huge milestone toward achieving the overarching goal of the QueSST mission to quiet the sonic boom.”

To call a sonic thump “quiet” may be a bit of an oversell, however. According to a 2022 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, many people aren’t exactly pleased with daily disruptions caused by existing subsonic air travel, so it’s hard to envision sonic thumps being quieter than the average passenger jet. And even if the X-59’s volume proves nominal, environmental advocates continue to voice concerns over the potentially dramatic increase in carbon emissions that a new era of hypersonic flights could generate. In a letter penned to NASA administrator Bill Nelson by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) last year, the watchdog organization argued increased supersonic travel would be a “climate debacle.”

[Related: Air Force transport jets for VIPs could have a supersonic future.]

“Because the QueSSt mission is focused on the sonic boom challenge, the X-59 is not intended to be used as a tool to conduct research into other challenges of supersonic flight such as landing and takeoff noise, emissions and fuel burn. These challenges are being explored in other NASA research,” NASA representatives told The Register in July 2023.

Even if everything goes smoothly, however, it is unlikely that a fleet of X-59 jets will be zipping over everyone’s heads anytime soon. In 2021, a Lockheed Martin Skunk Works manager estimated that supersonic air travel won’t feasibly make its potential return until around 2035.

First, however, is Friday’s scheduled pomp and circumstance. Viewers can tune into NASA’s livestream of the event at 4pm ET on YouTube, as well as through the agency’s NASA+ streaming service, NASA app, and website.

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On January 8 at 2:18 a.m. local time, the United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) new Vulcan Centaur rocket successfully launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The rocket separated from the lander after about an hour and sent Peregrine Mission One into space.

Several hours after the launch, the company who built the Peregrine lander announced that it had experienced an “anomaly” that stopped Peregrine from pointing its solar panels stably at the sun. In a press release, Astrobotic stated that it has engineers working on this issue, but without the spacecraft’s ability to charge its battery, the plan to for a soft landing on the moon is in jeopardy.

At 1:03 p.m. EST Astrobotic issued an update saying that the mission will likely not go on as planned, as the lunar lander is experiencing a failure within its propulsion system.

Later, Astrobotic announced that Peregrine is suffering a critical fuel leak and has less than two days of fuel left.  An image taken by the lander in space showed damaged insulation on the spacecraft, which indicates a leak in Peregrine’s propulsion system.

“An ongoing propellant leak is causing the spacecraft’s Attitude Control System (ACS) thrusters to operate well beyond their expected service life cycles to keep the lander from an uncontrollable tumble,” the company wrote.

On Tuesday January 9, Astrobiotic announced that it would be abandoning its attempt for a soft landing on the moon. The lunar lander was slated to attempt to make the first soft landing on the moon by the United States since 1972. Peregrine’s mission is to study the lunar surface ahead of future human missions to the moon.

The launch also began a new chapter in the age of private space exploration. The United Launch Alliance is a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, with the Vulcan rocket designed to replace two older rockets and compete with SpaceX. The private company owned by Elon Musk sent close to 100 rockets into orbit in 2023 alone. The United States Space Force is also counting on the Vulcan Centaur rocket to launch spy satellites and other spacecraft that Space Force believes are in the interest of national security. 

The Peregrine lander was built by Pittsburgh-based space robotics firm Astrobotic and aimed to become the first lunar lander constructed by a private company. This is also the first mission to fly under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, where NASA pays private companies to send scientific equipment to the moon.

“It’s a dream … For 16 years we’ve been pushing for this moment today,” said Astrobotic CEO John Thornton during a webcast of the launch according to CNN. “And along the way, we had a lot of hard challenges that we had to overcome and a lot of people doubted us along the way. But our team and the people that supported us believed in the mission, and they created this beautiful moment that we’re seeing today.”

Peregrine has a total of 20 payloads on board, five for NASA and 15 others. They include five small moon rovers and the first Latin American scientific instruments attempting to reach the lunar surface. If successful, the technology on board will measure properties including radiation levels, magnetic field, ice and water on the surface and subsurface, and a layer of gas called the exosphere. A better understanding of the exosphere and the moon’s surface is expected to help minimize risks when humans return to its surface, as early as 2025.  

Several non-scientific payloads are aboard as well, including a lunar dream capsule with over 180,000 messages from children around the world, a chunk of Mount Everest, and a physical coin containing one bitcoin.

Controversially, Peregrine is carrying human remains on behalf of commercial space burial companies Celestis and Elysium Space. Celestis offers to carry ashes to the moon for prices starting at more than $10,000. The 265 capsules include human remains from Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and original cast members and DNA samples from three former US presidents–George Washington, Dwight Eisenhower, and John F. Kennedy. Bringing human remains to the moon is strongly opposed by the Navajo Nation, as allowing human remains to touch the lunar surface would be desecration of a body that many tribes consider sacred. In a statement on January 4, Navajo Nation president Buu Nygren said that NASA or other government officials should address the tribe’s concerns ahead of the launch. 

“The moon holds a sacred place in Navajo cosmology,” Nygren wrote. “The suggestion of transforming it into a resting place for human remains is deeply disturbing and unacceptable to our people and many other tribal nations.”

[Related: The moon is 40 million years older than we thought, according to crystals collected by Apollo astronauts.]

According to The New York Times, NASA officials said in a news conference that they were not in charge of this mission and do not have a direct say on the payloads that were sold on Peregrine. ”There’s an intergovernmental meeting being set up with the Navajo Nation that NASA will support,” deputy associate administrator for exploration at NASA Joel Kearns said on January 4.

Peregrine 1 was originally scheduled to touch down on the surface of the moon on February 23, near Sinus Viscositatis–or the Bay of Stickiness. This area is named for rock domes that were potentially created by viscous lava.

Update January 9, 2:39PM: Additional information from the company about the technical problems has been added.

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This article was originally featured in The Conversation.

The year 2023 proved to be an important one for space missions, with NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returning a sample from an asteroid and India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission exploring the lunar south pole, and 2024 is shaping up to be another exciting year for space exploration.

Several new missions under NASA’s Artemis plan and Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative will target the Moon.

The latter half of the year will feature several exciting launches, with the launch of the Martian Moons eXploration mission in September, Europa Clipper and Hera in October and Artemis II and VIPER to the Moon in November–if everything goes as planned.

I’m a planetary scientist, and here are six of the space missions I’m most excited to follow in 2024.

1. Europa Clipper

NASA will launch Europa Clipper, which will explore one of Jupiter’s largest moons, Europa. Europa is slightly smaller than Earth’s Moon, with a surface made of ice. Beneath its icy shell, Europa likely harbors a saltwater ocean, which scientists expect contains over twice as much water as all the oceans here on Earth combined.

With Europa Clipper, scientists want to investigate whether Europa’s ocean could be a suitable habitat for extraterrestrial life.

The mission plans to do this by flying past Europa nearly 50 times to study the moon’s icy shell, its surface’s geology and its subsurface ocean. The mission will also look for active geysers spewing out from Europa.

This mission will change the game for scientists hoping to understand ocean worlds like Europa.

The launch window–the period when the mission could launch and achieve its planned route–opens Oct. 10, 2024, and lasts 21 days. The spacecraft will launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket and arrive at the Jupiter system in 2030.

2. Artemis II launch

The Artemis program, named after Apollo’s twin sister in Greek mythology, is NASA’s plan to go back to the Moon. It will send humans to the Moon for the first time since 1972, including the first woman and the first person of color. Artemis also includes plans for a longer-term, sustained presence in space that will prepare NASA for eventually sending people even farther–to Mars.

Artemis II is the first crewed step in this plan, with four astronauts planned to be on board during the 10-day mission.

The mission builds upon Artemis I, which sent an uncrewed capsule into orbit around the Moon in late 2022.

Artemis II will put the astronauts into orbit around the Moon before returning them home. It is currently planned for launch as early as November 2024. But there is a chance it will get pushed back to 2025, depending on whether all the necessary gear, such as spacesuits and oxygen equipment, is ready.

3. VIPER to search for water on the Moon

VIPER, which stands for Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, is a robot the size of a golf cart that NASA will use to explore the Moon’s south pole in late 2024.

Originally scheduled for launch in 2023, NASA pushed the mission back to complete more tests on the lander system, which Astrobotic, a private company, developed as part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.

This robotic mission is designed to search for volatiles, which are molecules that easily vaporize, like water and carbon dioxide, at lunar temperatures. These materials could provide resources for future human exploration on the Moon.

The VIPER robot will rely on batteries, heat pipes and radiators throughout its 100-day mission, as it navigates everything from the extreme heat of lunar daylight–when temperatures can reach 224 degrees Fahrenheit (107 degrees Celsius)–to the Moon’s frigid shadowed regions that can reach a mind-boggling -400 F (-240 C).

VIPER’s launch and delivery to the lunar surface is scheduled for November 2024.

4. Lunar Trailblazer and PRIME-1 missions

NASA has recently invested in a class of small, low-cost planetary missions called SIMPLEx, which stands for Small, Innovative Missions for PLanetary Exploration. These missions save costs by tagging along on other launches as what is called a rideshare, or secondary payload.

One example is the Lunar Trailblazer. Like VIPER, Lunar Trailblazer will look for water on the Moon.

But while VIPER will land on the Moon’s surface, studying a specific area near the south pole in detail, Lunar Trailblazer will orbit the Moon, measuring the temperature of the surface and mapping out the locations of water molecules across the globe.

Currently, Lunar Trailblazer is on track to be ready by early 2024.

However, because it is a secondary payload, Lunar Trailblazer’s launch timing depends on the primary payload’s launch readiness. The PRIME-1 mission, scheduled for a mid-2024 launch, is Lunar Trailblazer’s ride.

PRIME-1 will drill into the Moon–it’s a test run for the kind of drill that VIPER will use. But its launch date will likely depend on whether earlier launches go on time.

An earlier Commercial Lunar Payload Services mission with the same landing partner was pushed back to February 2024 at the earliest, and further delays could push back PRIME-1 and Lunar Trailblazer.

5. JAXA’s Martian Moon eXploration mission

While Earth’s Moon has many visitors–big and small, robotic and crewed–planned for 2024, Mars’ moons Phobos and Deimos will soon be getting a visitor as well. The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, has a robotic mission in development called the Martian Moon eXploration, or MMX, planned for launch around September 2024.

The mission’s main science objective is to determine the origin of Mars’ moons. Scientists aren’t sure whether Phobos and Deimos are former asteroids that Mars captured into orbit with its gravity or if they formed out of debris that was already in orbit around Mars.

The spacecraft will spend three years around Mars conducting science operations to observe Phobos and Deimos. MMX will also land on Phobos’ surface and collect a sample before returning to Earth.

6. ESA’s Hera mission

Hera is a mission by the European Space Agency to return to the Didymos-Dimorphos asteroid system that NASA’s DART mission visited in 2022.

But DART didn’t just visit these asteroids, it collided with one of them to test a planetary defense technique called “kinetic impact.” DART hit Dimorphos with such force that it actually changed its orbit.

The kinetic impact technique smashes something into an object in order to alter its path. This could prove useful if humanity ever finds a potentially hazardous object on a collision course with Earth and needs to redirect it.

Hera will launch in October 2024, making its way in late 2026 to Didymos and Dimorphos, where it will study physical properties of the asteroids.

Disclosure: Ali M. Bramson receives funding from NASA.

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For decades, images taken of Neptune have looked like the planet has a deep blue hue, while Uranus seemed more green. However, these two ice giants may actually look more similar to eachother than astronomers previously believed. According to a study published January 5 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, our solar system’s furthest planets’ true colors could both be similar pale shades of greenish blue. 

[Related: The secret to Voyagers’ spectacular space odyssey.]

Images versus reality

NASA’s Voyager 2 mission remains the only flyby of both ice giants conducted by a spacecraft. It gave us the first detailed images of these far-flung planets. Voyager 2 conducted a flyby of Uranus in 1986, and the images revealed a planet with a more pale cyan or blue color. The vessel flew by Neptune in 1989 and the imagery showed a planet with a rich blue color.

However, astronomers have long understood that most modern images of both planets don’t accurately reflect their true colors. Voyager 2 captured images of each planet in separate colors and these single-color images were then put together to make composites. These composite images were not always accurately balanced, particularly for the planet Neptune which was believed to appear too blue. The contrast on the early Voyager images of Neptune were also strongly enhanced to better reveal the clouds and winds of the planet. 

“Although the familiar Voyager 2 images of Uranus were published in a form closer to ‘true’ color, those of Neptune were, in fact, stretched and enhanced, and therefore made artificially too blue,” study co-author and University of Oxford astronomer Patrick Irwin said in a statement. “Even though the artificially-saturated color was known at the time amongst planetary scientists–and the images were released with captions explaining it–that distinction had become lost over time.”

Creating a more accurate view

In the new study, the team applied data taken from the Hubble Space Telescope’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. 

With both the STIS and MUSE, each pixel is a continuous spectrum of colors, so their observations can be processed more clearly to determine the more accurate color of the planets, instead of what is being seen with a filter. 

The team used the data to rebalance the composite color images that were recorded by Voyager 2’s onboard camera and by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3. The rebalancing revealed that both Uranus and Neptune are actually a similar pale shade of greenish blue. Neptune has a slight hint of more blue, which the model showed to be a thin layer of haze on the planet. 

The changing colors of Uranus

This research also provides a likely answer to why Uranus changes color slightly during its 84 year-long orbit around the sun. The team first compared images of Uranus to measurements of its brightness that were taken at blue and green wavelengths by the Lowell Observatory in Arizona from 1950 to 2016. These measurements showed that Uranus looks a little greener during its summer and winter solstices, when its poles are pointed towards the sun. However, during the equinoxes–when the sun is over the planet’s equator–it appears to have a more blue tinge. 

One already established reason for the change is due to Uranus’ a highly unusual spin. The planet spins almost on its side during orbit, so its north and south poles point almost directly towards the sun and Earth during its solstices. Any changes to the reflectivity of Uranus’ poles would have a major impact on the planet’s overall brightness when viewed from the Earth, according to the authors. What was less clear to astronomers was how and why this reflectivity differs. The team developed a model to compare the bands of colors of Uranus’s polar regions to its equatorial regions. 

They found that polar regions are more reflective at green and red wavelengths than at blue wavelengths. Uranus is more reflective at these wavelengths partially because gas methane absorbs the color red and methane is about half as abundant near Uranus’ poles than the equator.

[Related: Neptune’s bumpy childhood could reveal our solar system’s missing planets.]

However, this wasn’t enough to fully explain the color change so the researchers added a new variable to the model in the form of a ‘hood’ of gradually thickening icy haze which has previously been observed when Uranus moves from equinox to summer solstice. They believe that this haze is likely made up of methane ice particles.

After simulating this pole shift in the model, the ice particles further increased the reflection at green and red wavelengths at the planet’s poles, which explained that Uranus looks greener at the solstice due to less methane at the poles and increased thickness of the methane ice particles. 

“The misperception of Neptune’s color, as well as the unusual color changes of Uranus, have bedeviled us for decades,” Heidi Hammel, of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy said in a statement. “This comprehensive study should finally put both issues to rest.” Hammel is not an author of the new study. 

Filling in this gap between the public perception of Neptune and its reality shows how data can be manipulated to show off certain features of a planet or enhance visualizations. 

“There’s never been an attempt to deceive,” study co-author and University of Leicester planetary scientist Leigh Fletcher told The New York Times. “But there has been an attempt to tell a story with these images by making them aesthetically pleasing to the eye so that people can enjoy these beautiful scenes in a way that is, maybe, more meaningful than a fuzzy, gray, amorphous blob in the distance.”

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Signs of humanity have traveled through space ever since the very first radio signals left the Earth’s atmosphere. We even made concerted efforts to broadcast evidence of our existence through projects like the historic Voyager spacecraft recordings—but an official intergalactic tourism campaign advertising alien vacations to the “Horse Capital of the Word?” That’s a first.

[ Related: How scientists decide if they’ve actually found signals of alien life ]

The Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau (VisitLEX) recently turned to University of Kentucky professor and longtime SETI advocate, Robert Lodder, to assemble experts from various disciplines including linguistics, philosophy, and design to attract a unique target audience: (potential) extraterrestrial lifeforms. More specifically, any extraterrestrial life possibly residing within the TRAPPIST-1 system.

Located approximately 40 light-years away in the Leo constellation, TRAPPIST-1 is by far the most studied planetary system outside of our own. There, seven rocky planets orbit a small red dwarf star, three of which reside within its “Goldilocks zone”—the region astrobiologists believe could be conducive to supporting life.

“Many previous transmissions have employed the language of mathematics for communication, and our team did, too,” Lodder tells PopSci. “But we decided that extraterrestrials might be more interested in things unique to Planet Earth than Universal Truths like mathematics, so if we seek to attract visitors, it would be best to send something interesting and uniquely Earth.”

Collaborators ultimately decided on a package including black-and-white photographs of rolling Kentucky bluegrass hills, an audio recording of local blues legend, Tee Dee Young, and an original bitmap illustration—a type of image in which programmers use basic coding to create a grid with shaded blocks that form rudimentary images. Among other subjects, this bitmap art includes renderings of humans, horses, the elements necessary for life (as we know it), alongside the chemical composition maps of ethanol and water, aka alcohol—more specifically to Kentucky, bourbon.

With the message’s contents compiled, Lodder’s team then converted their advertisement into a one-dimensional array of light pulses using a computer-laser interface aimed at TRAPPIST-1. On a clear, dark autumn evening, VisitLEX hosted researchers and local guests at Kentucky Horse Park to fire off their tourism package into space.

While lasers are increasingly replacing radio communications in space due their increased data storage capabilities and lower costs, transmissions must be strong enough to travel millions of miles without degrading. This requires equally strong equipment, such as the Deep Space Optical Communications array aboard NASA’s Psyche spacecraft.

VisitLEX’s laser is far weaker than NASA’s equipment, but Lodder believes that at least some of the transmission’s light photons “will almost certainly” reach TRAPPIST-1. That said, it’s difficult to know if there will be enough photons to fully decode their message.

“The alien receiving technology could be worse than ours, or much better,” says Lodder.

[ Related: JWST just scanned the skies of potentially habitable exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 b ]

Regardless, if ETs ever do make a pitstop in Lexington because of VisitLEX’s interstellar commercial, it likely won’t happen until at least the year 2103—40 light-years for the broadcast to reach TRAPPIST-1, followed by another 40 light-years to travel the approximately 235-million mile trek over to Earth, assuming they’re capable of traveling at the speed of light. It all might sound like a lot both logistically and technologically, but both VisitLEX and Lodder’s team swear it’s worth the planning.

[ Related: To set the record straight: Nothing can break the speed of light ]

If there’s anyone out there listening and able to pick up this kind of admittedly weak signal—and if they have a taste for oak barrel aged bourbon and/or horses—well…

Update 1/12/24 9:00am: PopSci received the following response from Jan McGarry, Next Generation Satellite Laser Ranging Systems Deputy Lead at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and her retired colleague, John Degnan:
“The distance to the nearest star is 2 light years away or many orders of magnitude farther than the edge of our solar system (Pluto). Since the strength of a laser communications link is proportional to 1 divided by the distance squared, it is highly unlikely that a laser system would be able to transfer any meaningful amount of information over that distance let alone one 20 times farther away where the signal would be 400 times smaller.”

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Best overall		Canon 12×36 IS III		SEE IT	If you want sharp, bright, colorful, stabilized, distortion-free images, you want Canon binoculars.
Best high power		Celestron SkyMaster 25X100		SEE IT	Essentially the equivalent of a telescope in your hands, these Celestron binoculars offer a whopping 25x magnification and an objective lens measuring 100mm so you’ll see epic details in the night sky.
Best budget		Celestron UpClose G2 10×50		SEE IT	While they require collimation—the alignment of the lenses—these budget binoculars use multi-coated optics, resulting in a quality image with good contrast and mostly accurate color once adjusted.

While telescopes are popular for stargazing, binoculars for astronomy offer a more portable option for gazing into the heavens. Binoculars are extremely versatile, working well for general terrestrial observations as well as more celestial surveying. You can even use them handheld or on a mount. Whether you want to observe the moon or casually stargaze, the best binoculars for astronomy are great to take into nature and bring you closer to the stars. 

• Best overall: Canon 12×36 IS III
• Best splurge: Canon 10×42 L IS WP
• Best high power: Celestron SkyMaster 25X100
• Best compact: Nikon PROSTAFF P7 10×42
• Best budget: Celestron UpClose G2 10×50 

How we chose the best binoculars for astronomy

Binoculars for astronomy require more specific specs than general-purpose binoculars, so we prioritized options with larger objective lens size and higher magnification. We also aimed to select options at various price points suitable for everyone from beginners to expert stargazers. While binoculars with image stabilization are excellent for astronomy use, they are quite expensive, so we’ve included models both with and without stabilization. In making our selections, we considered optical quality, size and weight, eye relief, and build quality. 

The best binoculars for astronomy: Reviews & Recommendations

Binoculars for astronomy will allow you to gaze up at the moon, spot deep space objects, check out planets, and more. While these advanced optics can be used handheld, we’d recommend a tripod or mount of some variety to offer more stable, high-quality night sky views.

Best overall: Canon 12×36 IS III

SEE IT

Specs

• Objective lens diameter: 36mm
• Magnification: 12x
• Field of view: 5 degrees
• Eye relief: 0.57 inches (14mm)
• Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Dimensions: 5 x 6.85 x 2.76 inches

Pros

• Effective image stabilization
• Relatively lightweight and compact
• Image stabilized
• Excellent optical quality

Cons

• Pricey

Canon makes some of the best image-stabilized binoculars available, so it should be no surprise that our top pick comes from the imaging giant. The Canon 12×36 IS III binoculars for astronomy offer the company’s typical high-end optics and Porro II prisms, resulting in a sharp, bright, colorful image. It also features a double field flattener, which produces a distortion-free image.

The 36mm objective lens diameter is slightly lower than what is typically recommended for astronomy use. However, these still offer plenty of light gathering for stargazing. You’ll also be able to use them for things like bird watching, adding to their versatility. Plus, the smaller objective lens results in a more compact size ideal for most people, which is why it earned our top spot. These Canon binos provide 12x magnification, allowing you to see details on the moon’s surface. 

What really makes these optics stand out is the image stabilization. Canon built these with technology similar to what they use in their EF lenses, resulting in much sharper images when holding the binoculars. You’ll need two AA batteries for power, and they will typically get up to 12 hours of use. Simply put, once you use IS binoculars, you won’t want to go back to anything else. 

Best splurge: Canon 10×42 L IS WP

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Specs

• Objective lens diameter: 42mm
• Magnification: 10x
• Field of view: 6.5 degrees
• Eye relief: 0.63 inches (16mm)
• Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Dimensions: 5.4 x 6.9 x 3.4 inches

Pros

• Excellent stabilization
• High-quality optics
• Rugged build 
• Plenty of eye relief

Cons

• Expensive
• Fairly heavy and bulky

If money is no object and you want the best of the best, the Canon 10×42 L IS WP binoculars are the way to go. These powerful binoculars for astronomy offer a large objective lens of 42mm, capturing tons of light for viewing even dim celestial objects. The 10x magnification is plenty for most astronomical observations and offers plenty of eye relief for a range of users.

Like the pair mentioned above, these feature Canon’s impressive image stabilization. It will almost look like you are using a tripod, giving you sharp, clear views. The ‘L’ in the name refers to Canon’s top-tier line of optics. These feature two ultra-low dispersion (UD) lens elements (on each side), which effectively corrects for chromatic aberration. Images will be sharp, bright, and vibrant, offering excellent views of the stars. 

Of course, there are downsides to these binos. First, they are expensive. If you are a casual user, they will be overkill. Second, they are fairly bulky and heavy. You likely won’t want to hold them for long periods, and they will add weight to your pack if you are hiking. But this is the pair to get if you are serious about stargazing with your binoculars. 

Best high power: Celestron SkyMaster 25X100

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Specs

• Objective lens diameter: 100mm
• Magnification: 25x
• Field of view: 3 degrees
• Eye relief: 0.59 inches (15mm)
• Weight: 8.75 pounds
• Dimensions: 10.1 x 5.1 x 15.28 inches

Pros

• Massive object lens diameter gathers tons of light
• Lots of magnification
• Comes with a tripod adapter
• Excellent image quality

Cons

• Very bulky and heavy
• Not for handholding

Celestron is one of the top telescope producers, so it makes sense that the company would also produce top-notch binoculars for astronomy. Celestron SkyMaster 25×100 is essentially the equivalent of a telescope in your hands. It offers a whopping 25x magnification and an objective lens measuring 100mm. That massive lens will let in tons of light. Paired with the high level of magnification, you’ll see epic details in the night sky, such as Jupiter’s belts, star clusters, and more. 

These binos feature BaK-4 prisms and multi-coated lenses, enhancing contrast for superb viewing quality. They are ruggedly built with a water-resistant design. The SkyMaster also utilizes a rubber-armored housing, which protects them from damage and provides a better grip. 

Unfortunately, such power comes with great responsibility. In this case, that means lots of weight. The SkyMaster weighs 8.75 pounds and, naturally, is larger than any other option on our list. They also don’t offer any image stabilization. As a result, you won’t want to hold these by hand for very long. Luckily, it has a built-in tripod adapter, making it easier to hook up to a tripod for hands-free use. All of this also comes at a rather reasonable price, so you don’t have to break the bank to see craters on the moon. 

Best compact: Nikon PROSTAFF P7 10×42

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Specs

• Objective lens diameter: 42mm
• Magnification: 10x
• Field of view: 7 degrees
• Eye relief: 0.62 inches (15.7mm)
• Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Dimensions: 5.91 x 5.12 x 2.17 inches

Pros

• Compact and lightweight
• Waterproof and fogproof
• Adjustable eyecups and long eye relief
• Versatile

Cons

• No tripod adapter

Weight is an important consideration when backpacking or hiking, even when you hope to take advantage of the dark skies. That’s where the Nikon PROSTAFF P7 binoculars come into play. They are very compact and lightweight, coming in at just 1.3 pounds and just under six inches long. It will be much easier to bring them along on your trips. And, it will be easier to hold for longer viewing sessions as well. 

The PROSTAFF P7 are also ruggedly built and suited for adventures. They are waterproof to 3.3 feet and nitrogen-filled for fogproof performance. The 0.62-inch eye relief works well for those who wear glasses, and the turn-and-slide eyecups are adjustable to work well for a group of people. A rubber-armored body protects from drops and bumps and makes them easier to hold. Nikon used a water- and oil-repellent coating on both the objective and eyepiece lenses, which helps keep them free of water and fingerprints. 

Although these are not specifically designed for stargazing, they will definitely do the job. The 10x magnification is enough for casual night sky viewing, and the 42mm objective lens will gather plenty of light. Nikon designed these with high-quality optics and Phase-Correction coating for superb image quality and clarity. It also features a dielectric high-reflective multilayer prism coating, which maximizes light transmission. Finally, the locking diopter ring, typically only found on much more expensive optics, keeps your setting locked in.

Best budget: Celestron UpClose G2 10×50 

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Specs

• Objective lens diameter: 50mm
• Magnification: 10x
• Field of view: 6.8 degrees
• Eye relief: 0.47 inches (12mm)
• Weight: 1.69 pounds
• Dimensions: 8 x 7 x 2.5 inches

Pros

• Very affordable
• Water-resistant
• Rubber coating prevents slips
• Good optical quality

Cons

• Requires collimation
• Not nitrogen-filled

You don’t have to spend a fortune to get started with binoculars for astronomy. This budget-friendly pair also happens to be great for beginner stargazers. They are compact and lightweight, making them ideal binoculars for hiking. Yet they still offer 10x magnification and a 50mm objective lens. Those specs will allow you to see the moon in all its glory easily, as well as some star clusters and more.

Celestron built these with a rugged design, including a rubber coating to protect from drops and improve grip. They are water resistant, so you won’t need to panic if you get caught in a rain shower. They are not nitrogen-filled, though, so they tend to fog up. 

The main downside to this budget set of binos is that they require collimation—the alignment of the lenses. While not difficult, it does take time away from your stargazing. The good news is that Celestron used multi-coated optics, which results in a quality image with good contrast and mostly accurate color. If you are just getting started or want some kid-friendly binoculars for astronomy, these will do a great job.

What to consider when shopping for the best binoculars for astronomy

Binoculars are, for the most part, rather simple devices without much in the way of fancy technology. But, there is some specific lingo that you should be aware of when shopping for binoculars for astronomy to ensure you pick the right optics for viewing the night sky.

Magnification 

All binoculars include two numbers in the name, such as 10×50. The first number refers to magnification. For stargazing, you’ll typically want at least 10x magnification. If you want to see the moon or planets in more detail or search for smaller deep space objects, 12x will be better. However, remember that more magnification will exaggerate movement while holding the binoculars. So, if you will only handhold the binos, we suggest sticking to 10x or lower.

Objective lens

The second number tells you the size of the objective lens, measured in millimeters. In our example above, that would be 50mm. The objective lens is the lens closest to the object you’re viewing, or the one opposite of the eyepieces. This number tells you how large the binoculars are and how much light they let in. 

Larger objective lenses collect more light, which is better for stargazing. But it also means larger binoculars, which makes them harder to handhold. As a result, you’ll need a balance unless you only plan on using a tripod or mount of some type. For astronomy use, you’ll want at least 40-50mm, though 50-60mm will allow you to see fainter celestial objects. 

Image stabilization

If you’ve ever spent time looking through binoculars, you may have noticed how hard it is to keep them steady. That movement gets even more dramatic in higher-powered binoculars for astronomy, which can make detailed observations quite challenging. If you want superb image quality and don’t always want to rely on a tripod, look for a pair of image-stabilized binoculars. 

There are different types of image stabilization in binos. Some offer passive stabilization (also called mechanical stabilization) with suspended prisms, which don’t require any batteries. Other types of stabilization include digital, optical, and hybrid stabilization (a combination of digital and optical). Each type has pros and cons, though hybrid stabilization offers the best results, albeit at the highest cost. 

Roof prism vs. Porro prism

There are two varieties of binocular design: Roof prisms and Porro prisms. In Porro prism binoculars, the objective lens is offset from the eyepiece, requiring the light to travel in a zig-zag pattern. This design can result in a higher quality image, but they are bulky and heavy compared to roof prism binos. 

The prisms in Roof prism binoculars line up closely, allowing the objective lens to be in a straight line from the eyepiece. The Roof prism design results in a more compact, lightweight form factor. However, it is a more complicated design, which results in a much higher price tag compared to Porro prism binoculars. 

Exit pupil

Exit pupil refers to the round, bright image you see when looking through the eyepiece. The larger the diameter, the brighter the image, which is important for astronomy. To calculate this, divide the objective lens diameter by the magnification. So, for example, a 10×50 binocular would offer an exit pupil of 5mm. 

The key here is to find binoculars for astronomy with an exit pupil roughly the same size as the human pupil when dilated for darkness. In dark conditions, most pupils dilate to around 7mm. Opting for binoculars with an exit pupil of 2.5mm will make the image look quite dark.

Eye relief

Eye relief is the distance from the eyepiece lens to the exit pupil, where the image is formed. Put simply, it is how far you can hold the binoculars away from your eyes and still see the full image without vignetting. If you wear glasses, you’ll need binoculars with longer eye relief. Be sure to go with an eye relief greater than 14mm if you use glasses.  

Weight

Weight might not be the first thing that comes to mind when choosing binoculars for astronomy. However, it can be incredibly important. If you plan on handholding your binoculars, look for a more compact, lightweight option. Otherwise your arms will tire quickly, but more importantly, they will be hard to hold steady. And if you can’t hold them steady, you won’t get a very good view of the night sky. 

If you opt for a heavier option or plan long observation sessions with high magnification, we recommend mounting the binoculars to a tripod. 

FAQs

Final thoughts on the best binoculars for astronomy

• Best overall: Canon 12×36 IS III
• Best splurge: Canon 10×42 L IS WP
• Best high power: Celestron SkyMaster 25X100
• Best compact: Nikon PROSTAFF P7 10×42
• Best budget: Celestron UpClose G2 10×50 

Binoculars for astronomy can serve as an excellent alternative to bulky telescopes. These optics allow you to view celestial objects on the go, making it a great choice for camping, hiking, or travel of any type. Binoculars are also easier to store, which is ideal for those living in smaller spaces. Despite their convenience, they still allow you to see plenty of wonders in the night sky.

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Our writers and editors have combined decades of experience covering and reviewing consumer electronics. We each have our own obsessive specialties—from high-end audio to video games to cameras and beyond—but when we’re reviewing devices outside of our immediate wheelhouses, we do our best to seek out trustworthy voices and opinions to help guide people to the very best recommendations. We know we don’t know everything, but we’re excited to live through the analysis paralysis that internet shopping can spur so readers don’t have to.

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A rocket stocked with scientific instruments, technological gadgets, and… bitcoin (literally) is about to head for the moon’s surface. United Launch Alliance’s NASA-funded Vulcan Centaur is slated to lift off in the early hours of January 8 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, to begin its nearly two-month journey. After traveling roughly 238,900 miles, the nearly 2,829-pound Peregrin lander, built by private space company Astrobotic, should arrive at the Gruithuisen Domes within the moon’s Sinus Viscositatis region. If successful, it will mark the first US landing on Earth’s satellite since NASA’s Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

As Gizmodo notes, over 20 various payloads from six countries will be aboard the Peregrin lander—some meant for research, with others purely symbolic gestures ahead of Artemis astronauts’ planned touchdown later this decade.

[Related: Why scientists think it’s time to declare a new lunar epoch.]

The technology aboard

NASA intends to utilize a number of new tools and analysis tech aboard the lander, including a Near-Infrared Volatile Spectrometer System (NIRVSS) and Neutron Spectrometer System (NSS) meant for identifying substances such as water on the lunar surface. A Laser Retro-Reflector Array (LRA) will also provide incredibly precise distance measurements between the moon and Earth, while the Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer (LETS) will assess lunar surface radiation to advance future astronauts’ safety.

Similar to LETS, Germany’s M-42 radiation detector will analyze similar potential mission dangers, as Mexico’s Colmena robot swarm will deploy and assemble to form a solar panel. Alongside not to be outdone, Carnegie Mellon University’s tiny, student-built Iris Lunar rover could become the first US robot upon the moon if all goes as planned. In addition, the university is also sending off a MoonArk lightweight time capsule containing poems, music, nano-scale objects, Earth samples, and images.

Also, that

Despite the industry’s many criticisms, a portion of Vulcan’s inventory will also center on cryptocurrency—namely, Bitcoin. Thanks to BitMex and Bitcoin Magazine, a physical Bitcoin engraved with a private encryption key will be deposited on the lunar surface for “future explorers” to recover, along with a few other shiny crypto objects.

Stranger things

Although primarily intended to signify humanity’s future on the moon, next week’s launch also includes the literal remnants of its past. Two memorial space companies, Celestis and Elysium Space, will also have cargo aboard the Vulcan rocket: DNA from legendary science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, as well as the trace cremated ashes of multiple original Star Trek actors and show creator, Gene Roddenberry.

And all that’s just a portion of the larger inventory list intended to travel in the Vulcan rocket next week. For a more detailed look at additional payload info, including a hunk of Mount Everest, head over to Gizmodo.

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One of the most famous comets is heading back in the direction of Earth. On December 9, 2023, Halley’s comet reached aphelion–its furthest point from the sun–made its turn towards our planet for its next appearance in the 2060s. But don’t worry about Halley’s return. It’s not even close to a collision course with Earth. Like all the comets we know of, it’s made of dusty ice, some of which burns off to create a majestic tail as the body approaches the sun.

Currently, the comet is further out than Neptune, a bit over three billion miles from the sun—so far that it’s out of sight for even our largest telescopes and has been since 2003. Halley’s comet will make its next swing by our planet on July 29th, 2061, right on time with its 76 year cycle. 

So why is this one space rock, out of the millions in the solar system, so widely talked about, and why has it fascinated humans so intensely throughout history?

People have actually been watching it for generations, with recorded sightings as old as 240 BCE. For most of human history, we didn’t know what to call this mysterious visitor from outer space. Somewhat unsurprisingly, something so unknown and (at that time) unpredictable was widely feared and seen as a bad omen or harbinger of disruptive change. The comet supposedly heralded the defeat of Attila the Hun in 451 and the Ottoman Empire’s widespread conquest in 1456. Genghis Khan even took the comet as a sign for where to lead his armies in 1222, drastically expanding his territory and fathering many kids along the way—so many, in fact, that 1 in 200 men may be his descendents. 

“Naturally no one knew these appearances were all the same comet until Halley made his discovery,” explains Richard Goodrich, author of the book Comet Madness: How the 1910 Return of Halley’s Comet (Almost) Destroyed Civilization.

Around 1705, British scientist Edmond Halley noticed three comets with strikingly similar orbits, seen in 1531, 1607, and 1682. He concluded that they were actually the same comet, passing by every 76 years, and he predicted it would appear in 1758. Although he didn’t live to see it, his prediction came true, changing our perspective of the cosmos. “The reappearance of Comet Halley, as predicted, did much to replace a world of superstition with a world of science,” says Valdosta State astronomer Kenneth Rumstay. Our solar system was rapidly expanding, with Uranus discovered soon after in 1781 and the first asteroid, Ceres, spotted in 1801.

Despite the identification and explanation of the comet as a regular part of the cosmos, Halley’s 1910 showing caused widespread panic. One astronomer pointed out that Earth would encounter the comet’s gaseous tail, filled with toxic cyanogen gas. “Peddlers sold anti-comet pills and gas-masks,” says astronomer Ramesh Kapoor from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics. 

But, as we know, the world didn’t end then. Halley’s comet returned once again in 1986, now an object of scientific curiosity in the space age that was visited by multiple spacecraft to take up-close-and-personal photos. Little pieces of the comet even fall to Earth each year as the Eta Aquariid meteor shower. Halley’s is obviously one of the best studied comets, and has followed humanity throughout history with fascinating consequences—but part of what makes it so special is exactly how often it returns.

Human lifespans are around 70 to 90 years, and Halley’s 76 year orbit almost eerily resembles that timescale. “You really can mark out a human life with Halley’s orbit, and I think this shared time loop ties us closer with this particular comet,” says Ashley Benham-Yazdani, author of the children’s book Cosmic Wonder: Halley’s Comet and Humankind. Humanity uses this comet “to mark the passage of time, transforming it into a cultural touchstone,” she adds. “It has sparked in us the extremes of human emotion, inspiring awe in some and paranoid frenzy in others.”

In the 2060s, it’s probably unlikely that anyone will panic over this one comet. The 1986 appearance was already “a damp fizzle, which may not bode well for future appearances,” says Goodrich. Even if it’s not a totally spectacular show to the naked eye, planetary scientists are definitely interested. They’re keen to track the comet’s decline, monitoring how fast it loses material, and perhaps send more spacecraft for a detailed close-up, perhaps even a “sample-return mission sent to land and scoop up a piece of the Halley’s nucleus fuming its sooty smoke,” as Kapoor describes.

For most of us, it will certainly be a once-in-a-lifetime (or twice, if you’re lucky) cosmic event worth appreciating. “Those that were there for the 1986 visit will share their memories. And then, when it finally appears, we will likely take a moment to step outside, maybe with friends or family, to participate in the ancient act of observing the sky,” muses Benham-Yazdani. “This communion with the cosmos is rare for most people these days, but I hope that when it comes, it inspires a sense of wonder.”

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Over the holiday weekend, NASA released new images of Jupiter’s icy, volcanic moon Io. The Juno spacecraft flew within roughly 930 miles of the celestial body’s surface on December 30, 2023, capturing images that show off a volatile and pockmarked moon. 

[Related: Astronomers find 12 more moons orbiting Jupiter.]

The JunoCam imager captured the new images. They depict a red sphere dotted with giant gray volcanoes. Io is considered the most volcanic world in our solar system. By comparison, Earth sees roughly 50 eruptions each year and Io may have volcanic activity that is 100 times greater. Jupiter’s gravitational pull is largely responsible for Io’s volcanism. A tug-of-war between the large planet and the additional gravitational effects of Jupiter’s other giant moons–Ganymede, Europa, and Callisto–intensifies frictional tidal heating on Io. It takes this moon about 42 hours to orbit Jupiter, and the immense heat produced during orbit likely creates an ocean of magma underneath Io’s surface, fueling eruptions.

According to NASA, this was the closest flyby of Io since a similar flight made by the Galileo spacecraft in October 2001. Launched in 2011, the Juno spacecraft first entered Jupiter’s orbit in 2016. It is the first explorer to look below the gas giant’s dense clouds, with a mission to study our solar system’s largest planet and the origins of the solar system as a whole. The Juno mission has been monitoring the moon’s volcanic activity from distances ranging from about 6,830 miles to more than 62,100 miles. The team hopes that information collected in the December flyby and previous observations from the mission help them learn more about these intense volcanoes.  

“We are looking for how often they erupt, how bright and hot they are, how the shape of the lava flow changes, and how Io’s activity is connected to the flow of charged particles in Jupiter’s magnetosphere,” Scott Bolton, Juno’s principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute, said in a statement. 

[Related: A mysterious magma ocean could fuel our solar system’s most volcanic world.]

A second close flyby of Io is scheduled for February 3, 2024, where Juno will fly within about 930 miles of the moon’s surface again. The spacecraft has also performed close flights near the of the Jupiterian moons Ganymede and Europa.

“With our pair of close flybys in December and February, Juno will investigate the source of Io’s massive volcanic activity, whether a magma ocean exists underneath its crust, and the importance of tidal forces from Jupiter, which are relentlessly squeezing this tortured moon,” said Bolton. 

Beginning in April, Juno will also perform a series of occultation experiments that use Juno’s Gravity Science experiment to probe the makeup of Jupiter’s upper atmosphere. Studying what materials compose this part of the planet’s atmosphere should provide astronomer’s with key data on Jupiter’s shape and interior structure. The Juno mission is scheduled to wrap-up in late 2025. 

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A new year often means resolutions and a fresh planner. This year brings another 366 days of stargazing, since 2024 is a leap year. While the lack of daylight in the Northern Hemisphere can zap our energy, the extra hours of darkness means more time for watching the stars. The cold air this time of year is less hazy  than it is during the summer, so celestial bodies are easier to see if there are fewer clouds. Here are some cosmic events to keep and eye on as we welcome in 2024.

[Related: 7 US parks where you can get stunning nightsky views.]

January 3 and 4– Quadrantids Meteor Shower Predicted Peak

The Quadrantids is technically the year’s first meteor shower. It typically begins in the middle of November of the preceding year and ends by the middle of January. This year, it is predicted to peak in the early morning hours on January 3 and 4. 

While it is not as dramatic as December’s Geminids or July’s Persieds, the Quadrantids can produce over 100 meteors per hour under a dark sky without a bright moon. It is also known for producing the occasional fireball. According to NASA, “fireballs are larger explosions of light and color that can persist longer than an average meteor streak. This is due to the fact that fireballs originate from larger particles of material. Fireballs are also brighter, with magnitudes brighter than -3.”

For 2024, looking for shooting stars after 1 a.m. local time wherever you are will be the best bet for stargazing. However, the moon will also be rising, so the light may drown out the more faint shooting stars. 

January 12– Mercury at Greatest Western Elongation

Mercury will reach its greatest separation from the sun on January 12. Look for the Mercury low in the eastern sky just before sunrise local time. The planet will brighten rapidly at the beginning of this morning apparition. Before it appears, Mercury will have passed between the Earth and the sun. When its unilluminated side is turned towards Earth, it will appear as a thin, barely-lit crescent. As the apparition continues, the crescent will grow and the planet will get brighter. 

January 13 and 14– The Moon and Saturn ‘Dance’

While not as exciting as 2020’s ‘Great’ Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, the moon will appear close to our solar system’s most famous ringed planet this month. The moon will appear to float above Saturn on the 13th and then will dip below the ringed planet on the 14th. In Eastern Time, the two will be visible before the moon sets at about 8:10 p.m.

[Related: ‘Skyglow’ is rapidly diminishing our nightly views of the stars.]

January 25– Full Wolf Moon

The first full moon of 2024 rises on January 25 and reaches peak illumination at 12:54 p.m. EST

If peak illumination is during daylight hours where you are, the moon will still be bright visible in the northeastern horizon after sunset.

January’s full moon is called the Wolf Moon. The name is believed to have Celtic and Old English roots and references to the hungry packs of wolves that prowl during the winter months. Additional names for this first full moon of the year include the Start of the Winter Moon or Maajii-bibooni-giizis in Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe), the Waning Moon or Tahch’awɛka in Tunica, and the Cracking Tree Moon or Putheʔnaawe Mtokw Neepãʔuk in the Mahican Dialect of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Wisconsin.

The same skygazing rules that apply to pretty much all star gazing activities are key this month: Go to a dark spot away from the lights of a city or town and let your eyes adjust to the darkness for about a half an hour.

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NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter (technically a rotorcraft) has made dozens of tiny aerial jaunts across Mars since first arriving on the planet in February 2021, but its latest flight set a new record for the tiny aircraft. On December 21, NASA reported Ingenuity’s 69th flight was also its farthest, according to its flight log—over 135 seconds, the four-pound, 19-inch-tall helicopter traveled roughly 2,315 feet at a speed of nearly 22.5 mph, beating its previous distance of about 2,310 feet achieved in April 2022.

As impressive as Ingenuity’s most recent flight already is, the trip went even better than originally expected. According to NASA’s Flight 69 preview log, the agency estimated its helicopter to journey about 2,304 feet over 131 seconds.

[Related: Name a better duo than NASA’s hard-working Mars rover and helicopter.]

In total, Ingenuity has so far spent 125.5 minutes aloft to fly nearly 10.5 miles across the surface at altitudes as high as almost 80 feet. While chugging along, the helicopter snaps images of the ground beneath it to send back home to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) team overseeing the program in California. As Digital Trends notes, the visual aids have so far helped NASA engineers plot efficient, safe paths for the project’s Perseverance rover. In some instances, photographs even revealed new nearby geologic formations that the rover then detoured to explore.

Ingenuity long surpassed its original estimated lifespan, even without taking its latest feats into consideration. When first launched back in 2021, NASA expected the aircraft to only last for 5 flights in order to test avionic capabilities in the thin Martian air (just 1 percent of Earth’s atmosphere), and had no intention of utilizing it as a major component in the overall Perseverance mission.

It hasn’t all been smooth flying for Ingenuity, however. Back in May 2022, the helicopter briefly went dark after a seasonal increase in atmospheric dust prevented its solar arrays from fully recharging. Thankfully, engineers sorted out the situation and reestablished communications with their rotorcraft. Now, after nearly 14 times more trips than first intended under its wings, Ingenuity doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon.

[Related: Why NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter briefly went dark on Mars.]

Now that the helicopter exceeded NASA’s hopes, the agency believes similar, more advanced iterations could be deployed during future Mars missions, and perhaps even other locales throughout the solar system. For now, however, it’s one day at a time for Ingenuity—its 70th flight is also tentatively scheduled for this week.

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Best overall		Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ		SEE IT	This feature-laden model offers a great mix of performance and price.
Best for astrophotography		Celestron Inspire 100AZ		SEE IT	Easily attach any smartphone to the eyepiece to capture impressive shots of the night sky.
Best for deep space		Sky-Watcher Classic 200		SEE IT	This model’s chunky design peers further into space than the competition.

Budget telescopes are a great way to dip your toes into cosmic exploration without needing a fortune of galactic proportions. While you may miss out on advanced tech and smart features found in more expensive options, budget-friendly telescopes still allow you to view stars, planets, nebulas, and more. Choosing an affordable telescope can be challenging, though. Read on to discover our favorite picks and what you should look for in the best budget telescopes. 

• Best overall: Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ
• Best portable: Celestron Astromaster 70AZ
• Best for smartphone astrophotography: Celestron Inspire 100AZ
• Best for kids: Orion Observer II
• Best for deep space: Sky-Watcher Classic 200

How we chose the best budget telescopes

While budget telescopes will result in limited selection compared to higher-price items, there are still plenty of options for those on tight budgets. When selecting the telescopes for this guide, we prioritized those from well-established brands to ensure quality, durability, and reliability. You’ll notice that Celestron is well-represented, and for good reason. Celestron is truly the heavy in the consumer telescope world, and it tends to dominate on the more accessible end of the spectrum. We then considered the optical design, mount type, aperture, and focal length, choosing a variety of options suitable for different stargazing needs. Finally, we assessed build quality, optical quality, and included accessories. 

The best budget telescopes: Reviews & Recommendations

Manufacturers of budget telescopes inherently need to make sacrifices to keep prices down, but that doesn’t mean all budget-friendly devices are cheaply made or of poor quality. The options below will offer a balance of quality, features, and price so you can get the most for your money at a lower price point. 

Best overall: Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ

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Specs

• Optical design: Newtonian reflector
• Mount type: Alt-azimuth
• Aperture: 130mm (5.11 inches)
• Focal length: 650mm (25.59 inches)
• Magnification: 26x and 65x
• Weight: 18 pounds
• Dimensions: 38.98 x 16.93 x 8.98 inches

Pros

• Easy to set up and align
• Sharp, quality optics
• Bright aperture
• Excellent value for the price

Cons

• Manual control only
• Included eyepieces offer limited magnification

Our top pick offers an impressive amount of quality for its sub-$500 price. This Newtonian reflector telescope features a 5-inch primary mirror with highly reflective coatings to produce sharp, clear images. The 130mm aperture gatherers lots of light, so it’s plenty bright in many conditions. Those light-gathering skills also come in handy when taking photos if you want to practice astrophotography. 

This budget telescope comes with an alt-azimuth mount and a sturdy, full-height tripod. Despite its robust base, it’s still relatively lightweight, so bringing it to a spot with less light pollution won’t be too challenging. It also includes 10mm and 25mm eyepieces, offering 26x and 65x magnification, respectively. That makes seeing star clusters, nebulae, planets, and more possible. 

We especially like that the 130AZ comes with a phone deck. With your phone mounted to the telescope, you can use the StarSense app to identify which objects you want to look at. It will then guide you to where you need to be, which is fun for beginners and more experienced stargazers alike. If you want to use it without your phone, it also has a red dot finderscope to help guide you. 

Best portable: Celestron Astromaster 70AZ

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Specs

• Optical design: Newtonian reflector
• Mount type: Alt-azimuth
• Aperture: 70mm (2.76 inches)
• Focal length: 900mm (35 inches)
• Magnification: 45x and 90x
• Weight: 18 pounds
• Dimensions: 14.96 x 5.12 x 3.94 inches

Pros

• Includes everything you need to get started
• Comes with 10mm and 20mm eyepieces
• Very simple to set up
• Lightweight and portable

Cons

• Manual control only (no motor)
• Limited magnification

The Celestron Astromaster 70AZ Newtonian reflector is an extremely popular budget telescope thanks to its ideal balance of features, size, and price. It comes with an alt-azimuth mount and two eyepieces—10mm and 20mm—so you won’t need to purchase any extras to get started viewing the stars. It’s also easy to assemble, so you’ll be stargazing just a few minutes after opening the box. 

We like the Astromaster 70AZ partly because it is relatively compact and lightweight at roughly 18 pounds. It’s easier to bring with you on trips to find skies free of light pollution. The lightweight design also makes it a good choice for kids. The two eyepieces allow for 45x and 90x magnification, allowing you to view planets easily. 

Of course, as a budget telescope, there are some downsides. The 70mm aperture won’t allow you to see deep-space objects very well. And the panning handle doesn’t allow for very precise adjustments. It’s best for beginners, as a result. But, it provides quality optics at a very affordable price, making it an attractive option for those on a tight budget.

Best for smartphone astrophotography: Celestron Inspire 100AZ

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• Optical design: Refractor
• Mount type: Alt-azimuth
• Aperture: 100mm (3.94 inches)
• Focal length: 660mm (25.98 inches)
• Magnification: 33x and 66x 
• Weight: 6.6 pounds
• Dimensions: 38 x 33 x 52 inches

Pros

• Quality optics
• Lightweight and portable
• Very easy to set up
• Lens cap serves as a smartphone mount

Cons

• Some fringing

The Celestron Inspire 100AZ is a great choice for those wanting to explore the possibilities of astrophotography with just a phone. That’s in part thanks to the clever dual-purpose lens cap. When you’re ready to take photos, simply attach the lens cap to the eyepiece, then strap your phone into place, and you’re all set. 

The Inspire 100AZ is an achromatic refractor scope. It offers a 100mm aperture for plenty of light gathering and a 660mm focal length. You’ll be able to view the moon and planets easily and some brighter star clusters. It won’t quite cut it for deep space, however. That’s typical of this type of telescope.

This budget telescope features an alt-azimuth mount and comes with a sturdy tripod. It’s quick and easy to set up and break down. You’ll also get the StarPointer Pro red dot finder to help you find celestial objects and 10mm and 20mm Kellner eyepieces. And it offers a built-in red light to help you find your accessories in the dark without blasting your eyes with light. Unfortunately, there is some fringing, which is unsurprising for a budget refractor model. But for those just getting started, we think it’s still an excellent option.

Best for kids: Orion Observer II

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• Optical design: Refractor
• Mount type: Alt-azimuth 
• Aperture: 60mm (2.4 inches)
• Focal length: 700mm (27.5 inches)
• Magnification range: 28x, 70x
• Weight: 4.3 pounds
• Dimensions: 29.3 x 10.9 x 7.5 inches

Pros

• Lightweight and portable
• Comes with fun and useful books and maps
• Includes two eyepieces
• Easy to set up

Cons

• Not for viewing deep space

If a star projector piqued your child’s interest in the cosmos, a to-scale telescope is a logical next step to keep their interest growing. The Orion Observer II is a great starter kit for kids. It will allow them to check out craters on the moon or even the rings on Saturn, expanding their minds as they view our vast universe.

The anti-reflection-coated 60mm achromatic objective lens gathers enough light for budding astronomers and produces clear views while keeping the cost down. The 700mm focal length paired with the included 10mm and 25mm Kellner eyepieces result in 28x and 70x magnification, respectively. It features an alt-azimuth mount for easy tracking and comes with a tripod that’s easy to set up, even for kids. 

Part of what makes the Orion Observer II stand out for kids is the books and guides that come with it. The Orion MoonMap 260 shares 260 interest features to look for on the moon. The Star Target planisphere helps you figure out what you can see in the night sky for every night of the year. And the Exploring the Cosmos book introduces space and the stars for your budding astronomer. 

Best for deep space: Sky-Watcher Classic 200

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• Optical design: Dobsonian
• Mount type: Alt-azimuth
• Aperture: 8 inches
• Focal length: 1200mm
• Magnification range: 48x, 120x
• Weight: 45 pounds
• Dimensions: 49 x 27 x 18 inches

Pros

• 8-inch mirror captures lots of light
• Sharp, clear optics
• Comes with 25mm and 10mm eyepieces
• Sturdy and well-made

Cons

• Bulky and heavy

For viewing deep into the depths of space, you’ll need a telescope with lots of light-gathering abilities. That means a Dobsonian telescope, a type of telescopes commonly called “light buckets.” The Sky-Watcher Classic 200 is an excellent budget-friendly Dobsonian, offering a lot of quality for the price. 

The large eight-inch aperture will allow you to view even faint nebulas, galaxies, and star clusters. The 1200mm focal length provides lots of reach, resulting in 48x and 120x magnification when using the included 10mm and 25mm Plössl eyepieces. It also comes with a two-inch Crayford focuser, a 1.25-inch eyepiece adapter, and a 9×50 straight-through finder scope. There is a built-in eyepiece tray to keep it all organized as well, which we appreciate.

Sky-Watcher designed this scope with Teflon bearings for smooth azimuth movement and patented tension control handles for accurate adjustments. It is very well made and will last a lifetime. The main downside to this budget telescope is its size. It weighs 45 pounds when fully assembled. It also doesn’t come with a stand, so it must be placed on a sturdy, level surface. This telescope is not one that you will want to travel with or move around much as a result. Instead, it’s best suited for homes where you can set it up and leave it be. 

Things to consider when shopping for the best budget telescopes

There’s lots of technical jargon associated with telescopes, so figuring out what it all means can be overwhelming. We spoke with Dr. Jason Aufdenberg, Associate Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, to get his advice on telescope shopping. He explained that it may be tempting to opt for the largest magnification you can afford and ignore all the other features, but that’s not necessarily the right call. Below are some key things to pay attention to when choosing a budget telescope, or any telescope, for that matter. 

Optical design

There are three primary types of optical designs in telescopes: Refractor, reflector, and catadioptric or compound. 

Reflector telescopes use glass lenses to focus light into an eyepiece. Light needs to travel in a straight path to the eyepiece in reflectors, which results in devices that are longer than they are wide. Reflector telescopes tend to result in chromatic aberration, otherwise known as fringing. To avoid this, Dr. Aufdenberg explained that manufacturers rely on complicated multi-element lens systems, which makes them expensive. But they are sturdy and relatively maintenance-free, making them one of the most common types available. 

Reflector telescopes—which include Dobsonian and Newtonian—use mirrors to reflect the light into focus. These bounce light back and forth in the optical tube, which allows for a shorter design. They also cost less to make, so most cheap telescopes are reflectors. Dr. Aufdenburd suggests a Dobsonian for beginners because it offers the most light collection per dollar. However, this type of telescope will require what’s called collimation, which is an alignment of the mirrors. It usually only takes a few minutes, but it is an additional step. 

Finally, catadioptric telescopes use both lenses and mirrors, resulting in a compact form factor. If you’re looking for a portable option, a catadioptric is your best bet. Schmidt-Cassegrains and Maksutov-Cassegrains are two common varieties of this type of telescope. 

Mount type

Dr. Aufdenberg stressed that the telescope mount is just as important as the other features. That’s because the mount controls how and where the telescope can move, which impacts what you can do with it. There are three primary types of mounts to consider: Alt-azimuth, Dobsonian, and equatorial. 

Alt-azimuth mounts are the simplest and, thus, most affordable mounts available. These allow for altitude (vertical) and azimuth (horizontal) adjustments. Quality alt-az mounts allow for smooth tracking across the sky, which makes them an ideal choice for shorter astrophotography captures. Some are even computerized for automatic tracking.

Dobsonian mounts sit on lazy susan-like platforms that must be placed on sturdy surfaces like tables or mounted to platforms. They are intended to support massive Newtonian telescopes, but many compact telescopes also use this mount type as well. They provide more stability than the other mount types, as long as you have a stable surface to mount it to. 

Equatorial mounts essentially counteract the Earth’s rotation, making them perfect for long observations and serious astrophotography. With an equatorial mount, you can focus on a specific celestial object and guide it across the sky to keep it centered. You can either do this manually or with an electric motor for automatic tracking. 

Lens

Once you decide on your optical design and mount type, you’ll need to select the diameter of the primary lens, also known as aperture. The aperture is measured in millimeters or inches and indicates how much light the telescope lets in. A larger aperture will allow for shorter exposure times for astrophotography and allow you to see dimmer objects—such as nebulae—faster. You should choose the largest lens that you can afford and that is as portable as you need it to be.  

Magnification

Lastly, you’ll want to think about the type of objects you want to view and what magnification is required to view those objects. To see details such as Jupiter’s moons or Saturn’s rings, you’ll want at least 30-40x magnification. 

Magnification is, in part, determined by the focal length of your eyepiece. Many telescopes will come with multiple eyepieces, providing more versatility. To determine the magnification with a specific eyepiece, divide the focal length of the optical tube by the eyepiece. 

FAQs

Final thoughts on the best budget telescopes

• Best overall: Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ
• Best portable: Celestron Astromaster 70AZ
• Best for smartphone astrophotography: Celestron Inspire 100AZ
• Best for kids: Orion Observer II
• Best for deep space: Sky-Watcher Classic 200

You don’t have to spend a fortune to get a quality, fun-to-use telescope. By prioritizing the features and technology that you will actually use, you’ll be able to save money while getting a device that will last you for years to come. Whether you are a novice to stargazing or someone with more experience, the budget telescopes above will get you searching the cosmos for less. 

Why trust us

Popular Science started writing about technology more than 150 years ago. There was no such thing as “gadget writing” when we published our first issue in 1872, but if there was, our mission to demystify the world of innovation for everyday readers means we would have been all over it. Here in the present, PopSci is fully committed to helping readers navigate the increasingly intimidating array of devices on the market right now.

Our writers and editors have combined decades of experience covering and reviewing consumer electronics. We each have our own obsessive specialties—from high-end audio to video games to cameras and beyond—but when we’re reviewing devices outside of our immediate wheelhouses, we do our best to seek out trustworthy voices and opinions to help guide people to the very best recommendations. We know we don’t know everything, but we’re excited to live through the analysis paralysis that internet shopping can spur so readers don’t have to.

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A nebula can look like a lot of different animals—a crab, tarantula, seagull, a cat’s eye, and even a chicken on the run. The European Southern Observatory’s VLT Survey Telescope in Chile took a new 1.5-billion-pixel image of IC 2944 aka the Running Chicken Nebula. It is located roughly 6,500 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Centaurus and this new image shows the nebula in new detail.

[Related: What animal do you see in this image of a nebula?]

According to NASA, a nebula is a giant cloud of dust and gas. Some nebulae come from the gas and dust that is thrown out by the explosion of a dying star. Others are regions where new stars are beginning to form. The Running Chicken Nebula is home to thousands of young stars in the making. These starlets within the nebula release intense radiation that makes the surrounding hydrogen gas take on a pinkish hue with the filters used to create the image. 

This image is a mosaic of hundreds of separate frames that were stitched together. The individual images were taken with filters that allow the light of different colors through and the filters were combined to create the final image. The observations were taken using a wide-field camera called the OmegaCAM on the VST. The telescope is located in Chile’s Atacama Desert which maps the southern sky in visible light. 

The Running Chicken Nebula is made up of several different stellar regions, which are all in this new image that spans an area of space that’s about 270 light-years wide. It would take the average chicken almost 21 billion years to run across it, according to the ESO. The brightest region within the nebula is IC 2948. This is where some observers see the bird’s head, while others see a chicken’s butt. The wispy pastel streams are additional plumes of gas and dust.

A region called IC 2944 is in the center of the image and is marked by brilliant and pillar-like structures. The brightest twinkle in this particular spot is called Lambda Centauri. This star can be bright enough to be seen without a telescope and is actually much closer to Earth than the rest of the nebula itself.

[Related: NASA releases Hubble images of cotton candy-colored clouds in Orion Nebula.]

Both IC 2948 and IC 2944 are home to many young stars that are not very bright. However, what they lack in brilliance, they make up for in radiation. These stars spew out huge amounts of ultraviolet radiation that make the region appear to look like a chicken running around. Some parts of the nebula called Bok globules can actually withstand the fierce bombardment from the ultraviolet radiation. These globules can be seen as dark, small, dense pockets of gas and dust throughout the image. Aside from the nebulae, numerous orange, white, and blue stars appear like fireworks with the filters. 

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NASA’s Psyche spacecraft accomplished yet another historic communications achievement less than a month after successfully firing its “first light” laser data transmission. On December 11, the onboard Deep Space Optical Communications array’s flight laser transceiver sent an “ultra-high definition” video clip approximately 19 million miles back to Earth—a new record not just for transmission, but for cat videos, as well.

According to NASA’s December 18 announcement, Psyche sent an encoded near-infrared laser beam to Earth last week at its maximum bandwidth speed of 267 megabits per second (Mbps) while en route to the space probe’s final destination, a metal-heavy asteroid located between Mars and Jupiter. Roughly 101 seconds later, researchers at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory received and downloaded the data package. The team then sent each individual video frame over to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where the clip played in real time. And then, a cat named Taters made space exploration history.

As NASA explains, the 15-second video clip’s main character is an ode to some of the very first television test broadcast transmissions. Beginning in 1928, many of these earliest airings included a tiny statue of popular cartoon character, Felix the Cat. In honor of cats’ long lineage in telecommunications, Psyche’s brief scene showcases a sizable orange tabby named Taters chasing a red laser pointer across a couch while chilled out music plays in the background. Overlaid graphics also display information about the cute cat such as its heart rate, alongside more pertinent project info like Psyche’s orbital path, technical specs, and data bit rate information. 

[Related: NASA’s Psyche wins first deep space laser relay.]

Even across millions of miles of space, the demonstration reportedly holds up to some of the best internet download rates here on Earth.

“Despite transmitting from millions of miles away, [Psyche] was able to send the video faster than most broadband internet connections,” Ryan Rogalin, JPL’s receiver electronics lead for the project, explained on Monday. “In fact, after receiving the video at Palomar, it was sent to JPL over the internet, and that connection was slower than the signal coming from deep space.”

Thanks to this and future Psyche laser system testing, NASA plans to ready astronauts’ communications arrays for longterm voyages to the moon and Mars.

“Increasing our bandwidth is essential to achieving our future exploration and science goals, and we look forward to the continued advancement of this technology and the transformation of how we communicate during future interplanetary missions,” NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy said in the agency’s December 18 announcement.

For now, however, Taters takes center stage—although the video’s focal point wasn’t only a callback television’s very first test broadcasts.

“Today, cat videos and memes are some of the most popular content online,” reads NASA’s announcement, adding in its accompanying material that, “Coincidentally, cats like to chase lasers.”

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Volcanic eruptions are not a major threat to the Martian landscape, but an area about the size of Alaska was potentially covered with lava as recently as one million years ago. The findings are detailed in a study published December 15 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets and reveal that the presence of large fissures could have resulted in major flooding events. The reactions from the mixture of lava and water from the floods may have created an environment that could harbor life. 

[Related: Giant quake that shook Mars for hours had a surprising source.]

A geologically ‘dead’ planet?

Planet Earth is home to very active plate tectonics and these constantly churning chunks of crust alter our planet’s surface. Mars has long been considered a geologically “dead” planet due to its lack of plate tectonics and volcanic activity has never been observed there. However, some recent discoveries have questioned the notion that Mars was always this way, including evidence that a giant mantle plume underneath the region of Elysium Planitia was once behind intense seismic and volcanic activity in the planet’s relatively recent past. Elysium Planitia has the youngest terrain on the Red Planet, so studying it helps scientists better understand its past, including more hydrological and volcanic events. 

In this new study, a team from the University of Arizona and the University of Alaska Fairbanks, combined images taken with NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and measurements from ground-penetrating radar to recreate a 3D model of every individual lava flow they could detect evidence of in Elysium Planitia. The survey revealed more than 40 volcanic events in the planet’s recent past. One of the largest flows possibly filled a Martian valley named Athabasca Valles with almost 1,000 cubic miles of basalt.

“Elysium Planitia was volcanically much more active than previously thought and might even still be volcanically alive today,” study co-author and planetary geologist Joana Voigt said in a statement. Voight completed this research as part of her PhD at the University of Arizona and is now postdoctoral researcher at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The Marsquakes recorded by NASA’s InSight lander between 2018 and 2022 also provided the team on this study with further proof that the Red Planet is not so dead just below the surface. 

“Our study provides the most comprehensive account of geologically recent volcanism on a planet other than Earth,” study co-author and University of Arizona planetary geologist Christopher Hamilton said in a statement. “It is the best estimate of Mars’ young volcanic activity for about the past 120 million years, which corresponds to when the dinosaurs roaming the Earth at their peak to present.”

What steam could mean for finding evidence of life 

These study’s findings have implications for future research into whether Mars harbored life at some point in its history. Elysium Planitia has traces of several large floods and the interaction of the outpouring lava with flood water or ice likely shaped the landscape in dramatic ways. The team found evidence of steam explosions across Elysium Planitia. Astrobiologists are interested in these types of interactions, as they may have created hydrothermal environments that were conducive to microbial life.

For a closer look, the team used images taken with the Context camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and other images from the orbiter’s HiRISE camera in selected areas. They also used data records from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter aboard NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor. They then combined the images with survey data taken with NASA’s Shallow Radar (SHARAD) probe. 

[Related: Mars rover snaps pics of dusty craters that may have once roared with water.]

“With SHARAD, we were able to look as deep as 460 feet below the surface,” said Voigt. “Combining the datasets allowed us to reconstruct a three-dimensional view of the study area, including what the topography was like before lava erupted from multiple cracks and filled basins and channels previously carved by running water.”

This detailed reconstruction of Mars’ geological features provides scientists a peek into the processes that shaped its past. Understanding the relationship between the planet’s volcanoes and crust is a key to recreating the planet’s paleo-environmental conditions. In addition to water from within the magma being flung into the Martian atmosphere and then freezing on the surface, eruptions can also allow for major releases of groundwater onto the surface.

The team plans to continue to use complex datasets obtained with various imaging methods to build more detailed insights of the Martian surface and what lies beneath.

According to Voigt, lava flow surfaces are similar to “open books that provide a wealth of information about how they came to be if you know how to read them. These areas that used to be considered featureless and boring, like Elysium Planitia, I think they contain a lot of secrets, and they want to be read.”

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Around 10 billion years ago, a small galaxy collided with our Milky Way, creating a cosmic sausage. That so-called “Gaia-Enceladus-sausage” (GES) merger event stirred up the stars in our galaxy, flinging some of them into sausage-like elongated orbits around the galaxy’s central black hole and puffing up the Milky Way’s disk to its current thick, pancake-like shape. 

Now, astronomers think that the GES merger might also be responsible for molding the Milky Way’s characteristic bar—a straight line of stars at the center of the galaxy’s spiral. Their findings were recently submitted to the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and are currently available on arXiv as a pre-print.

“Our paper shows, for the first time, that the Milky Way’s bar could have been created as a direct result of the Galaxy’s biggest merger [the Gaia-Enceladus-Sausage merger], whose remnants we can see in the motions of nearby stars,” authors Alex Merrow and Robert Grand, astronomers at Liverpool John Moores University tell PopSci.

Nearly two-thirds of all spiral galaxies have bars, and they’re a crucial piece of the puzzle of how stars, gas, and energy move throughout a galaxy because of their gravitational influence. However, astronomers don’t fully understand how they came to be. Although we can’t travel back in time to see the Milky Way’s origins, astronomers can study nearby stars of different ages in great detail, providing clues about the past. “Observational clues lie in starlight, much like fossils inform us about the Earth’s history,” Merrow and Grand explain. “In particular, the positions, motions, and chemical compositions of stars throughout the galaxy tell stories of our Cosmic past.”

Recent observations hinted that our galaxy’s bar might be quite old—perhaps 10 billion years old, around the same time as the GES merger. To see if the merger could nudge stars in just the right way to form a bar, the researchers generated a computer simulation of a GES-like galaxy smashing into a Milky-Way-like galaxy, and then watched how the stars moved with “gravity” over time. With this setup, the stars in the simulation formed into a bar pretty quickly, indicating that it’s possible this type of merger event could make a galactic bar.

“It’s a cool result, especially since there’s a lot of evidence nowadays showing how the GES merger had a significant impact on a number of the Milky Way’s present-day properties,” Pratik Gandhi, a UC Davis astronomer not involved in the new work, tells PopSci. 

Our galaxy is also an important player in how we got here—living creatures on the tiny rock that is Earth. “In the Milky Way, we live well outside of the bar region, but we’re not outside its influence,” Merrow and Grand explain. When the bar was moving around stars, it may have shifted our sun, too—and where you live in a galaxy has huge consequences for how comfortable a planet you live on. The sun could have “been born in a completely different part of the galaxy to where it is now, owing to the bar’s gravitational influence moving it around,” they add.

Learning more about our home galaxy is important for our own origin story, explaining why we ended up in this particular part of the galactic neighborhood. This information could be key to unlocking other galactic histories as well. As Merrow and Grand say, this work will “provide a new perspective on the history of other barred galaxies throughout the Universe.” 

Correction 12/19/2023: The galaxy collision likely occurred 10 billion years ago. PopSci regrets the error.

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SpaceX and its billionaire CEO Elon Musk may finally have a reason to look over their shoulder in the satellite internet race. On Thursday, Amazon revealed it successfully used a space laser technology called “optical inter-satellite link” (OISL) to beam a 100 gigabit per second connection between two of its Project Kuiper satellites stationed 621 miles apart from each other in low Earth orbit. That’s roughly the distance between New York and Cincinnati. Amazon believes that same tech could help it soon deliver fast and reliable broadband internet to some of the most remote regions on Earth. 

Typically, LEO satellites send data between antennas at the customer’s location and ground gateways that connect back to the internet. An OISL eliminates the need for that immediate data downlink to the ground, which can increase internet speed and reduce latency, particularly for end-users in remote areas. The ability to communicate directly between satellites means that, in practical terms, OISLs could bring strong internet connections to cruisers in the ocean or offshore oil rigs many miles away from land.

“With optical inter-satellite links across our satellite constellation, Project Kuiper will effectively operate as a mesh network in space,” Project Kuiper Vice President of Technology Rajeev Badyal said in a statement.

“Mesh networks” generally refer to a group of connected devices that work side-by-side to form a single network. In a press release, Amazon says it plans to outfit its satellites with multiple optical terminals so several of them can connect with each other simultaneously. In theory, that should establish “high-speed laser cross links” that form the basis for a fast mesh network in space. Amazon expects this space-based mesh network should be capable of transferring data around 30% faster than terrestrial fiber optic cables sending data across roughly the same distance. How that actually plays out in practice for everyday users still remains to be seen since Project Kuiper’s services aren’t currently available to consumers.

Amazon launched its first two satellites into orbit in October and carried out the OISL tests in November. The two satellites, KuiperSat-1 and KuiperSat-2, were reportedly able to send and receive data at speeds of roughly 100 gigabits per second for an hour-long test window. The satellites had to maintain that link while moving at up to 15,534 miles per hour. 

Kuiper Government Solution Vice President Ricky Freeman said the network’s ability to provide “multiple paths to route through space” could be particularly appealing to customers “looking to avoid communications architecture that can be intercepted or jammed.” 

When asked by PopSci if the potential customer described here is a military or defense contractor, an Amazon spokesperson said Project Kuiper is focused “first and foremost” on providing internet coverage to residential customers in remote and underserved communities. The spokesperson went on to say it may approach government partners in the future as well. 

“We are committed to working with public and private sector partners that share our commitment to bridging the digital divide,” the spokesperson said. “We’re building a flexible, multi-purpose communications network to serve a variety of customers that will include space and government agencies, mobile operators, and emergency and disaster relief operations.” 

Project Kuiper slowly moving out of the shadows

Project Kuiper launched in 2019 with a goal of creating a constellation of 3,236 satellites floating in low-Earth- orbit. Once completed, Amazon believes the constellation could provide fast and affordable broadband internet previously underserved regions around the globe. But the project has taken its sweet time to actually lift off. After more than four years, the company finally launched its first satellites into orbit in October. As of this month the company had reportedly ordered just 94 rocket launches according to CNBC.

SpaceX, Project Kuiper’s biggest rival, already has a huge head start. The company has reportedly launched more than 5,000 Starlink satellites into space and currently offers its satellite internet service to paying customers. In a surprise twist, Amazon recently struck a deal with its rival where it will use SpaceX rockets to quickly launch more Kuiper satellites into orbit

The new laser tests prove Amazon’s Project Kuiper is indeed much more than a wishful multi-billion dollar side quest. Whether or not it can ramp up satellite deployments in time to catch up with SpaceX, however, remains to be seen.

Correction 12/15/23: An earlier version of this story read that Amazon would bypass the need for a ground link.

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Even six years after its dramatic plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere, NASA’s now complete Cassini mission continues to fuel discovery. Data from the mission recently revealed evidence that the giant plume of water vapor and ice grain spewing from Saturn’s moon Enceladus contains hydrogen cyanide. This linear molecule is key to the origin of life. Cassini found strong confirmation for the molecule and the possibility that the ocean under Enceladus’ icy outer shell holds a powerful source of chemical energy. The findings were published December 14 in Nature Astronomy.

[Related: NASA hopes its snake robot can search for alien life on Saturn’s moon Enceladus.]

In June, a new analysis of Cassini data found that, in theory, Enceladus has all the chemicals it needs to support life within its plume. The ocean under Enceladus likely supplies most of this material for the plume streaming off of the moon. This newly identified energy source also comes in the form of several organic compounds. Some of these compounds serve as fuel for organisms here on Earth. It’s possible that there is more chemical energy inside of this small moon than astronomers previously thought. The more energy, the more likely it would be for the celestial body to sustain life. 

“Our work provides further evidence that Enceladus is host to some of the most important molecules for both creating the building blocks of life and for sustaining that life through metabolic reactions,” study co-author and Harvard University doctoral student Jonah Peter said in a statement. “Not only does Enceladus seem to meet the basic requirements for habitability, we now have an idea about how complex biomolecules could form there, and what sort of chemical pathways might be involved.”

The ‘Swiss army knife of amino acid precursors’

Hydrogen cyanide is of the most crucial and versatile molecules needed to form the amino acids needed to sustain life, because its molecules can be stacked together in many different ways. The team on this study calls hydrogen cyanide the “Swiss army knife of amino acid precursors.”

“The discovery of hydrogen cyanide was particularly exciting, because it’s the starting point for most theories on the origin of life,” said Peter. “The more we tried to poke holes in our results by testing alternative models, the stronger the evidence became. Eventually, it became clear that there is no way to match the plume composition without including hydrogen cyanide.”

In 2017, scientists found evidence that Enceladus potentially had chemistry that could help sustain life in its ocean. The combination of hydrogen, methane, and carbon dioxide inside of the plume pointed to a methanogenesis. This metabolic process produces methane and is widespread on Earth. Methanogenesis also may have been critical to the origin of life on our planet.

[Related: Here’s how life on Earth might have formed out of thin air and water.]

The new study found evidence for additional energy chemical sources that produce a process stronger than methanogenesis. Scientists found numerous organic compounds that were oxidized. Oxidation helps drive the release of chemical energy, so the presence of oxidized compounds indicates that there are multiple chemical pathways to potentially sustain life present in Enceladus’ subsurface ocean. 

“If methanogenesis is like a small watch battery, in terms of energy, then our results suggest the ocean of Enceladus might offer something more akin to a car battery, capable of providing a large amount of energy to any life that might be present,” study co-author and astrobiologist and planetary scientist at NASA’S Jet Propulsion Laboratory Kevin Hand said in a statement.

How Earth math works on Saturn’s moons

The team also performed a detailed statistical analysis to recreate the conditions that Cassini found on Enceladus. They examined data on the gas, ions, and ice grains around Saturn that Cassini’s ion and neutral mass spectrometer gathered. The statistical models helped the team tease out the small differences in various chemical compounds.

“There are many potential puzzle pieces that can be fit together when trying to match the observed data,” Peter said. “We used math and statistical modeling to figure out which combination of puzzle pieces best matches the plume composition and makes the most of the data, without overinterpreting the limited dataset.”

While determining if life could originate on Enceladus is still a long way off, this new research shows the chemical pathways for life on this Saturnian moon can be tested in the lab on Earth. 

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For nearly a year, the world waited with baited breath for closure to a whodunit orbiting over 250 miles above everyone’s heads. Last week, the wait came to an end, clearing astronaut Frank Rubio’s name in the process. NASA posted a brief rundown of the saga detailing the multi-month search for the MIA produce.

Whatever happened to the disappearing dwarf tomatoes?

Back in November 2022, the International Space Station received a cargo delivery containing materials for Veg-05, a project aimed at furthering NASA researchers’ and astronauts’ understanding of hydroponic and aeroponic growing methods in microgravity, without soil. Access to fresh food will be an absolute necessity during humans’ long-term missions to the moon, Mars, and perhaps one day even beyond. Regular grocery runs won’t exactly be an option for the first residents of a potential Martian base, so growing healthy, nutritious produce like tomatoes will be a must.

Veg-05 offered astronauts a chance to investigate various growing techniques, which ultimately resulted in an  impressive yield of dwarf tomatoes. At the time, astronauts including Frank Rubio intended to eventually taste test their ISS garden bounty. After picking the first two fruits off the vine, Rubio reportedly sealed them in a Ziploc bag and “velcroed it where I was supposed to velcro it,” he recounts in NASA’s video.

“And then I came back, and it was gone,” he continued.

While missing items are often recovered within the many ISS intake vents, Rubio estimates he spent somewhere between 18 and 20 hours of his spare time searching for the missing tomatoes, all to no avail. All the while, lighthearted rumors began to spread aboard the ISS that he simply ate the snacks without telling anyone. Rubio eventually returned to Earth on September 27 having broken the record for longest time spent in space (371 days), but still an accused man. During a subsequent December 6 livestream, however, ISS’s current residents broke the news: Rubio’s innocence could finally be confirmed.

[Related: Microgravity tomatoes, yogurt bacteria, and plastic eating microbes are headed to the ISS.]

“We can exonerate him; we found the tomato[es],” astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli said during last week’s broadcast.

Almost a year after their disappearance, the two tiny tomatoes were rediscovered—dehydrated, somewhat squishy, but very much intact and in their original Ziploc container.

That said, Rubio wasn’t the only one to miss out on eating the space-grown produce. In April 2023, NASA announced that while astronauts successfully grew their tomatoes, an unexpected risk of fungal and microbial contamination prevented anyone from actually tasting the final products. For what it’s worth, however, Rubio’s rediscovered tomatoes reportedly displayed no outward signs of contamination—perhaps a bit of cosmic karma.

UPDATE 12/19/23 9:04AM: In an email to PopSci, a NASA spokesperson confirmed the tomatoes’ hideaway locale:

The tomatoes were found behind the Earth-facing (or forward) hatch of the Harmony module of the International Space Station. The hatch holds the pressurized mating adapter, which allows visiting spacecraft to dock to the microgravity laboratory. Harmony is a connecting point between other modules of the space station, and houses crew quarters, as well as provides electrical power and electronic data for the orbital complex.

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A team using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) spotted the smallest free-floating brown dwarf star ever recorded and two other “failed stars.” They are located in a star cluster that’s only 1,000 light-years from Earth and is not associated with a parent star. The findings were published December 13 in the Astronomical Journal and may help astronomers better determine the boundaries between stars and planets. 

[Related: A Jupiter-sized dwarf star burns half as hot as a campfire.]

Failed Stars

Brown dwarfs are celestial bodies that are more massive than planets, but not quite as large as stars. They form the way stars do, growing dense enough to collapse under the weight of their own gravity, but they never become dense and hot enough to start fusing the hydrogen needed to turn into a star. This is why they get the nickname “failed stars.”

The brown dwarf JWST spotted has a mass around eight times that of the planet Jupiter. Meanwhile, the smallest of these stars has a mass around three times that of Jupiter, which challenges current theories about how these types of celestial bodies are formed. Astronomers are using JWST to try and determine what the smallest celestial objects that can form in a star-like manner are. 

“One basic question you’ll find in every astronomy textbook is, what are the smallest stars? That’s what we’re trying to answer,” study co-author and Pennsylvania State University astronomer Kevin Luhman said in a statement. 

Scouring the skies

Luhman and his colleague Catarina Alves de Oliveira began their search with star cluster IC 348. This grouping is only about 1,000 light-years away in the Perseus star-forming region. Star cluster IC 348 is relatively young, at only about 5 million years old. Due to its age, any brown dwarfs present would still be relatively bright in infrared light and be glowing from the heat of their formation.

They imaged the center of the star cluster with JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) to identify any brown dwarf candidates from their brightness and colors. They then used the microshutter array on the telescope’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) to look at the most promising targets. The JWST’s sensitivity to infrared light allowed the team to detect fainter objects than other ground-based telescopes. 

They narrowed the star cluster down to three possible targets. All of the stars weighed three to eight Jupiter masses and had surface temperatures ranging from 1,500 to 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit. According to the team’s computer models, the smallest target was only three to four times the size of Jupiter and can offer clues to the star formation process.

[Related: Two tiny stars fit into an orbit smaller than our sun.]

“It’s pretty easy for current models to make giant planets in a disk around a star,” study co-author and European Space Agency (ESA) astronomer Catarina Alves de Oliveira of ESA said in a statement. “But in this cluster, it would be unlikely this object formed in a disk, instead forming like a star, and three Jupiter masses is 300 times smaller than our Sun. So we have to ask, how does the star formation process operate at such very, very small masses?”

A strange molecule

Tiny brown dwarfs can also help astronomers better understand exoplanets because the smallest brown dwarfs overlap with the largest known exoplanets. While they would generally be expected to have some similar properties, a free-floating brown dwarf is easier to study than a giant exoplanet. The glare of its host star generally hides giant exoplanets, making them more difficult to observe.  

Two of the brown dwarfs in this study also have evidence of an unidentified hydrocarbon, a molecule made up of both hydrogen and carbon atoms. NASA’s Cassini mission detected the same infrared signature in the atmosphere of Saturn and its moon Titan and in the gas between stars.

“This is the first time we’ve detected this molecule in the atmosphere of an object outside our solar system,” said Alves de Oliveira. “Models for brown dwarf atmospheres don’t predict its existence. We’re looking at objects with younger ages and lower masses than we ever have before, and we’re seeing something new and unexpected.”

The star or planet identity crisis

The question remains whether brown dwarfs are considered stars or rogue planets that were ejected from planetary systems. This team argues that the brown dwarfs in this study are most likely brown dwarf stars, and not an ejected planet. 

While the rogue planet theory couldn’t be completely ruled out, it is unlikely. Most of the stars in cluster IC 348 are low-mass and the team believes that it’s unlikely that they are capable of producing massive planets. The cluster also may not have had enough time during its 5 million years of existence for gas giants to form and be ejected from their planetary systems.  

Finding more objects like these brown dwarfs could help clarify their status as stars or planets. Some theories suggest that rogue planets are more likely to be spotted on the outskirts of a star cluster. Expanding the search area may reveal if they exist within IC 348. Future research could also take longer surveys that can pick up fainter and smaller objects. 

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NASA intends the Voyager program to continue its historic exploration for at least another few years. But after nearly half a century and billions of miles of cosmic travel, the pair of space probes aren’t the young, spry technological wonders they were back in 1977. Repairs are to be expected, as was the case earlier this year when NASA beamed a pair of software patches out to both Voyager 1 and 2. Earlier this week, however, NASA confirmed the detection of a new issue—while this one only reportedly affects Voyager 1, its engineering team is already at work finding a solution to coax a bit more life out of the record-breaking endeavor.

On December 12, NASA announced an issue within Voyager 1’s flight data system (FDS), one of the spacecraft’s three onboard computers. Although the probe can receive and carry out engineers’ commands, the FDS is currently unable to use its telemetry modulation unit (TMU) subsystem. Without this line of communication, Voyager 1 can’t transmit its engineering and science data back home.

[Related: Voyager probes get virtual tune-up to keep decades-long missions going and going.]

Although the TMU is designed to send data packages to Earth through simple binary code, it’s now “stuck” repeating a single pattern. NASA reportedly attempted the classic “turn it off and on again” IT trick, but to no avail.

According to the agency on Tuesday, it may take “several weeks” for a new potential solution to materialize. This is largely due to the fact that the Voyager program has continued chugging along far past its original lifespan estimate. Any remedies to these sorts of issues likely involves delving into decades-old documents penned by NASA engineers, people who had no way of knowing back in 1977 just how much further the probes would travel past Jupiter and Saturn. NASA also reminded everyone in its news update that, unlike near instantaneous texting between pals on Earth, it takes about 22.5 hours for signals to reach Voyager 1. That means it takes roughly two days minimum to assess the efficacy of any potential remedy.

Regardless of the current issue’s outcome, Linda Spilker, a project scientist for the Voyager program, knows there will inevitably come a day when Earth bids a final adieu to the little spacecrafts that could.

[Related: How is Voyager’s vintage technology still flying?]

“We’ve been able to resolve so many Voyager issues in the past but these are old spacecraft and we know that they can’t last forever,” she writes. “Voyager’s original mission was only four years long and we have certainly outlasted those early expectations.”

“The Voyager mission has transformed the way we look at our own solar system, from the planetary flybys of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, to now exploring interstellar space, a place where no spacecraft has flown before,” Spilker continued.

“We realize that Voyager means a lot to people and we are doing our best to keep them going for as long as possible.”

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NASA has released a new image of supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A) taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). JWST used its Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) to image Cas A in a different way, despite it being among the most well-studied supernova remnants in the cosmos. 

[Related: An amateur astronomer spotted a new supernova remarkably close to Earth.]

Cas A is about 11,000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia. It is made from the remains of gigantic star that astronomers believe exploded about 340 years ago. Since then, NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope, and now retired Spitzer Space Telescope assembled a multiwavelength picture of the remains of the stellar explosion. JWST enabled astronomers to observe Cas A at different wavelengths. The image shows the more intricate details of this expanding shell of material slamming into the gas that was shed by the star before it exploded.

Color coding

In April, an image of Cas A created with JWST’s Mid-Infrared Instrument revealed some new and surprising features in its inner shell. Astronomers are now looking into why many of these features are also present in the new image taken with NIRCam, which offers a different view of the same supernova remnants.

To the human eye, infrared light is invisible. Image processors and scientists translate these wavelengths of light into visible colors for images like this one. Colors were assigned to various filters from JWST’s NIRCam which sees in near-infrared light. Each hue hints at something different happening within Cas A.

The clumps of bright orange and light pink make up the inner shell of the supernova remnant. JWST detected tiny knots of gas made up of sulfur, oxygen, argon, and neon that originated from the now exploded star itself. A mixture of dust and molecules that should one day become the components of new stars and planetary systems are embedded within the gas. 

“With NIRCam’s resolution, we can now see how the dying star absolutely shattered when it exploded, leaving filaments akin to tiny shards of glass behind,” Purdue University astronomer Danny Milisavljevic said in a statement. “It’s really unbelievable after all these years studying Cas A to now resolve those details, which are providing us with transformational insight into how this star exploded.”

In the new near-infrared view, Cas A’s inner cavity and outermost shell are less colorful when compared with the mid-infrared view JWST previously took. A region which looked deep orange and red when imaged by MIRI now appears more white like smoke. This shows where the initial star explosion’s blast wave is colliding into surrounding circumstellar material. The dust is too cool to be detected directly at near-infrared wavelengths, but lights up in the mid-infrared.

[Related: Astronomers just confirmed a new type of supernova.]

The team believes that the smoke-like sections of the image are from synchrotron radiation. This kind of light is emitted across the electromagnetic spectrum, including the near-infrared. Synchrotron radiation is generated by charged particles that are hurtling through space at very high speeds and spiraling around magnetic field lines. 

A missing ‘Green Monster’ and a new ‘baby’

A loop of green light in the central cavity nicknamed the Green Monster is also not seen in this new image. When it was first spotted, researchers described it as “challenging to understand.” While it is invisible in the NIRCam image, the circular holes that were just visible in the previous MIRI image are faintly outlined in white and purple in this new NIRCam image. The white and purple represent ionized gas. The team believes that the ionized gas is caused by the supernova debris pushing through and sculpting the gas left behind by the star before it exploded.

While the Green Monster may have been missing from NIRCam’s image, the team was in for a different surprise. A large blob was visible at the bottom right corner of NIRCam’s field of view. This giant blob is called Baby Cas A since it looks like offspring of the main supernova remnant.

Baby Cas A is a light echo, where light from the long-ago stellar explosion is warming distant dust. This far away dust is glowing as it cools down. The team is particularly intrigued by Baby Cas A’s intricate dust pattern and its proximity to Cas A itself. Baby Cas A is likely located about 170 light-years behind the supernova remnant.

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It’s pretty easy to imagine carving glass to make parts for a piece of technology. We see them everyday–in eyeglasses, in microscopes in high school chemistry classes, and even in most telescopes. But astronomers have done something a bit different. They’ve made a telescope with a far weirder component: liquid mercury. 

The International Liquid Mirror Telescope (ILMT), situated atop a mountain in the Himalayas, has a spinning vat of liquid mercury as its mirror. This international project—a collaboration between India, Belgium, Poland, Uzbekistan, and Canada—recently successfully observed its first supernova, illustrating that these fluid marvels can be used for modern astronomy. Their results are available on the pre-print server arXiv, and published in the Bulletin of the Liège Royal Society of Sciences.

“The ILMT is the first liquid mirror telescope designed specifically for astronomy and located at a good astronomical site,” explains Paul Hickson, co-author on the new work and astronomer at The University of British Columbia. In the past, NASA has used small liquid mirror telescopes (LMTs) to keep tabs on asteroids and other space debris, but these were generally in less desirable locations and smaller in size than the four-meter diameter ILMT.

The major telescopes of astronomy, like the James Webb Space Telescope or the Keck Observatory in Hawai’i, use humongous glass mirrors that have been carefully ground into a perfect parabola, the shape needed to focus light in a reflecting telescope. LMTs work by rotating a liquid—typically mercury—to make a parabola instead. Telescope operators have to keep careful tabs on the rotating fluid, as any tiny disturbances will blur their images.

Because they get around the tricky and time-consuming work of perfecting a glass behemoth, LMTs are often cheaper to make. However, they have one really significant drawback, which can be a dealbreaker for a lot of science cases. These unique telescopes can only point straight up (known as zenith pointing), as any tilting will disturb the spinning fluid with gravity. So unlike conventional telescopes, they can’t simply slew to any target in the sky—they’re fixed in place, and so have to wait for a target to pass overhead.

Having seen the idea of an LMT float around the astronomical community for years, “it is wonderful to see the method fully implemented and producing good science,” comments Ian McLean, an astronomer and experienced instrument builder at University of California, Los Angeles. “However,” he adds, “I would be very surprised if this technology took off and became common in the future unless the demand for zenith pointing telescopes suddenly became essential.”

The ILMT team has a clear plan for their telescope, though, taking advantage of the unique zenith pointing restriction. They’re planning to stare at the same patch night after night, keeping watch for anything interesting like a cosmic watchman. The goal, Hickson explains, is “to observe a large region of sky repeatedly, once each night, in order to detect things that change,” such as stars that flare up or explode entirely in a supernova, or asteroids zooming past in our own solar system. Anything the ILMT spots can then be followed up by traditional observatories, which generally spend their nights chasing down celestial objects and somewhat rarely look at the same exact spot twice in a row.

After the telescope’s debut in 2022, the ILMT recently captured light from an already identified supernova called SN 2023af. This successful detection is “an excellent triumph for the liquid mirror technology telescope team,” adds McLean. The team hopes it’s only the first of many supernovae to come. According to lead author Brajesh Kumar, a researcher at the South-Western Institute For Astronomy Research in China, they expect ILMT “will discover and monitor hundreds of supernovae each year” from here on, hopefully unraveling the details of how stars’ lives come to an end.

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Six decades of human lunar exploration has shaped the moon’s environment. There has been enough change that some scientists argue that a new geological epoch on the moon should be declared. In a commentary published December 8 in the journal Nature Geoscience, a team of anthropologists and geologists say it should be called the Lunar Anthropocene and “space heritage” should be preserved and cataloged. 

[Related: Why do all these countries want to go to the moon right now?]

Why the Lunar Anthropocene?

Scientists used the term Anthropocene to describe the epoch where humans began to have a significant impact on Earth’s ecosystem and geology. The planet is about 4.5 billion years old, and modern humans have only been around for 200,000 years. In that short amount of time, Homo sapiens have significantly altered Earth’s biological, chemical, and physical systems. 

The beginning of the Anthropocene Epoch is still being debated and has a large range. Some suggest it began thousands of years ago. Others pinpoint 1950, when plutonium isotopes from nuclear weapons tests were found at the bottom of a relatively pristine lake in Canada. Emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses accelerating global warming, ocean acidification, increased species extinction, habitat destruction, and natural resource extraction are additional signs that humans have dramatically modified our planet.

“The idea is much the same as the discussion of the Anthropocene on Earth—the exploration of how much humans have impacted our planet,” study co-author and Kansas University archaeologist Justin Holcomb said in a statement. “Similarly, on the moon, we argue the Lunar Anthropocene already has commenced, but we want to prevent massive damage or a delay of its recognition until we can measure a significant lunar halo caused by human activities, which would be too late.”

64 years of moon exploration–and disturbance

On September 13, 1950, the USSR’s uncrewed spacecraft Luna 2 first descended onto the lunar surface. In the decades since, over 100 other spacecraft have touched the moon. NASA’s Apollo Lunar Modules followed in the 1960s and 1970s and China got the first seedling to sprout on the moon in 2019. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) successfully landed on the moon with the Chandrayaan-3 mission in August. 

All of this activity has displaced more of the moon’s surface than natural meteroid impacts and other natural processes. 

In Nature Geoscience, the team argues that upcoming lunar missions and projects will change the face of the moon in more extreme ways. They believe that the concept of the Lunar Anthropocene may help correct a myth that the moon is barely impacted by human activity and is an unchanging environment. 

[Related: Lunar laws could protect the moon from humanity.]

“Cultural processes are starting to outstrip the natural background of geological processes on the moon,” Holcomb said. “These processes involve moving sediments, which we refer to as ‘regolith,’ on the moon. Typically, these processes include meteoroid impacts and mass movement events, among others. However, when we consider the impact of rovers, landers and human movement, they significantly disturb the regolith.”

They believe that the lunar landscape will look entirely different in only half a century, with multiple countries having some presence on the surface of the moon. 

University College London astrophysicist Ingo Waldmann told New Scientist that the moon has entered its version of the Anthropocene. He said that lunar geology isn’t very dramatic. The moon might see an asteroid impact every couple of million years, but there aren’t too many other big events. “Just us walking on it has a bigger environmental impact than anything that would happen to the moon in hundreds of thousands of years,” said Waldmann.

The moon is currently in a geological division called the Copernican Period. It dates over one billion years ago. In that time, Earth has gone through roughly 15 geological periods.

Leave only footprints

The unofficial motto of the United States National Park Service here on Earth is “take only photographs, leave only footprints.” The authors of this commentary believe that a similar mindset should apply to the moon. Debris from human missions to the moon includes everything from spacecraft components, excrement, golf balls, flags, and more.

“We know that while the Moon does not have an atmosphere or magnetosphere, it does have a delicate exosphere composed of dust and gas, as well as ice inside permanently shadowed areas, and both are susceptible to exhaust gas propagation,” the authors wrote. “Future missions must consider mitigating deleterious effects on lunar environments.”

The team hopes that calling a similar attention to the environmental impact of the moon will protect their historical and anthropological value. There are currently no laws or policy protections against disturbing the moon. The team hopes that this concept of a Lunar Anthropocene will spark conversations about human impacts on the moon and how historical artifacts are preserved.

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This article was originally featured in The Conversation.

Imagine you’re a farmer searching for eggs in the chicken coop–but instead of a chicken egg, you find an ostrich egg, much larger than anything a chicken could lay.

That’s a little how our team of astronomers felt when we discovered a massive planet, more than 13 times heavier than Earth, around a cool, dim red star, nine times less massive than Earth’s Sun, earlier this year.

The smaller star, called an M star, is not only smaller than the Sun in Earth’s solar system, but it’s 100 times less luminous. Such a star should not have the necessary amount of material in its planet-forming disk to birth such a massive planet.

The Habitable Zone Planet Finder

Over the past decade, our team designed and built a new instrument at Penn State capable of detecting the light from these dim, cool stars at wavelengths beyond the sensitivity of the human eye–in the near-infrared–where such cool stars emit most of their light.

Attached to the 10-meter Hobby-Eberly Telescope in West Texas, our instrument, dubbed the Habitable Zone Planet Finder, can measure the subtle change in a star’s velocity as a planet gravitationally tugs on it. This technique, called the Doppler radial velocity technique, is great for detecting exoplanets.

“Exoplanet” is a combination of the words extrasolar and planet, so the term applies to any planet-sized body in orbit around a star that isn’t Earth’s Sun.

Thirty years ago, Doppler radial velocity observations enabled the discovery of 51 Pegasi b, the first known exoplanet orbiting a Sunlike star. In the ensuing decades, astronomers like us have improved this technique. These increasingly more precise measurements have an important goal: to enable the discovery of rocky planets in habitable zones, the regions around stars where liquid water can be sustained on the planetary surface.

The Doppler technique doesn’t yet have the capabilities to discover habitable zone planets the mass of the Earth around stars the size of the Sun. But the cool and dim M stars show a larger Doppler signature for the same Earth-size planet. The lower mass of the star leads to it getting tugged more by the orbiting planet. And the lower luminosity leads to a closer-in habitable zone and a shorter orbit, which also makes the planet easier to detect.

Planets around these smaller stars were the planets our team designed the Habitable Zone Planet Finder to discover. Our new discovery, published in the journal Science, of a massive planet orbiting closely around the cool dim M star LHS 3154–the ostrich egg in the chicken coop–came as a real surprise.

LHS 315b: The planet that should not exist

Planets form in disks composed of gas and dust. These disks pull together dust grains that grow into pebbles and eventually combine to form a solid planetary core. Once the core is formed, the planet can gravitationally pull in the solid dust, as well as surrounding gas such as hydrogen and helium. But it needs a lot of mass and materials to do this successfully. This way to form planets is called core accretion.

A star as low mass as LHS 3154, nine times less massive than the Sun, should have a correspondingly low-mass planet forming disk.

A typical disk around such a low-mass star should simply not have enough solid materials or mass to be able to make a core heavy enough to create such a planet. From computer simulations our team conducted, we concluded that such a planet needs a disk at least 10 times more massive than typically assumed from direct observations of planet-forming disks.

A different planet formation theory, gravitational instability–where gas and dust in the disk undergo a direct collapse to form a planet – also struggles to explain the formation of such a planet without a very massive disk.

Planets around the most common stars

Cool, dim M stars are the most common stars in our galaxy. In DC comics lore, Superman’s home world, planet Krypton, orbited an M dwarf star.

Astronomers know, from discoveries made with Habitable Zone Planet Finder and other instruments, that giant planets in close-in orbits around the most massive M stars are at least 10 times rarer than those around Sunlike stars. And we know of no such massive planets in close orbits around the least massive M stars–until the discovery of LHS 3154b.

Understanding how planets form around our coolest neighbors will help us understand both how planets form in general and how rocky worlds around the most numerous types of stars form and evolve. This line of research could also help astronomers understand whether M stars are capable of supporting life.

Written by Suvrath Mahadevan, Guðmundur Kári Stefánsson, and Megan Delamer.

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Best overall		Sky-Watcher Skymax Maksutov-Cassegrain Reflector Telescope		SEE IT	Blending aperture and portability.
Best for deep space		Explore Scientific ED127 Triplet Refractor Telescope		SEE IT	Capture the sky with high-contrast images.
Best portable		Sky-Watcher EvoStar 80 APO Doublet Refractor		SEE IT	Get sharp sky photos with accurate colors.

Some stargazers are happy to look, while others want to save far-off galaxies for the future with a telescope for astrophotography. Your choice of telescope comes, in part, down to what kind of astrophotography you want to do. A telescope that details the moon’s every last crevice is different from a model that lets you make the Andromeda Galaxy your next piece of wall art. Interplanetary photos are a different ball game, too. It’s also important to start with a budget in mind. You can easily spend well over $1,000 and will probably spend at least that much for a model that results in high-quality images. However, there are a few budget-friendly models worth considering as well. The best telescopes for astrophotography fit different gazing and astrophotography goals, budgets, and portability needs. 

• Best overall: Sky-Watcher Skymax Maksutov-Cassegrain Reflector Telescope
• Best for deep space: Explore Scientific ED127 Triplet Refractor Telescope
• Best portable: Sky-Watcher EvoStar 80 APO Doublet Refractor
• Best for beginners: Celestron 114LCM Computerized Newtonian Telescope
• Best budget: Celestron AstroMaster 130EQ-MD Newtonian Telescope

How we chose the best telescopes for astrophotography

We’re camera nerds and into telescopes, so we know a thing or two about the “photography” part of “astrophotography.” We looked at critical reviews and user recommendations and conducted heavy research to ensure we got the “astro” part down.

We picked telescopes based on their build quality, optics, field of view, and focal ratio, with a few specific parameters in mind. We avoided models with plastic pieces and cheap housing, except when looking at budget models, as build quality can affect the ability of the telescope to stay aligned and with viewing quality. Everything from the aperture to the included eyepieces was factored into the optics. Field of view affects the kind of objects you can photograph, and we have those with a narrow field of view for closer objects and wider fields of view for deep-sky objects. Finally, we have models on both ends of the focal ratio spectrum, including middle-of-the-road options for those who want an all-purpose telescope for astrophotography.

The best telescopes for astrophotography: Reviews & Recommendations

Stars can move at 500,000 per hour. Thanks to modern tech, we can take incredibly detailed photos of them in the sky. One of our picks should make you feel like Galileo or Copernicus, minus the death threats from the Catholic Church.

Best overall: Sky-Watcher Skymax Maksutov-Cassegrain Reflector Telescope

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Specs

• Focal ratio: f/15
• Weight: 17.1 pounds
• Optical design: Maksutov-Cassegrain

Pros

• Bright clear views of in-solar system objects
• Capable of deep-sky viewing and images
• Relatively compact for the viewing power
• Includes 1.25-inch adapter

Cons

• Doesn’t come with a mount

The Sky-Watcher Skymax Reflector Telescope is a compound telescope that offers a long focal length in a relatively compact design. It weighs 17 pounds, and you get excellent, clear views of the moon, planets, and bright deep-sky objects. 

A 1.25-inch adapter comes with the telescope, so you can directly attach a DSLR camera and get snapping once you’ve located the desired object. The f/15 focal ratio does mean it’s considered a slow telescope, so taking deep-sky shots is a little harder. However, as long as those objects are bright, this telescope can capture the images. 

Keep in mind that this model doesn’t come with a mount. You’ll have to purchase one separately. Depending on the type you choose, they can be pricey.

Best for deep space: Explore Scientific ED127 Triplet Refractor Telescope

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Specs

• Focal ratio: f/7.5
• Weight: 18 pounds (21 pounds with finder)
• Optical design: Triplet Refractor

Pros

• Excellent build quality
• Works with a wide range of accessories
• Can mount a DSLR camera to the cradle handle with additional accessory
• Light enough to be portable with handle on the tube rings

Cons

• Does not include mount
• Cannot be used with a focal reducer

The Explore Scientific ED127 Triplet Refractor Telescope is a versatile telescope that can take—with the right accessories—photos of galaxies and other deep-sky objects. Even in poor light conditions, the ED127 can capture impressive images. 

It comes with a 1.25-inch eyepiece adapter that fits some astrophotography cameras, but you may need a T-adapter for certain DSLR cameras. This model also gets points for portability thanks to the handle on the tube rings. The handle makes it easy to mount despite its power and weight. 

However, this model doesn’t come with a mount, so you’ll have to purchase one separately, adding several hundred dollars to the already splurge-y cost. Additionally, this model cannot be used with a focal reducer, limiting its use in certain types of astrophotography.

Best portable: Sky-Watcher EvoStar 80 APO Doublet Refractor

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Specs

• Focal ratio: f/7.5
• Weight: 7.3 pounds
• Optical design: Refractor

Pros

• Impressive optical image quality
• Lets you delve into professional-quality astrophotography
• CA stays controlled with the doublet and moderate focal ratio

Cons

• Not a good choice for beginners
• Expensive
• Includes only the tube with a few accessories

The Sky-Watcher EvoStar 80 APO Doublet Refractor offers an impressive array of optics that create vivid detail and image quality. However, attaining that quality may require the purchase of a few extra accessories. Consequently, this isn’t a model for beginners. 

However, for advanced beginners, intermediate, and even some advanced astrophotographers, the EvoStar 80 provides the quality and ability to travel with the telescope. At only 7.3 pounds, you can take it to the local mountaintop for a broader range of spectacular views as you escape light pollution. The optical specs—including a 1.45 Dawes limit, 1.75 Rayleigh limit, and 12 limiting magnitude—squeeze every last ounce of optical quality, especially in a tube this size. 

If you know what you’re doing and you’re serious enough in astrophotography to know the difference between good and great optical quality, this is a portable telescope that will not disappoint.

Best for beginners: Celestron 114LCM Computerized Newtonian Telescope

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Specs

• Focal ratio: f/9
• Weight: 13.2 pounds
• Optical design: Newtonian Reflector

Pros

• Quick, straightforward assembly
• Computerized mount makes it easier to identify and target objects
• Includes Sky Tour button to get familiar with the night sky

Cons

• Cannot take deep-sky images

The Celestron 114LCM Computerized Newtonian Telescope not only lets beginners start taking photographs right away but also introduces them to the night sky. The included mount even has a Sky Tour button that takes users on a guided journey through the heavens. While it doesn’t have the optics to do deep-sky astrophotography, you can connect a webcam, astrophotography camera, or mobile phone to start taking photos. 

You don’t have to be an expert to assemble the telescope and get started right away, which is key for beginners. This model is also relatively lightweight and portable.

Best budget: Celestron AstroMaster 130EQ-MD Newtonian Telescope

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Specs

• Focal ratio: f/5
• Weight: 28 pounds
• Optical design: Newtonian Reflector

Pros

• Good views of solar system and moon for the price
• Red dot finder makes it easier to target
• Affordable price for a telescope that can be used for basic planetary and moon photography

Cons

• Mount can be difficult to adjust
• Parts feel cheap

It’s harder but not impossible to find a telescope under $500 for astrophotography, and the Celestron AstroMaster 130EQ-MD Newtonian Telescope is one of the best below that price point. While the quality of the build and accessories can sometimes reflect the low price, users get excellent views of the moon and planets. That’s also where this telescope shines when it comes to astrophotography: closer objects. A red dot finder, which shines a red dot on the lens, helps users hone in on their target, too. 

You can use this telescope for viewing deep-sky objects, but your chances of getting a good photo at those longer distances aren’t great with this model. However, this value pick is perfect if you’re just getting started.

What to consider when buying the best telescopes for astrophotography

You don’t have to wait for the moon to reach a certain phase to get a good look at the sky. Sometimes, you just want to capture the brief moment where Jupiter was in your view. Here are the features and specs you should look for when searching the galaxies of the internet for a telescope for astrophotography:

Mount type

Before you invest in a telescope, consider what type of mount you already have or the mount that comes with the telescope. The mount is especially important for taking long exposure (slow) images. 

Mount importance comes down to the fact that the Earth is rotating, which alters the object’s location as you take a photo. Without the right mount, you can end up with blurred images or images with a visible trail. 

One of the best options for astrophotography is the equatorial mount. These mounts require only one axis adjustment to follow the object. In comparison, an alt-azimuth mount requires adjusting two axes while you’re trying to track the object. Mounts can be manual or automatic. Automatic equatorial mounts are more expensive, but they leave you free to change eyepieces or take photos. 

Remember that although a telescope may come with one kind of mount, you can buy a different mount separately. 

Focal ratio

The focal ratio is the telescope’s focal length divided by the aperture. The resulting number is the f/number, such as f/4 or f/11. A smaller focal ratio, those below f/5, indicates a faster telescope in that it gathers light at a faster rate than a model with a slower focal rate. These models are fast and have a wider field of view, making them more suited to deep-sky photography. They have shorter focal lengths (the distance between the eyepiece and the lens), which also makes them lighter and easier to carry. 

Slow telescopes have a focal ratio of f/8 or higher. Their longer focal lengths require slower shutter speeds to gather the same amount of light as a slow telescope. They have a narrower field of view but capture greater detail, making them a better choice for images within our solar system, like the moon or planets. 

Optical design

There are many types of telescopes, but those most pertinent to astrophotography include:

Refractor telescopes: Refractor telescopes are one of the most popular astrophotography telescope types. They give you more ability to correct chromatic aberration. Chromatic aberration is when light rays focus at different points, creating different colors around the object’s borders. Refractor telescopes provide more adjustments to fix this problem. They come in APO (apochromatic) and semi-APO design, with APO offering the best chromatic aberration correction. 

Reflecting telescopes: Newtonian and Gregorian telescopes fall into this category. They have mirrors instead of lenses. The Newtonian Dobsonian telescopes are among the most affordable and easiest telescopes to use, making them a good choice for beginners. However, depending on the targeted object, they don’t typically offer the best optical quality as some of the other types of telescopes. 

Schmidt-Cassegrain and Maksutov-Cassegrain: Schmidt-Cassegrain and Maksutov-Cassegrain telescopes are both catadioptric (also called compound telescopes) models. They’re a hybrid between refractor and reflector telescopes, having both lenses and mirrors. These models offer great optical correction features like refractor telescopes and provide long focal lengths in a relatively short tube for greater detail (and photographs) with a smaller telescope. 

FAQS

Final thoughts on the best telescopes for astrophotography

• Best overall: Sky-Watcher Skymax Maksutov-Cassegrain Reflector Telescope
• Best for deep space: Explore Scientific ED127 Triplet Refractor Telescope
• Best portable: Sky-Watcher EvoStar 80 APO Doublet Refractor
• Best for beginners: Celestron 114LCM Computerized Newtonian Telescope
• Best budget: Celestron AstroMaster 130EQ-MD Newtonian Telescope

Maybe you got your first telescope as a kid and have been fascinated by the skies ever since. Or maybe you got a point-and-shoot camera and have slowly widened your exposure to celestial subjects. However you got here, here you are, scrolling through our top telescopes for astrophotography. The Sky-Watcher Skymax Reflector Telescope offers the best blend of quality with image quality. Its price makes it more feasible for experienced astrophotographers, but you’ll get images with quality that are well above the price. If you’re on a budget, the Celestron 114LCM Computerized Newtonian Telescope or Celestron AstroMaster 130EQ-MD Newtonian Telescope are great options. The 114LCM’s SkyTour and automatic mount make it a great choice for beginners. 

Why trust us

Popular Science started writing about technology more than 150 years ago. There was no such thing as “gadget writing” when we published our first issue in 1872, but if there was, our mission to demystify the world of innovation for everyday readers means we would have been all over it. Here in the present, PopSci is fully committed to helping readers navigate the increasingly intimidating array of devices on the market right now.

Our writers and editors have combined decades of experience covering and reviewing consumer electronics. We each have our own obsessive specialties—from high-end audio to video games to cameras and beyond—but when we’re reviewing devices outside of our immediate wheelhouses, we do our best to seek out trustworthy voices and opinions to help guide people to the very best recommendations. We know we don’t know everything, but we’re excited to live through the analysis paralysis that internet shopping can spur so readers don’t have to.

The post The best telescopes for astrophotography in 2023 appeared first on Popular Science.

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While those of us in the Northern Hemisphere are in the grips of the darkest days of the year, the colder and less humid air makes it a prime time for stargazing. Here’s what to look out for in the last month of 2023. 

December 4 – Mercury at Greatest Elongation 

The planet Mercury will be at its farthest from the sun at 12:26 a.m. EST on December 4. According to EarthSky, Mercury shines at magnitude -0.3 when it is at greatest elongation, or angular distance from the sun. This makes it brighter than most stars. It will be in front of the constellation Sagittarius the Archer, but most of the stars in this constellation will be lost in the twilight. For best viewing, look to the western sky shortly after sunset.

[Related: A probe destined for Mercury ended up rubbernecking Venus.]

December 11 or 12 Asteroid Leona passes in front of Betelgeuse

Betelgeuse is one of the sky’s biggest and brightest stars, but it will vanish for about 12 seconds as a large asteroid passes in front of it.  Asteroid Leona will pass in front of the red supergiant star, temporarily blocking some of its light in a rare eclipse. With clear skies, should be visible to those along a narrow path stretching from Tajikistan and Armenia, westward towards Turkey, Greece, Italy, and Spain, across the Atlantic to Miami and the Florida Keys and parts of Mexico.

The timing and date will depend on where skygazers are located. In Cordoba Spain, the event will be at its midpoint at roughly 2:25 a.m. local time on December 12. In Miami, Florida it will be 8:24 p.m. local time on December 11. You can look up the exact time here. 

December 13 and 14 – Geminids Meteor Shower Predicted Peak

If shooting stars are more your thing, you won’t want to miss this year’s Geminid meteor shower. This is one of the most reliable annual meteor showers. Stargazers may see up to 120 shooting stars per hour at the shower’s peak if they are watching from a dark location with clear skies.

The Geminids are predicted to peak on December 14. However, since the shower rises in mid-evening, the meteors should be active all night close to the peak dates of December 13 and 14. The young waxing crescent moon will also not interfere with the Geminids this year. The shower should start in mid-evening and be highest around 2 a.m.

December 21 – Winter Solstice

The first day of winter in the Northern Hemisphere is marked by the winter solstice. The solstice officially arrives on Thursday, December 21, 2023, at 10:27 p.m. EST.

Since the Earth is tilted on its axis, on the solstice, one half of the planet is pointed away from the sun and the other half is pointed towards it. The solstice technically only lasts a moment, when a hemisphere–in this case, the Northern–is tilted as far away from the sun as it can be.

[Related: What is a solstice? And other questions about the shortest day of the year, answered.]

The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year and those in the Northern Hemisphere will see the fewest hours of sunlight on the 21st. After the solstice, the days will continue to grow longer until we reach the summer solstice in June.

December 22 and 23 – Ursids Meteor Shower Predicted Peak

In case you miss Geminids, you won’t have to wait too long for another meteor shower. This year’s Ursid meteor shower is predicted to peak on December 21 and 22. According to EarthSky, Ursids is a little bit more low key than Geminids, but still worth checking out. It will also potentially overlap with the Geminids. 

The first quarter moon may interfere with the Ursids this year, until the moon sets roughly three hours before the sunrise. However, the extra hours of darkness make it worth investigating. Under a clear sky, there can be about five to 10 meteors per hour. To catch the Ursids look towards the Little Dipper in the constellation Ursa Minor.

December 26 – Full Cold Moon

The last full moon of the year will appear full and bright on Christmas Day and will  reach its peak illumination on December 26 at 7:33 p.m. EST. The moon’s disk will appear fully illuminated a few days before this, so you can start looking on December 24 and 25 as it rises. According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, December’s full moon has a high trajectory in the sky. This means that it will be located above the horizon longer than most full moons. 

December’s full moon is called the Cold Moon for the cold air that grips the Northern Hemisphere this time of year. Other names for December’s full moon include the Little Spirit Moon or Manidoo-Giizisoons in Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe), the Storytelling Moon or Hiinaiwi Nuti in the Catawba Language of the Catawba Indian Nation in South Carolina, and the It’s a Long Night Moon or Wahsutes in Oneida.

The same skygazing rules that apply to pretty much all star gazing activities are key this month: Go to a dark spot away from the lights of a city or town and let your eyes adjust to the darkness for about a half an hour. Here’s to hoping for clear skies ahead!

Update, December 8, 2023, 8:39 a.m. This post has been updated to include Asteroid Leona passing in front of Betelgeuse.

The post Two meteor showers and a bright Mercury to light up December’s sky appeared first on Popular Science.

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For the first time, astronomers have observed a disc around a young star in a galaxy outside of ours called Large Magellanic Cloud. This extragalactic neighbor of our home Milky Way galaxy is located almost 200,000 light-years away from Earth and could crash into our home galaxy in about two billion years.

[Related: A ‘bridge of stars’ connects two of our closest galaxies.]

The new observations were made with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile. A massive young star in the star system HH 1177 is growing and taking in matter from its surroundings. As the matter gathers, a spinning disc called an accretion disc is forming. This is the first time that astronomers have seen an accretion disc in an extragalactic area. The discovery is described in a study published November 29 in the journal Nature. 

“When I first saw evidence for a rotating structure in the ALMA data I could not believe that we had detected the first extragalactic accretion disc, it was a special moment,” Anna McLeod, a study co-author and astronomer Durham University in the United Kingdom, said in a statement.  “We know discs are vital to forming stars and planets in our galaxy, and here, for the first time, we’re seeing direct evidence for this in another galaxy.”

This new study follows previous observations of star system HH 1177 made with the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. In 2018, the telescope spotted a jet from a forming star located deep inside a gas cloud in the Large Magellanic Cloud. 

“We discovered a jet being launched from this young massive star, and its presence is a signpost for ongoing disc accretion,” said McLeod. 

To confirm that there was an accretion disc around the star, the authors needed to measure the movement of dense gas around the young star. As matter is pulled towards this expanding star, it can’t fall directly onto it. The matter flattens into a spinning disc around the star instead. Near the center, the disc rotates faster. The difference in speed is the evidence the astronomers needed to determine that an accretion disc is present around the star. 

“The frequency of light changes depending on how fast the gas emitting the light is moving towards or away from us,” study co-author and astrophysicist at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK Jonathan Henshaw said in a statement. “This is precisely the same phenomenon that occurs when the pitch of an ambulance siren changes as it passes you and the frequency of the sound goes from higher to lower.”

[Related: Your guide to the types of stars, from their dusty births to violent deaths.]

ALMA’s detailed frequency measurements made it possible to distinguish the characteristic spin of a disc and confirm the detection of the first disc around a young star outside of our galaxy.

Enormous stars like this one form significantly faster and live far shorter lives than low-mass stars like our sun. In the Milky Way galaxy, these giant stars are particularly challenging for astronomers to observe. The dusty material that forms them can hide the stars from view right when a disc is shaping around them. 

However, in the Large Magellanic Cloud, the material from which new stars are being born is quite different from the star-making matter in the Milky Way. Due to its lower dust content, star system HH 1177 isn’t cloaked in the dusty cocoon it was born in. The lack of dust compared to similar systems in the Milky Way is giving astronomers a far away, but unobstructed view of star and planet formation in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

“We are in an era of rapid technological advancement when it comes to astronomical facilities,” McLeod said. “Being able to study how stars form at such incredible distances and in a different galaxy is very exciting.”

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Gravitational lensing occurs when things with mass create ripples and dents in the fabric of spacetime, and light has to follow along those lines, which sometimes create a magnifying glass effect. This both sounds and looks like something wild from science fiction, but it’s actually a very important tool in astronomy. The James Webb Space Telescope has been in the news a lot recently for just this: watching how light bends around massive galaxy clusters in space, revealing fainter, further away old galaxies behind them. 

Now, Slava Turyshev, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, is trying to harness one of these gravitational lenses closer to home, using our sun. In a new paper posted to the pre-print server arXiv, Turyshev computes all the detailed math and physics needed to show that it is actually possible to harness our sun’s gravity in this way, with some pretty neat uses. A so-called “solar gravitational lens” (SGL) could help us beam light messages into the stars for interstellar communication or investigate the surfaces of distant exoplanets.

“By harnessing the gravitational lensing effect of our star, astronomy would experience a revolutionary leap in observing capability,” says Nick Tusay, a Penn State astronomer not involved in the new work. “Light works both ways, so it could also boost our transmitting capability as well, if we had anyone out there to communicate with.”

When it comes to telescopes here on Earth, bigger is definitely better. To collect enough light to spot really faint far away objects, you need a huge mirror or lens to focus the light—but we can really only build them so big. This is where the SGL comes in, as an alternative to building bigger telescopes, instead relying on spacetime bent by the sun’s gravity to do the focusing for us. 

“Using the SGL removes the need to build larger telescopes and instead raises the problem of how to get a telescope out to the focal distance of the Sun (and how to keep it there),” explains Macy Huston, a Berkeley astronomer not involved in the new research. “And there’s a lot of work ongoing to try to solve this,” they add.

Turyshev is actively working on a mission design to send a one-meter telescope (less than half the size of the famous Hubble) out to the focus of the sun’s gravitational well. It’s quite a trek—this focal point is located about 650 AU out from our star, almost five times out from humanity’s current distance record holder, Voyager 1. To get out to such a huge distance in less than a lifetime, the team is relying on cutting-edge solar sail technology to move faster than ever before.

Currently, the James Webb Space Telescope is investigating the atmospheres of planets around other stars, and the future Habitable Worlds Observatory in the 2040s will hopefully be able to see enough detail in exoplanetary atmospheres to find hints of life. Turyshev’s mission would be the next big step towards confirming life on other worlds, hopefully launching around 2035. Once JWST and HWO identify possibly interesting worlds, the SGL telescope will then actually map the surface of an exoplanet in detail. Turyshev claims it would be able to see a planet blown up to 700 by 700 pixels—a huge improvement on direct imaging’s current 2 or 3 pixels. “If there is a swamp on that exoplanet, emitting methane, we’ll know that’s what is positioned on this continent on this island, for example,” he explains.

Looking further into the sci-fi future, this same SGL technology could be used not only “as a telescope we could use from the solar system to view other planetary systems in great detail” but also as an “interstellar communication network (for intentional communications),” says Huston. A laser positioned at the sun’s gravitational focus could send messages to other stars without losing as much signal as our current Earth-bound beacon tech.

“If we were to ever become an interstellar civilization, this [SGL] could potentially be the most effective means of communication between star systems,” says Tusay. Our radio transmissions, leaking out of Earth’s atmosphere since the early 1900s, rapidly become fainter the further away from our planet. Turyshev’s mathematical calculations show that signals sent from the SGL could be easily noticed at the distances of nearby stars, even when accounting for the noisy background of the real world. Transmission via the SGL is “not prohibited, it’s really encouraged by physics,” says Turyshev.

This tech wouldn’t solve all our interstellar roadblocks, though. We might be able to send messages, but we still don’t have a way of sending ourselves out amongst the stars to travel. There’d also be a huge delay in our galactic calls—more like sending a cross-country letter by horseback than FaceTiming with your friends. “Light still has a maximum speed,” reminds Tusay. As a result, sending a message to a star four light-years away would take four years to get there, and another four for the response to reach us. Still, the solar gravitational lens is one big step towards making our science fiction futures a reality.

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Reducing damaging “ultra-emission” methane leaks could soon become much easier–thanks to a new, open-source tool that combines machine learning and orbital data from multiple satellites, including one attached to the International Space Station.

Methane emissions originate anywhere food and plant matter decompose without oxygen, such as marshes, landfills, fossil fuel plants—and yes, cow farms. They are also infamous for their dramatic effect on air quality. Although capable of lingering in the atmosphere for just 7 to 12 years compared to CO2’s centuries-long lifespan, the gas is still an estimated 80 times more effective at retaining heat. Immediately reducing its production is integral to stave off climate collapse’s most dire short-term consequences—cutting emissions by 45 percent by 2030, for example, could shave off around 0.3 degrees Celsius from the planet’s rising temperature average over the next twenty years.

[Related: Turkmenistan’s gas fields emit loads of methane.]

Unfortunately, it’s often difficult for aerial imaging to precisely map real time concentrations of methane emissions. For one thing, plumes from so-called “ultra-emission” events like oil rig and natural gas pipeline malfunctions (see: Turkmenistan) are invisible to human eyes, as well as most satellites’ multispectral near-infrared wavelength sensors. And what aerial data is collected is often thrown off by spectral noise, requiring manual parsing to accurately locate the methane leaks.

A University of Oxford team working alongside Trillium Technologies’ NIO.space has developed a new, open-source tool powered by machine learning that can identify methane clouds using much narrower hyperspectral bands of satellite imaging data. These bands, while more specific, produce much more vast quantities of data—which is where artificial intelligence training comes in handy.

The project is detailed in new research published in Nature Scientific Reports by a team at the University of Oxford, alongside a recent university profile. To train their model, engineers fed it a total of 167,825 hyperspectral image tiles—each roughly 0.66 square miles—generated by NASA’s Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) satellite while orbiting the Four Corners region of the US. The model was subsequently trained using additional orbital monitors, including NASA’s hyperspectral EMIT sensor currently aboard the International Space Station.

The team’s current model is roughly 21.5 percent more accurate at identifying methane plumes than the existing top tool, while simultaneously providing nearly 42 percent fewer false detection errors compared to the same industry standard. According to researchers, there’s no reason to believe those numbers won’t improve over time.

[Related: New satellites can pinpoint methane leaks to help us beat climate change.]

“What makes this research particularly exciting and relevant is the fact that many more hyperspectral satellites are due to be deployed in the coming years, including from ESA, NASA, and the private sector,” Vít Růžička, lead researcher and a University of Oxford doctoral candidate in the department of computer science, said during a recent university profile. As this satellite network expands, Růžička believes researchers and environmental watchdogs will soon gain an ability to automatically, accurately detect methane plume events anywhere in the world.

These new techniques could soon enable independent, globally-collaborated identification of greenhouse gas production and leakage issues—not just for methane, but many other major pollutants. The tool currently utilizes already collected geospatial data, and is not able to currently provide real-time analysis using orbital satellite sensors. In the University of Oxford’s recent announcement, however, research project supervisor Andrew Markham adds that the team’s long-term goal is to run their programs through satellites’ onboard computers, thus “making instant detection a reality.”

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The sun is setting earlier, giving you a longer chance to get a view of the night sky. You can see stars, planets, meteors, and more with this Celestron telescope deal at Amazon for Cyber Monday.

Celestron-AstroMaster 114EQ Newtonian Telescope-Reflector Telescope for Beginners $199.96 (Was $319.95)

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This telescope is great for older kids who want to learn more about the sky or someone with a budding interest in the stars. It’s just as user-friendly as it is powerful, and the package includes 2 eyepieces (20mm and 10mm), a full-height tripod, and a StarPointer red dot finderscope. You also get a free download of Starry Night, a software program that helps you learn about what’s in the atmosphere. I’ve personally seen the moon through a telescope and it is indeed super, super, super cool.

• CELESTRON StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ Smartphone App-Enabled Telescope $298.99 (Was $479.95)
• Celestron-NexStar 127SLT Computerized Telescope $492.79 (Was $699.95)
• Celestron-NexStar 130SLT Computerized Telescope $518.16 (Was $639.95)
• Celestron-PowerSeeker 127EQ Telescope $132.58 (Was $219.95)
• Celestron-70mm Travel Scope $72.07 (Was $109.95)
• Celestron-AstroMaster 70AZ Telescope $126.65 (Was $189.95)
• Celestron-PowerSeeker 50AZ Telescope $47.99 (Was $63.95)
• Celestron–StarSense Explorer DX 102AZ Smartphone App-Enabled Telescope $319.99 (Was $469.95)
• Celestron-AstroMaster 130EQ Newtonian Telescope $239.20 (Was $349.95)
• Celestron-50mm Travel Scope $50.96 (Was $74.95)
• Celestron–76mm Signature Series FirstScope $52.94 (Was $71.95)

If you’re thinking to yourself, “How can I support one of my favorite 151-year-old brands while fulfilling my desire to own a telescope of my own?”, it’s your lucky day. Our telescope, made in collaboration with Celestron, is up to $100 off this Cyber Monday.

POPULAR SCIENCE AstroMaster 80mm – Portable Refractor Telescope $149.95 with coupon (Was $239.95)

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This telescope under $500 is a beginner-friendly model with an even friendlier price. The short tub provides a relatively loose view of celestial objects, so beginners won’t get frustrated trying to find specific areas. Plus, the short tube design keeps it small and light, so this is a great scope to keep as a backup for quick jaunts out into dark sky country without lots of gear.

• Popular Science StarSense Explorer DX 100AZ Smartphone App-Enabled Telescope $269.95 with coupon (Was $349.95)
• Popular Science StarSense Explorer DX 5” Smartphone App-Enabled Telescope $499.95 with coupon (Was $599.95)

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A new image from NASA’s almost two-year-old James Webb Space Telescope features new details of a portion of our galaxy’s dense center for the first time. The image includes some parts of the star-forming hotspot that astronomers are still trying to fully understand. The region is named Sagittarius C and is about 300 light-years away from Sagittarius A*, or the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy.

[Related: Gaze upon the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy.]

“There’s never been any infrared data on this region with the level of resolution and sensitivity we get with Webb, so we are seeing lots of features here for the first time,” observation team principal investigator Samuel Crowe said in a statement. “Webb reveals an incredible amount of detail, allowing us to study star formation in this sort of environment in a way that wasn’t possible previously.” Crowe is an undergraduate student at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

The image features roughly 500,000 stars and a cluster of young stars called protostars. These are stars that are still forming and gaining mass, while generating outflows that glow in the midst of an infrared-dark cloud. A massive previously-discovered protostar that is over 30 times the mass of our sun is located at the heart of this young cluster. 

The protostars are emerging from a cloud that is so dense that the light from stars behind it cannot reach the JWST. This light trick makes the region look deceptively less crowded. According to the team, this is actually one of the most tightly packed areas of the image. Smaller infrared-dark clouds dot the image where future stars are forming. 

“The galactic center is the most extreme environment in our Milky Way galaxy, where current theories of star formation can be put to their most rigorous test,” University of Virginia astronomer Jonathan Tan said in a statement. 

JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) also captured large-scale emission from ionized hydrogen that is surrounding the lower side of the dark cloud. According to Crowe, this is the result of energetic photons that are being emitted by young massive stars. The expanse of the region spotted by JWST came as a surprise to the team and needs more investigation. They also plan to further examine the needle-like structures in the ionized hydrogen, which are scattered in multiple directions.

“The galactic center is a crowded, tumultuous place. There are turbulent, magnetized gas clouds that are forming stars, which then impact the surrounding gas with their outflowing winds, jets, and radiation,” Rubén Fedriani, a co-investigator of the project at the Instituto Astrofísica de Andalucía in Spain, said in a statement. “Webb has provided us with a ton of data on this extreme environment, and we are just starting to dig into it.”

[Related: ‘Christmas tree’ galaxy shines in new image from Hubble and JWST.]

At roughly 25,000 light-years from Earth, the galactic center is close enough for the JWST to study individual stars. This allows astronomers to collect data on both how stars form, but also how this process may depend on the cosmic environment when compared to other regions of the galaxy. One question this could help answer is if there are more massive stars in the center of the Milky Way, as opposed to on the edges of the galaxy’s spiral arms.

“The image from Webb is stunning, and the science we will get from it is even better,” Crowe said. “Massive stars are factories that produce heavy elements in their nuclear cores, so understanding them better is like learning the origin story of much of the universe.”

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With their winding and buff arms made up of billions of stars, spiral galaxies offer some of the beautiful images of the universe. Our own Milky Way galaxy is a spiral galaxy, yet these types of swirling clusters are relatively scarce in a part of the universe called the Supergalactic Plane. A team of astrophysicists believes that the bright elliptical galaxies without a defined center are more common than swirling galaxies because of the difference in density of the environments found inside and outside of the Plane. The findings are described in a study published November 20 in the journal Nature Astronomy.

[Related: Behold six galactic collisions, masterfully captured by Hubble.]

Smoothing out the arms

The Supergalactic Plane is a flattened structure in the universe that extends nearly a billion light years across. Our own Milky Way galaxy is embedded within the Plane and is about 100,000 light years wide. There are dozens of enormous armless galaxy clusters called elliptical galaxies in the Plane, but not nearly as many disk-shaped galaxies with spiral arms. 

According to the new study, the different distributions of elliptical and disk galaxies are a natural occurrence. Galaxies experience frequent interactions and mergers with other galaxies in the Plane because the region is so densely packed. This galactic demolition derby then turns the spiral galaxies into elliptical galaxies. The arms are smoothed out and the lack of internal structure in the elliptical galaxy and presence of dark matter leads to the growth of supermassive black holes. Since the dark matter outweighs everything else, it has the power to shape the newly formed elliptical galaxy and tends to guide the growth of the central black hole.

The stars in an elliptical galaxy also orbit around the core in random directions and are generally older than those in spiral galaxies, according to NASA. 

In parts of the universe away from Plane, galaxies can evolve in relative isolation. This solitude helps them preserve their spiral structure.

“The distribution of galaxies in the Supergalactic Plane is indeed remarkable,” Carlos Frenk, a study co-author and astrophysicist at Durham University in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. “It is rare but not a complete anomaly: our simulation reveals the intimate details of the formation of galaxies such as the transformation of spirals into ellipticals through galaxy mergers.”

A galactic time machine

In the study, the team used a supercomputer simulation called Simulations Beyond the Local Universe. It follows the evolution of the universe over a period of 13.8 billion years from around the time of the Big Bang up to the present. 

[Related: Hubble image captures stars forming in a far-off phantom galaxy.]

Most cosmological simulations consider random patches of the universe, which cannot be directly compared to other observations. Instead, SIBELIUS works to precisely reproduce the observed structures in space, including the Supergalactic Plane. According to the team, the final simulation is remarkably consistent with observations of our universe through telescopes.

“The simulation shows that our standard model of the universe, based on the idea that most of its mass is cold dark matter, can reproduce the most remarkable structures in the universe, including the spectacular structure of which the Milky Way is part,” said Frenk.

Scientists have been studying the separation of elliptical and spiral galaxies since the 1960s. This partitioning features prominently in a recent list of cosmic anomalies that was compiled by cosmologist and 2019 Nobel laureate Professor Jim Peebles.

“By chance, I was invited to a symposium in honor of Jim Peebles last December at Durham, where he presented the problem in his lecture,” study co-author and astrophysicist at the University of Helsinki in Finland Till Sawala said in a statement. “And I realized that we had already completed a simulation that might contain the answer. Our research shows that the known mechanisms of galaxy evolution also work in this unique cosmic environment.”

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SpaceX’s second, unpiloted Starship test flight of the year ended in yet another fiery inferno on November 18. This time, the sudden end arrived roughly 8 minutes into its 90-minute scheduled mission. But although its Super Heavy first stage booster suffered a fatal “rapid unscheduled disassembly” in the Caribbean, the world’s most powerful rocket almost doubled its previous lifespan and passed multiple other crucial milestones.

Starship launched once again from its test site near Boca Chica, Texas, at 8:03am ET on Saturday, with all 39 of the Super Heavy booster’s Raptor engines remaining lit during the mission—a first for the spacecraft intended to eventually deliver humans to Mars. At two minutes and 41 seconds following liftoff, Starship’s hot-staging sequence—in which upper stage engines ignite and separate from the booster—also proceeded successfully, clearing yet another hurdle for SpaceX engineers. The reusable booster then performed its flip maneuver en route towards an intended safe return back to Earth, but exploded only a few seconds later. The booster’s fate wasn’t a huge surprise, however, as SpaceX mission control operators already suspected such a dramatic event could occur due to the immense “load on top of the booster.”

Meanwhile, the Starship upper stage continued to soar for another few minutes to roughly 92 miles above the Earth’s surface—well above the Kármán Line, an internationally recognized demarcation between the planet’s atmosphere and outer space. Moments before its scheduled Second Engine Cut Off, or SECO, the upper stage met its own explosive demise. Space X representatives cited a delay in Starship’s automated flight termination system, but do not yet know the exact cause for its malfunction. If successful, Starship would have circumnavigated Earth before performing a hard landing near Hawaii.

The results of April’s Starship test received considerable criticism from both Boca Chica locals and the Federal Aviation Administration for surrounding environmental damage sustained during launch. Starship’s Raptor engines burn approximately 40,000 pounds of fuel per second to reach 17 million pounds of thrust. Nearby Texan residents described the blowback as resembling a “mini earthquake” at the time, with at least one business owner’s store window shattering. The April 20 test flight blasted a 25-feet deep crater, ejecting clouds of dirt, dust, and debris into the air while smashing a bowling ball-sized fragment into a nearby NASA Spaceflight van. Much of the area near Starship’s launch site includes protected ecosystems, as well as land considered sacred by local Indigenous communities. The FAA soon issued 63 corrective actions needed before SpaceX could legally attempt another Starship test.

[Related: SpaceX’s Starship launch caused a ‘mini earthquake’ and left a giant mess.]

Unlike SpaceX’s outing, Starship’s upgraded launch mount reportedly better mitigated the resulting blowback—at least according to Elon Musk’s company assessment. The FAA, meanwhile, wasted no time in issuing its own statement on Saturday’s event.

“A mishap occurred during the [SpaceX] Starship OFT-2 launch from Boca Chica, Texas, on Saturday, Nov. 18,” the administration posted to X over the weekend. Although no injuries or public property damage was reported this time, the FAA promised to oversee the “SpaceX-led mishap investigation” to ensure the company will comply with “regulatory requirements.”

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Although NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is currently en route to its rendezvous with a unique, metal-heavy asteroid floating between Mars and Jupiter, it still has quite a while before it reaches its destination. But researchers aren’t waiting until the end of its 3.5 year, 280-million-mile journey to make the most of the project. Even after barely a month of spaceflight, Psyche is already achieving some impressive technological feats.

On November 16, NASA announced its Deep Space Optical Communications experiment aboard Psyche successfully achieved “first light” earlier this week, beaming a data-laden, near-infrared laser nearly 10 million miles back to Caltech’s Palomar Observatory. Additionally, DSOC operators were able to “close the link”—the vital process in which test data is simultaneously beamed through both uplink and downlink lasers. Although only the first of numerous test runs to come, it completes a necessary step within NASA’s ongoing plans to develop far more powerful communications tools for future space travel.

[Related: In its visit to Psyche, NASA hopes to glimpse the center of the Earth.]

Astronauts, ground crews, and private companies have all utilized radio wave frequencies for data transfers and communications since the late-1950’s, thanks to a global antenna array known as the Deep Space Network. As organizations like NASA aim to expand humanity’s presence beyond Earth in the coming decades, they’ll need to move away from radio systems to alternatives like infrared lasers. Not only are such lasers more cost efficient, but they are also capable of storing and transmitting far more information within their shorter wavelengths. Further along in DSOC’s development, for example, will hopefully accomplish data transmission rates between 10-to-100 times greater than today’s spacecraft radio systems.

“Achieving first light is one of many critical DSOC milestones in the coming months, paving the way toward higher-data-rate communications capable of sending scientific information, high-definition imagery, and streaming video in support of humanity’s next giant leap: sending humans to Mars,”  Trudy Kortes, NASA’s director of Technology Demonstrations, said in Thursday’s announcement.

NASA also noted that, while similar infrared communications has been successfully achieved in low Earth orbit as well as to-and-from the moon, this week’s DSOC milestone marks the first test through deep space. This is more difficult thanks to the comparatively vast, growing distance between Earth and Psyche. During the November 14 test, data took roughly 50 seconds to travel from the spacecraft to researchers in California. At its farthest distance from home, Psyche’s data-encoded photons will take around 20 minutes to relay. That’s more than enough time for both Earth and Psyche to drift further along their own respective cosmic paths, so laser arrays on the craft and at NASA will need to adjust for the changes. Future testing will ensure the terrestrial and deep space tech is up to the task.

[Related: NASA’s mission to a weird metal asteroid has blasted off.]

Once it becomes the new norm, Jason Mitchell, director of the Advanced Communications and Navigation Technologies Division within NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program, believes optical lasers will offer a “boon” for researchers’ space missions data collection, and will help enable future deep space exploration.
“More data means more discoveries,” Mitchell said in NASA’s announcement.

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Hindsight is not quite 20/20 for NASA’s historic Apollo missions. For instance, the Apollo 12 lander successfully touched down on the moon at exactly 6:35:25 UTC on November 19, 1969. What happened to the lunar environment as astronauts touched down, however, wasn’t recorded—and exact details on the reactions between nearby rocks, debris, and lunar regolith to lander engines’ supersonic bursts of gas aren’t documented. And physically replicating Apollo 12’s historic moment on Earth isn’t possible, given stark differences in lunar gravity and geology, not to mention the moon’s complete lack of atmosphere.

This is particularly a problem for NASA as it continues to plan for astronauts’ potential 2025 return to Earth’s satellite during the Artemis program. The landing craft delivering humans onto the lunar surface will be much more powerful than its Apollo predecessors, so planning for the literal and figurative impact is an absolute necessity. To do so, NASA researchers at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, are relying on the agency’s Pleiades supercomputer to help simulate previous lunar landings—specifically, the unaccounted information from Apollo 12.

As detailed by NASA earlier this week, a team of computer engineers and fluid dynamics experts recently designed a program capable of accurately recreating Apollo 12’s plume-surface interactions (PSI), the interplay between landing jets and lunar topography. According to the agency, the Pleiades supercomputer generated terabytes of data over the course of several weeks’ worth of simulations that will help predict PSI scenarios for NASA’s Human Landing System, Commercial Lunar Payload Services, and even future potential Mars landers.

[Related: Meet the first 4 astronauts of the ‘Artemis Generation’]

NASA recently showed off one of these simulations—the Apollo 12 landing—during its appearance at SC23, an annual international supercomputing conference in Denver, Colorado. For the roughly half-minute simulation clip, the team relied on a simulation tool called the Gas Granular Flow Solver (GGFS). The program is both capable of modeling interactions to predict regolith cratering, as well as dust clouds kicked up around the lander’s immediate surroundings.

According to the project’s conference description, GGFS utilizing its highest fidelities can “model microscopic regolith particle interactions with a particle size/shape distribution that statistically replicates actual regolith.” To run most effectively on “today’s computing resources,” however, the simulation considers just one-to-three potential particle sizes and shapes.

[Related: Moon-bound Artemis III spacesuits have some functional luxury sewn in.]

The approximation of the final half-minute of descent before engine cut-off notably includes depictions of shear stress, or the lateral forces affecting a surface area’s erosion levels. In the clip, low shear stress is represented by a dark purple hue, while the higher shear stress areas are shown in yellow.

Going forward, the team intends to optimize the tool’s source code, alongside integrating increased computational resources. Such upgrades will allow for better, higher fidelity simulations to fine-tune Artemis landing procedures, as well as potentially plan for landing missions far beyond the lunar surface.

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A team using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has observed two of the most distant galaxies astronomers have ever seen. At close to 33 billion light years away from Earth, these distant regions can offer insight into how the universe’s earliest galaxies may have formed. The findings are detailed in a study published November 13 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

[Related: ‘Christmas tree’ galaxy shines in new image from Hubble and JWST.]

The galaxies UNCOVER z-13 and UNCOVER z-12 are the second and fourth most distant galaxies ever observed and are located in a region called Pandora’s Cluster (Abell 2744). The two galaxies are among the 60,000 sources of light in Pandora’s Cluster that were captured in some of the first deep field images the JWST took in 2022. This region of space was selected for this kind of imaging due to its location behind several galaxy clusters. The light creates a natural magnification effect called gravitational lensing. This happens when the gravitational pull of the clusters’ combined mass warps the space-time around it. It then magnifies any light that passes nearby and offers a larger view behind the clusters.

Other galaxies confirmed at this distance generally appear in images as red dots. However, these new galaxies are larger and look more like a peanut and a fluffy ball, according to the team.

“Very little is known about the early universe, and the only way to learn about that time and to test our theories of early galaxy formation and growth is with these very distant galaxies,” study co-author and astronomer Bingjie Wang from Penn State University said in a statement. “Prior to our analysis, we knew of only three galaxies confirmed at around this extreme distance. Studying these new galaxies and their properties has revealed the diversity of galaxies in the early universe and how much there is to be learned from them.” 

Wang is also a member of the JWST UNCOVER (Ultradeep NIRSpec and NIRCam ObserVations before the Epoch of Reionization) team that conducted this research. UNCOVER’s early goal is to obtain highly detailed images of the region around Pandora’s Cluster using JWST.

Since the light that is emitted from these galaxies had to travel for so long to reach Earth, it offers a window into the universe’s past. The team estimates that the light JWST detected was emitted by the two galaxies when the universe was about 330 million years old and that it traveled for about 13.4 billion light years to reach the space telescopes. 

However, the galaxies are currently closer to 33 billion light years away from Earth because of the expansion of the universe over this period of time. 

“The light from these galaxies is ancient, about three times older than the Earth,” study co-author, Penn State astronomer, and UNCOVER member Joel Leja said in a statement.  “These early galaxies are like beacons, with light bursting through the very thin hydrogen gas that made up the early universe. It is only by their light that we can begin to understand the exotic physics that governed the galaxy near the cosmic dawn.”

[Related: JWST takes a jab at the mystery of the universe’s expansion rate.]

The two galaxies are also considerably bigger than the three galaxies previously located at these extreme distances. While our Milky Way galaxy is roughly 100,000 light years across, galaxies in the early universe are believed to have been very compressed. A galaxy of 2,000 light years across like one of ones the team imaged came as a surprise.

“Previously discovered galaxies at these distances are point sources—they appear as a dot in our images,” Wang said. “But one of ours appears elongated, almost like a peanut, and the other looks like a fluffy ball. It is unclear if the difference in size is due to how the stars formed or what happened to them after they formed, but the diversity in the galaxy properties is really interesting. These early galaxies are expected to have formed out of similar materials, but already they are showing signs of being very different than one another.”

To make inferences about these early galaxies, the team used detailed models. They believed that in addition to being young (by space standards), the two galaxies also had few metals in their composition, and were growing rapidly and actively forming stars. 

“The first elements were forged in the cores of early stars through the process of fusion,” Leja said. “It makes sense that these early galaxies don’t have heavy elements like metals because they were some of the first factories to build those heavy elements. And, of course, they would have to be young and star-forming to be the first galaxies, but confirming these properties is an important basic test of our models and helps confirm the whole paradigm of the Big Bang theory.”

Astronomers will continue to use lensing clusters and the instruments aboard the JWST to continue to peel back the timeline of some of the universe’s first galaxies.  

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There are millions of pieces of space junk orbiting Earth these days, so what’s one more bit of detritus amidst the trash cloud?

According to NASA’s recent spacewalk debriefing, International Space Station denizens Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara spent nearly seven hours conducting various repairs on a sun-tracking solar panel array. During their shift, however, one of their “crew lock bags” (astronaut-speak for a toolkit) accidentally got loose, and drifted away before either astronaut could catch it. While not a major issue in and of itself, this certainly highlights (yet again) the growing problem floating above humanity’s heads.

[Related: The FCC just dished out their first space junk fine.]

Thankfully, the lock bag didn’t contain anything of major importance. In a separate press conference last week, ISS deputy program manager Dana Weigel stated the bag’s contents included “some tethers and things like tool sockets” similar to the everyday household varieties, calling them “fairly common items” that aren’t a “huge impact” for the crew. Most importantly, Mission Control observed the bag’s current orbital trajectory and determined it presents a low risk of “recontacting” with the ISS, with “no action required.”

Meganne Christian, a European Space Agency 2022 astronaut class member, shared a clip on social media taken from Moghbeli’s helmet camera showing the toolbag’s escape into the cosmic abyss.

Since the toolbag isn’t in a stable orbit, experts estimate it will decay into Earth’s atmosphere sometime during March 2024. Given its size, the lost equipment will burn up completely during the descent, so there’s no need to stress or keep an eye to the sky—unless that’s your thing, of course.

The US Space Force already cataloged the new orbital debris as 58229/1998-067WC, and will track its movements over the course of its lifespan. Per The Register, the toolbag’s brightness is measured at a stellar magnitude +6, meaning you could hypothetically witness its atmospheric reentry with the naked eye during perfect weather conditions. That said, binoculars will probably increase the odds of seeing its fiery end.

[Related: Some space junk just got smacked by more space junk, complicating cleanup.]

But one toolbag’s atmospheric cremation does very little to solve the ongoing issue of space junk. After years of orbital industry expansion, the planet is surrounded by discarded rocket debris, satellites, and all manner of space travel detritus. It’s getting so bad that a recent project space junk cleanup project was suddenly complicated by its target colliding with another bit of trash.

Thankfully, governmental regulators are taking notice—earlier this year, the FCC issued its first ever space pollution fine to the satellite television provider, Dish Network, for failing to properly decommission one of its satellites last year. No penalties are expected for ISS astronauts Moghbeli and O’Hara; after all, they aren’t the first astronauts to drop the bag, so to speak. In 2008, two ISS astronauts accidentally lost a kit containing “two grease guns, scrapers, several wipes and tethers and some tool caddies.”

Update 11/17/2023 12:20PM : The Virtual Telescope Project has released this image, taken on November 15, 2023. The tool bag is still zooming around the Earth at roughly 17,500 mph until its projected March 2024 deorbit.

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Two of the most powerful space telescopes in the universe have joined forces to showcase a panorama of colorful galaxy clusters about 4.3 billion light-years away from Earth. The image of  galaxy cluster MACS0416 is from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Hubble Space Telescope and combines both visible and infrared light. 

[Related: Euclid telescope spies shimmering stars and galaxies in its first look at the ‘dark’ universe.]

According to NASA, MACS0416 is a pair of colliding galaxy clusters that will eventually combine to form an even bigger cluster. It includes numerous galaxies outside of the cluster and some other light sources that vary over time. The variation is likely due to a phenomenon called gravitational lensing, where light is distorted and amplified from distant background sources.

Color coding

In the image, different colors represent the varying wavelengths of light. The shortest are blue, the intermediate are green, and the longest are red. The wavelengths range from 0.4 to 5 microns and the variation creates a particularly vivid landscape of galaxies.

The colors also give clues to how far away the galaxies are. The bluest galaxies are relatively close, tend to show intense star formation, and are best detected by Hubble. The more red galaxies tend to be further away and are best spotted by JWST. Some of the galaxies also appear very red because they have a large amount of cosmic dust that tends to absorb bluer colors of starlight.

“The whole picture doesn’t become clear until you combine Webb data with Hubble data,” Rogier Windhorst said in a statement. Windhorst is an astronomer at Arizona State University and principal investigator of the PEARLS program (Prime Extragalactic Areas for Reionization and Lensing Science), which took the JWST observations.

Oh Christmas tree

While the images are pleasant to look like, they were also taken for a specific scientific purpose. The team was using their data to search for objects varying in observed brightness over time, known as transients. All of these colors twinkling together in the galaxy look like shining colorful lights on a Christmas tree. 

“We’re calling MACS0416 the Christmas Tree Galaxy Cluster, both because it’s so colorful and because of these flickering lights we find within it. We can see transients everywhere,” said astronomer Haojing Yan of the University of Missouri in Columbia said in a statement. Yan is a co-author of one paper describing the scientific results published in The Astrophysical Journal.

The team identified 14 transients across the field of view. Twelve of the transients were located in three galaxies that are highly magnified by gravitational lensing. This means that they are likely to be individual stars or multiple-star systems that are very highly magnified for a short period of time. The other two transients are located within more moderately magnified background galaxies, so they are likely to be supernovae.

More observations with JWST could lead to finding numerous additional transients and in other similar galaxy clusters. 

Godzilla and Mothra 

One of the transients stood out in particular. The star system is located in a galaxy that existed roughly three billion years after the big bang and is magnified by a factor of at least 4,000. They nicknamed the star system Mothra in a nod to its “monster nature” of being both very bright and magnified. Mothra joins another lensed star the researchers previously identified that they nicknamed “Godzilla.” In Japanese cinema, Godzilla and Mothra are giant monsters known as kaiju.

In addition to the new JWST images, Mothra is also visible in the Hubble observations that were taken nine years ago. According to the team, this is unusual, because a very specific alignment between the foreground galaxy cluster and the background star is needed to magnify a star this much. The alignment should have been eliminated by the mutual motions of the star and the cluster.

An additional object within the foreground cluster could be adding more magnification. 

“The most likely explanation is a globular star cluster that’s too faint for Webb to see directly,” astronomer Jose Diego of the Instituto de Física de Cantabria in Spain said in a statement. “But we don’t know the true nature of this additional lens yet.” Diego is also a co-author of a paper published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics that details this finding. 

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If you live in and around Gulkana, Alaska and recently saw some eerie lights in the sky—don’t worry; they were all part of a science experiment. Earlier this week, researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and several other US institutions created artificial auroras by sending radio pulses into the Earth’s ionosphere using HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) transmitters on the ground. The frequencies of these transmissions were between 2.8 and 10 megahertz. 

These transmitters act as heaters that excite the gasses in the upper atmosphere. When the gasses “de-excite,” they produce an airglow between 120 and 150 miles above ground, according to a notice about the project issued by the HAARP team. This is similar to how charged particles from the sun interact with gasses in the upper atmosphere to create natural auroras; the charged particles are steered by the Earth’s magnetic field to the north and south poles to form aurora borealis and aurora australis. Compared to those light displays, the artificial auroras are much weaker. 

So why did the researchers do all this? Studying this artificial airglow may provide insights on what happens when real aurora lights appear.

If you noticed a faint red or green splotch in the sky above Alaska between November 4 and November 8, chances are good that you saw the experiment in progress. HAARP also notes in its FAQ that these ionosphere-heating experiments have no detectable effects on the environment after 10 minutes or so. 

[Related: Why NASA will launch rockets to study the eclipse]

Additionally, the team also wants to understand how these superheated gasses in the ionosphere interact with each other. Insights into these dynamics could inform collision detection and avoidance features for satellite systems. Gathering more intel on auroras and other upper atmosphere phenomena like it can help scientists see how weather and particles from space are interacting with the environment around Earth, and how energy is transferred during these events. 

Disturbing the ionosphere is not the only way to study auroras. Launching rockets into the ionosphere, which sits just at the edge of space, is another popular approach. 

The goal of HAARP is to research the physical and electrical properties of the Earth’s ionosphere as it pertains to surveillance, military and civilian communications, as well as radar and navigation systems. Outside of studying auroras, HAARP has used its antenna array to peer inside a passing asteroid, observe solar storms, and conduct other tests related to space physics. Beyond the Earth, the team’s ambitions extend to the moon and to Jupiter. 

HAARP has had an interesting history. Despite conducting serious science, around 2014, controversy and conspiracy brewed around the program’s mysterious antenna field, then run by the US military, prompting scientists to host open houses with the public explaining what they can and can’t do with their technology. Its image problem remains despite the changes in ownership over the years. 

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What happens to glass if you leave it out in the open for several billion years—but with no air and no running water? We can find the answers to that question by studying naturally occurring glass on the moon. The moon may lack the features that usually weather rocks or minerals on Earth, but that doesn’t make this satellite completely inert. Scientists know that prolonged exposure to radiation leaves a mark on the lunar surface. Now, new research suggests that billions of years of radiation exposure appear to stiffen lunar glass, according to a team who published their work yesterday in the journal Science Advances.

The moon may not seem like an obvious place to find glass. But tiny glass spheroids riddle the lunar regolith—the rock chips and other loose material covering the lunar surface. Meteoroids constantly bombard the material, melting it into tiny pools. As the molten regolith cools back down, it hardens into glass. 

Glass is more than just a brittle, transparent sheet that fills windows. Scientists think of the stuff as the result of a liquid cooling rapidly without its atoms slotting into a defined structure. For that reason, some scientists consider glass to be its own separate state of matter.

And, even on the moon, glass does not last for billions of years without changing. Though the moon has neither a significant atmosphere nor running water to weather rocks like on Earth, the lunar surface is subject to something that our planet’s atmosphere typically filters out: radiation. Some of it comes from the sun; some arrives as cosmic rays from far greater distances. Regardless, over billions of years of radiation exposure, the effects build up.

[Related: Why do all these countries want to go to the moon right now?]

Geologists have long been interested in how radiation affects lunar soil. “There have been 20 years’ worth of study on it,” says Rhonda Stroud, a space materials scientist at Arizona State University, who was not an author of the paper. 

Much of that work involved taking facsimiles of lunar soil, which they call simulants, and exposing them to radiation. But, Stroud says, it’s hard to know how individual material particles react by studying vast quantities of them. “Any one little dust particle or sub-millimeter glass sphere could have its own age,” she says. “Things get buried, the regolith churns.”

Fortunately, we have actual lunar glass on Earth in the form of samples returned by our moon missions. Most recently, we can thank the Chang’e-5 lunar lander, which lifted off from China in November 2020 and returned less than a month later bearing 3.81 lbs of souvenirs. Chang’e-5 did not land in a place on the moon that experienced many impacts—and, consequently did not return with much glass. 

Still, scientists managed to sift through Chang’e-5’s bounty and pick out five particular glassy particles, each one about the width of a human hair. They examined each particle under a transmission electron microscope, allowing them to view its structure. They also pressed a tiny probe on each particle, allowing them to test how the particle reacted to force.

The researchers then “rejuvenated” the samples by heating them up to liquid temperatures of more than 1100 degrees F, holding them there for a minute, then letting them cool. They repeated the same microscope and pressure tests on the de-aged samples, allowing them to estimate what the particles looked like before hundreds of millions or even billions of years sitting on the moon and basking in radiation.

[Related: We finally have a detailed map of water on the moon]

They found a drastic change in a property that engineers call the Young’s modulus, which measures how much force a material needs to distort by a certain length. If the researchers’ rejuvenated samples were any indication, then prolonged radiation exposure increased the Young’s modulus of the glass by as much as 70 percent. More subtly, radiation also seemed to harden some of the particles.

These discoveries can help scientists figure out how glass behaves in the soil of other worlds. And the research team believes that it might also help us understand the behavior of the glass we make on Earth. 

In fact, this paper’s authors believe that lunar glass itself may soon be useful. In their vision, moon-dwellers might sift through the lunar regolith for glass beads and convert them into glass that they could use for their vehicles or habitats.

But it is not obvious to everyone how research like this yet translates into actual infrastructure. “The radiation from solar wind is very, very slow,” Stroud says. “I don’t think we need materials to withstand billions of years.”

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After over half a century of loyal service, the world’s last remaining Super Guppy aircraft continues to dutifully transport NASA’s gigantic rocket parts in its cavernous, hinged cargo bay. On Tuesday, the Huntsville International Airport posted a video and accompanying images to social media of the rotund plane arriving from Kennedy Space Center. Perhaps somewhat unsurprisingly, it sounds like a prop plane of that size can make a huge, rich racket on the tarmac.

[Related: Artemis II lunar mission goals, explained.]

Aboard the over 50-ton (when empty), turboprop plane this time around was the heat shield that protected last year’s Artemis I Orion spacecraft. The vital rocketry component capable of withstanding 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit resided in the Super Guppy’s 25-foot tall, 25-foot wide, 111-foot long interior during a nearly 690-mile journey to the Alabama airport, after which it was transported a few miles down the road to the Marshall Space Flight Center. From there, a team of technicians will employ a specialized milling tool to remove the heat shield’s protective Avcoat outer layer for routine post-flight analysis, according to NASA.

The Super Guppy is actually the third Guppy iteration to lumber through the clouds. Based on a converted Boeing Stratotanker refueling tanker and designed by the now defunct Aero Spacelines during the 1960s, an original craft called the Pregnant Guppy was supplanted by its larger Super Guppy heir just a few years later. This updated plane included an expanded cargo bay, alongside an incredibly unique side hinge that allows its forward section to open like a pocket watch. A final Super Guppy Turbine debuted in 1970, and remained in use by NASA for over 25 years. In 1997, the agency purchased one of two newer Super Guppy Turbines built by Airbus. This Guppy is the current and only such hefty boy gracing the skies. With its bulky profile, the Super Guppy’s travel specs are pretty impressive—it’s capable of flying as high as 25,000 feet at speeds as fast as 250 nautical miles per hour.

[Related: NASA’s weird giant airplane carried the future of Mars in its belly.]

Last PopSci checked in on the Super Guppy’s journeys was back in 2016, when it transported an Orion crew capsule potentially destined for a much further trip than the Artemis missions’ upcoming lunar sojourns—Mars. According to Digital Trends, the Super Guppy’s next flight could occur sometime next year ahead of NASA’s Artemis II human-piloted lunar flyby.

“Although much of the glory of America’s space program may be behind it, the Super Guppy continues to be one of the only practical options for oversized cargo and stands ready to encompass a bigger role in the future,” reads a portion of NASA’s official description.

Until then, feel free to peruse the official, 74-page Super Guppy Transport User’s Guide.

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NASA’s Juno spacecraft has been exploring Jupiter since it arrived at the planet in 2016. In recent years, the mission has turned its attention to the gas giant’s many moons, including the hellish volcanic world Io and the ice ball Europa. Now, in research published in Nature Astronomy, the Juno team revealed new photos of Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede, which show evidence of salts and organic compounds. These materials are likely the residue of salty sea water from an underground ocean that bubbled up to the frozen surface of Ganymede. And, excitingly, a salty ocean indicates conditions there might be conducive to life.

Ganymede is a particularly weird place. Not only is it Jupiter’s most massive satellite, it’s the biggest moon in the whole solar system—it’s even larger than the planet Mercury. It also is the only moon to have its own magnetic field, generated from a molten metal core deep in its interior. Like other icy worlds of the outer solar system, such as Europa or possibly Pluto, Ganymede probably has an ocean lurking under its icy crust. Some studies suggest multiple seas, stacked together in a layer cake of ice sheets and oceans, hide underground.

“Because Ganymede is so big, its interior structure is more complicated” than that of smaller worlds, explains University of Arizona geologist Adeene Denton, who is not affiliated with the new work. She notes that the moon’s massive size means there’s a lot of space for interesting molecules to mix about. But that also means they’re tricky to spot, because material must cover a large distance  to get to the surface where our spacecraft can see them.

Juno finally passed close enough to Ganymede—within 650 miles, less than the distance from New York City to Chicago—to take a close look at the chemicals on its surface using its Jovian InfraRed Auroral Mapper (JIRAM). This incredible instrument tracked the composition of Ganymede’s surface in great detail, noting features as small as 1 kilometer wide. If JIRAM were looking at New York City, it would be able to map Manhattan in ten-block chunks.

[Related: Astronomers find 12 more moons orbiting Jupiter]

Importantly, material on the surface of Ganymede might tell us about the water hiding below. If there are salts above, the subsurface ocean might have that same brine. Oceans, including the ones on Earth, acquire their salt from chemical interactions where liquid water touches a rocky mantle. This kind of exchange is “one of the conditions necessary for habitability,” says lead author Federico Tosi, research scientist at the National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome, Italy.

However, other current research suggests that Ganymede doesn’t have a liquid water layer directly touching its mantle. Instead, icy crusts separate the ocean from the rock. But because the team did see these salts in the JIRAM data, it suggests they were touching at one point in the past, if not now. “This testifies to an era when the ocean must have been in direct contact with the rocky mantle,” explains Tosi.

As for the organic chemicals that Juno detected, the team still isn’t completely  sure what flavor of compound they are. They’re leaning towards aliphatic aldehydes, a type of molecule found elsewhere in the solar system that’s known as an intermediate step necessary to build more complex amino acids. These usually indicate liquid water and a rocky mantle are interacting. This definitely isn’t a detection of life, but it’s interesting for the possibility of life lurking in Ganymede’s hidden oceans. “The presence of organic compounds does not imply the presence of life forms,” says Tosi. “But the opposite is true: life requires the presence of some categories of organic compounds.”

[Related: Why a 3,000-mile-long jet stream on Jupiter surprised NASA scientists]

Unfortunately, Juno won’t have a chance to swing by Ganymede again to search for more salty shores—instead, it’s headed toward the explosive Io. The probe’s most recent survey of these minerals was a “a unique opportunity to take a close look at this satellite,” Tosi says. We won’t have to wait too much longer, though, for a second visit. In about ten years, he adds, we’ll get another chance to explore these salty waters with the ESA JUICE mission, “which is expected to achieve complete and unprecedented coverage of Ganymede.”

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Excerpted from A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith. Copyright © 2023. Available from Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House.

On Earth, air pushes on your skin from every direction with a consistent pressure of about 14 pounds per square inch, or using ridiculous non-American units, 1 atmosphere. That’s about the weight of 1 liter of water on every square centimeter of your skin. You don’t notice this for the same reason a seabottom shrimp doesn’t notice that the surrounding liquid could implode a submarine—your body is adapted to the pressure near Earth’s surface. It counterbalances the typical push of your surroundings, and you only rarely experience sudden pressure changes. 

But consider a soda. When you buy a sealed bottle of Diet Pepsi, you know it’s full of gas, but you don’t see a lot of bubbles. That’s because the bottle is held at about four times the surface air pressure of Earth, keeping carbon dioxide suspended sedately inside. When you open the top, you expose its contents to Earth’s relatively gentle atmosphere. All that dissolved gas rushes out in the familiar bubbling foam. If you want to avoid the sudden burst of gas, you can always open your bottle forty meters under the sea, where the pressure will keep the gas in place, and the seawater will make the Diet Pepsi taste no worse. 

Your body is like the soda, except that the gas suspended in your fluids is nitrogen, absorbed from the atmosphere. If you were teleported to outer space, where the air pressure level is “none,” your bodily fluids would react like the Diet Pepsi when opened, only instead of a burst of foam, you’d get nitrogen bubbles blocking your veins and arteries, preventing the normal flow of blood, oxygen, and nutrients. This danger is familiar to divers going from low depths back to the surface. If you switch from high to low pressure too quickly, you get “decompression sickness,” colloquially known as “the bends” because it often affects joints, causing the sufferer to bend in agony. If it’s in your lungs, that’s “the chokes.” If it’s in your brain, you’ve got “the staggers.” 

If you’re exposed to space, most likely you’ll just have the death. In fact, the only people who’ve ever died in space were killed by sudden loss of pressure. It was June 30, 1971, and cosmonauts Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vik tor Patsayev, and Vladislav Volkov were returning from Salyut-1. The three cosmonauts spent weeks performing zero gravity acrobatics, televised for the adoring Soviet public. They entered the capsule, and after some brief issues getting the hatch to seal, undocked and began their descent. When the ground crew arrived and the capsule was opened, the men were found, still seated, serene in death. Attempts to revive them proved useless—each had suffered massive brain hemorrhaging. Subsequent investigation determined that when they undocked from their space station, a valve on the return craft had unexpectedly popped open, exposing them to a near-perfect vacuum. 

Decompression sickness isn’t just a danger during accidents; it’s an issue any time you use a pressure suit. You may imagine a space suit as something like bulky clothing, but normal clothing doesn’t have to provide a sealed habitat inside itself. It’d be more accurate to imagine a leather balloon that happens to be shaped like a human. And like a balloon, the higher the internal pressure, the harder it is to bend. In a human-shaped balloon, high pressure means difficulty bending at the joints. Like, a lot of difficulty. A phenomenon called “fingernail delamination” is well documented, and we encourage you not to learn what it is. Thus, although the International Space Station is kept at Earth pressure, both American and Russian space suits only have around one third of that. 

So, why don’t astronauts get bendy, choky, staggery, and deathy when they don space suits? Because they prebreathe pure oxygen before spacewalks, removing most of the nitrogen from their blood. No nitrogen, no nitrogen bubbles. Movies may have led you to believe heroic astronauts can slip on a space suit and leap to the rescue, but under current designs this would result in Brad Pitt clutching his joints and shambling to a very painful (if handsome) death. 

The astute nerd will ask why not just keep the ISS at the same low pressure as the suit. The short answer is that although humans can survive in low pressure as long as there’s enough oxygen floating around, engineers would have to design all equipment to operate in a low-pressure, pure-oxygen environment. 

But pure oxygen is dangerous. In 1967, during prep for the Apollo 1 flight, a spark went off in the crew’s capsule, causing an intense fire in the pure oxygen environment. The three astronauts—Edward White II, Roger Chaffee, and Gus Grissom—could not be rescued, because the sudden increase in temperature and pressure made it impossible to use the inward-opening hatch, while the intense heat prevented rescuers from saving them. 

Less well known is a similar and earlier incident from the Soviet Union. In early 1961, Valentin Bondarenko was training to be a cosmonaut, and one of the training exercises was to spend ten days in a high-oxygen pressurized chamber. Near the end of confinement, he removed a medical sensor from his body and wiped the sticky glue from the sensor off with an alcohol swab. He absent-mindedly threw it aside, where it landed on an electric hot plate. The resulting fire quickly got out of control, consuming his suit. Oxygen had to be bled out of the chamber before rescuers could reach him, and he died of shock soon after. This happened just a month before Gagarin became the first human to reach outer space. The Soviets preferred to keep their failures a secret, and so when the Apollo 15 astronauts left a plaque on the Moon with the names of astronauts and cosmonauts who lost their lives in the race for the Moon, Bondarenko was not included. His story was only finally shared a quarter century after his passing. 

Buy A City on Mars by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith here.

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A very dry start

When the solar system first came together, some of the young planets were too hot for water. “Earth and Mars should have formed extremely dry,” says Humberto Campins, an asteroid expert at the University of Central Florida—due to their locations in the solar system’s frost line.

When the sun was coalescing out of a collapsing cloud of gas and dust 4.6 billion years ago, its tremendous heat made a boundary. Outside of it, space was cool enough for ice grains to solidify. (This helps explain why far-out Jupiter and Saturn have ocean moons.) Inside of it, heat vaporized water. Earth and the other inner planets clumped together from the dry rock and dense metal that remained. Something must have happened, some millions of years later, to nourish those planets with water. Astronomers have explored several possible scenarios. 

Craters on the surface of our moon indicate that our side of the frost line was constantly hit with space rocks, including a particularly violent shower known as the Late Heavy Bombardment. Some experts think those projectiles—specifically meteorites, the bits of asteroids that fall to Earth—might have been more like cosmic water balloons. The hypothesis is supported by the 2010 discovery of a thin crust of frost on asteroid 24 Themis. More recently, NASA found water-bearing clay minerals in the near-Earth asteroid Bennu during a ground-breaking sample-retrieval mission.

Still, it’s possible that other processes were involved in delivering water to Earth, such as gas from the cloudy solar nebula that dissolved hydrogen into the planet’s magma layer. It’s also possible that there were multiple sources and steps.

“The pieces of the puzzle are not clear,” says Campins, who is a member of the team that probed Bennu’s contents. But he points to one major clue that “gives us an idea of where the water may be coming from”: the type of hydrogen that flows through our aquatic systems.

Matching elements

The most common form of hydrogen in the universe has a lone proton orbited by an electron. But there’s a slightly different version called deuterium with a proton and a neutron squished into the center. Astronomers have measured the proportion of deuterium to regular hydrogen in Earth’s water and looked for that “D-H ratio” in other objects around the solar system.

This lends to the idea that a bunch of space bodies hit Earth with noble gasses, H₂O, and who knows what else. “If most of the water gets contributed by asteroid impacts and most of the noble gasses are contributed by comets,” the elemental math seems to add up, Campins says. “But I think that nature is a little bit more complicated than that…it could be that the timing of those two was not the same.” 

In fact, newer evidence emphasizes a different kind of space rock from closer to home.

Local rocks

If space rocks brought water to the Red Planet, could they have done so elsewhere? “What we’re learning here may not only be applicable to our understanding of what we should expect on Mars,” Campins says, “but about the possibility of water and organic molecules being delivered to planets around other stars, which would give you an environment that could be conducive to the formation of life.”

Putting these lines of evidence together gives us a recipe that would have involved lots of damp local rocks and a few of the more distant ice balls. Hydrogen, nitrogen, and zinc isotopes “all tell the same story” of a wet Earth, Raymond says: Previously overlooked non-carbonaceous meteorites probably supplied about 70 percent of the planet’s water, and just a dash of carbonaceous meteorites touched up its vast blue surface. 

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On November 7, the European Space Agency (ESA) released the first five images taken with its premier Euclid space telescope. The images show spiral galaxies, star nurseries, and incredible celestial objects in incredibly sharp detail. 

[Related: Euclid space telescope begins its search through billions of galaxies for dark matter and energy.]

Perseus cluster of galaxies

IC 342 aka the ‘Hidden Galaxy’

Irregular galaxy NGC 6822

[Related: Your guide to the types of stars, from their dusty births to violent deaths.]

Globular cluster NGC 6397

The Horsehead Nebula

Dark matter and dark energy

In July, Euclid launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. It’s on a mission of studying the mysterious influence of dark matter and dark energy on the universe and mapping one third of the extragalactic sky. According to the ESA, 95 percent of our cosmos appears to be made of these mysterious ‘dark’ entities. But we don’t understand what they are because their presence causes only very subtle changes in the appearance and motions of the things we can see.

“Dark matter pulls galaxies together and causes them to spin more rapidly than visible matter alone can account for; dark energy is driving the accelerated expansion of the Universe. Euclid will for the first-time allow cosmologists to study these competing dark mysteries together,” Carole Mundell, ESA Director of Science, said in a statement. “Euclid will make a leap in our understanding of the cosmos as a whole, and these exquisite Euclid images show that the mission is ready to help answer one of the greatest mysteries of modern physics.”

Euclid will observe the shapes, distances, and motions of billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years over the course of the next six years.

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Astronomers have discovered the most distant supermassive black hole ever observed. They had the help of a “cosmic magnifying glass,” or gravitational lensing. This happens when a massive celestial body creates a large curvature of spacetime so that the path of light around it can be bent as if by a lens.

The black hole is located in the galaxy UHZ1 in the direction of the galaxy cluster Abell 2744. The galaxy cluster is about 13.2 billion-years-old. The team used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to find the telltale signature of a growing black hole. It started to form only 470 million years after the big bang when the universe was only 3 percent of its current age of about 13.7 billion years-old. The galaxy is much more distant than the cluster itself, at 13.2 billion light-years from Earth. 

[Related: Gravitational wave detector now squeezes light to find more black holes.]

Astronomers can tell that this black hole is so young because it is so giant. Black holes evaporate over time. Most black holes in galactic centers have a mass that is equal to roughly a tenth of the stars in their host galaxy, according to NASA. This early black hole is growing and as a mass that is on par with our entire galaxy. Astronomers have never witnessed a black hole at this stage before and studying it could help explain how some of the first supermassive black holes in the universe formed. The findings are detailed in a study published November 6 in the journal Nature Astronomy.

“We needed Webb to find this remarkably distant galaxy and Chandra to find its supermassive black hole,” study co-author and astronomer Akos Bogdan said in a statement. Bogdan is affiliated with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“We also took advantage of a cosmic magnifying glass that boosted the amount of light we detected,” Bogman added. This magnifying effect is known as gravitational lensing. The team took X-ray observations with Chandra for two weeks. They saw intense, superheated X-ray emitting gas—a supermassive black hole’s trademark—from the galaxy. The light coming from the galaxy and the X-ray from the gas around the supermassive black hole were magnified by the hot gas and dark matter coming from the galaxy cluster. This effect was like a “cosmic magnifying glass” and it enhanced the infrared light signals that the JWST could detect and allowed Chandra to see the faint X-ray source.

“There are physical limits on how quickly black holes can grow once they’ve formed, but ones that are born more massive have a head start. It’s like planting a sapling, which takes less time to grow into a full-size tree than if you started with only a seed,” study co-author and Princeton University astronomer Andy Goulding said in a statement. 

[Related: ‘Rogue black holes’ might be neither ‘rogue’ nor ‘black holes.’]

Observing this phenomenon could help astronomers answer how some supermassive black holes can hit enormous masses so soon after the explosion of energy from the big bang. There are two opposed theories for the origin of these supermassive black holes–light seed versus heavy seed. The light seed theory says that a star will collapse into a stellar mass black hole and then grow into a supermassive black hole over time. In the heavy seed theory, a large cloud of gas–not an individual star–collapses and condenses to form the supermassive black hole. This newly discovered black hole could confirm the heavy seed theory. 

“We think that this is the first detection of an ‘Outsize Black Hole’ and the best evidence yet obtained that some black holes form from massive clouds of gas,” study co-author and Yale University theoretical astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan said in a statement. “For the first time we are seeing a brief stage where a supermassive black hole weighs about as much as the stars in its galaxy, before it falls behind.”

The team plans to use this and more data coming in from the JWST and other space telescopes to create a better picture of the early universe. 

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On November 3, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History debuted a piece of the asteroid Bennu to the public for the first time. The sample was deposited on Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on September 24. The spacecraft did not land, but instead dropped a capsule containing about nine ounces of asteroid samples down to Earth. The spacecraft continued on to a new mission called OSIRIS-APEX. It is set to explore the asteroid Apophis when it comes within 20,000 miles of Earth in 2029. 

On display is a 0.3-inch in diameter stone that weighs only 0.005-ounces. The stone was retrieved amidst rocks and dust collected by the spacecraft in 2020 after two years of exploring Bennu. 

[Related: NASA’s first asteroid-return sample is a goldmine of life-sustaining materials.]

OSIRIS-REx stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer and is the first US mission to collect samples from an asteroid. The spacecraft traveled 1.4-billion-miles from Earth, to the asteroid Bennu, and then back again. Bennu is roughly 4.5 billion years old and dates back to the crucial first 10 million years of the solar system’s development. Its age offers scientists a window into what this time period looked like. The space rock is shaped like a spinning top and is about one-third of a mile across at its widest part–slightly wider than the Empire State Building is tall. It revolves around the sun between the orbits of Earth and Mars.

“The OSIRIS-REx mission is an incredible scientific achievement that promises to shed light on what makes our planet unique,” Kirk Johnson, the Sant Director of the National Museum of Natural History, said in a statement. “With the help of our partners at NASA, we are proud to put one of these momentous samples on display to the public for the first time.”

The sample was labeled OREX-800027-0 by NASA scientists at Houston’s Johnson Space Center and is being stored in a nitrogen environment to keep it safe from contamination. CT scans of the displayed stone revealed that it is composed of dozens of smaller rocks. The fragments were fused back together at some point and the entire stone was changed by the presence of water. The alterations to the stone produced clays, iron oxides, iron sulfides, and carbonates as its major minerals and even carbon. 

The samples from this mission hold chemical clues to our solar system’s formation. Evidence of essential elements like carbon in the rocks outside of the main sample container have already been uncovered by NASA scientists. These early samples also contain some water-rich minerals. Scientists believe that similar water-containing asteroids bombarded Earth billions of years ago, which provided the water that eventually formed our planet’s first oceans.

[Related: NASA’s OSIRIS mission delivered asteroid samples to Earth.]

“Having now returned to Earth without being exposed to our water-rich atmosphere or the life that fills every corner of our planet, the samples of Bennu hold the promise to tell us about the water and organics before life came to form our unique planet,” museum meteorite curator Tim McCoy said in a statement. McCoy has worked on the OSIRIS-REx mission for nearly two decades as part of an international team of scientists.

According to Space.com, a sizable crowd turned out to see the space rock and NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and other space agency and Smithsonian officials were present at the unveiling ceremony. Additional Bennu samples will be on display at a later date and at the Alfie Norville Gem & Mineral Museum at the University of Arizona in Tucson and Space Center Houston, next to to NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

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Tired of paying increasingly hefty monthly subscription fees for your streaming services, only to scroll nearly as long as a movie’s runtime just to find something to watch? Well, your choices are only going to expand thanks to NASA’s new streaming channel. But at least when NASA+ launches on November 8, it won’t come with any fees or commercials.

The commercial free on-demand platform will be available via the NASA App on iOS and Android devices, web browsers, as well as through Roku, Apple TV, and Fire TV. The ever-expanding catalog will include live coverage of launch events and missions, original videos, and multiple new series.

[Related: NASA’s first asteroid-return sample is a goldmine of life-sustaining materials.]

“We’re putting space on demand and at your fingertips with NASA’s new streaming platform,” Marc Etkind, NASA Headquarters’ Office of Communications associate administrator, said earlier this year. “Transforming our digital presence will help us better tell the stories of how NASA explores the unknown in air and space, inspires through discovery, and innovates for the benefit of humanity.”

Check out trailers for some of the first series to hit NASA+ this month:

NASA Explorers will offer viewers a multi-episode look at the agency’s recently concluded, seven-year OSIRIS-REx mission. Completed in September, OSIRIS-REx successfully returned samples collected in space from Bennu, a 4.5 billion-year-old asteroid traveling across the cosmos since the dawn of the solar system.

Other Worlds will focus on the latest updates and news from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) program. Launched in 2021 following a 17-year-long development on Earth followed by a six-month orbital tune up, the JWST provides researchers with some of the most spectacular glimpses of space ever achieved. Over the course of its decade-long lifespan, the JWST aims to capture information and imagery from over 13.5 billion years ago—when some of the universe’s earliest galaxies and stars began to form.

And for those looking to just bask in cosmic majesty, Space Out will allow viewers to do just that alongside “relaxing music and ultra-high-definition visuals of the cosmos, from the surface of Mars to a Uranian sunset.”

[Related: Moon-bound Artemis III spacesuits have some functional luxury sewn in.]

“From exoplanet research to better understanding Earth’s climate and the influence of the Sun on our planet along with exploration of the solar system, our new science and flagship websites, as well as forthcoming NASA+ videos, showcases our discovery programs in an interdisciplinary and crosscutting way, ultimately building stronger connections with our visitors and viewers,” Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA Headquarters’ Science Mission Directorate, said over the summer.

NASA+ comes as the space agency nears a scheduled 2025 return to the lunar surface as part of its ongoing Artemis program. When humans touch down on the moon for the first time in over 50 years, they apparently will do so in style, with both Prada-designed spacesuits and high-tech lunar cameras.

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We may be a spacefaring species, but only a tiny vanguard have actually explored beyond Earth’s atmosphere. Fewer than 700 people have flown in space, and the vast majority of those have been white men with a military background, screened for health and skills. But astronauts’ demographics are rapidly changing. Commercial space companies have sent space tourists on suborbital and orbital space flights, such as the all-civilian men and women of the SpaceX Inspiration 4 mission. Multiple companies plan to launch private space stations after the International Space Station is retired. NASA, meanwhile, has promised that a woman will be the first astronaut to set foot on the moon again when the Artemis III mission lands on the lunar south pole. And, in subsequent missions, the space agency plans to build long-term habitats on the moon. 

With more humans headed to space than ever, there’s an opportunity for all kinds of medical scenarios to crop up—especially those that haven’t occurred among the previous cadre of professional astronauts. Space travelers could have heart attacks, suffer traumatic injuries, or, as a result of one of the most human of activities, become pregnant.  

“It’s not a question of if, but when,” says physician Emmanuel Urquieta, the chief medical officer at the Translational Research Institute for Space Health, or TRISH, at Baylor College of Medicine. The problem, he says, is that the small sample of humans who have flown in space provides very little knowledge of how average body will respond to long-term flights. That goes double for conception, pregnancy, and the delivery of a baby, where there is no human spaceflight data at all. Numerous factors such as low gravity and high radiation are thought to pose risks to the healthy development of a fetus or the birth of a child. 

[Related: Space changes your brain in bigger ways than we thought]

These aren’t simply academic gaps to fill. “If we’re planning to develop habitation capabilities, and off-Earth colonies on the moon and Mars, this is something that will absolutely need to be solved,” Urquieta says. 

Scientists have just completed a very basic start. One new study published in the journal iScience by researchers at the Japan Aerospace Space Agency, JAXA, and the Japan Aerospace Space Agency may provide optimistic, if provisional, evidence that pregnancy in space is possible. At least, for mice. 

In August 2021, the research team sent frozen mouse embryos to the ISS, where, once thawed, they developed in the space station’s microgravity environment. After the embryos were returned to Earth about a month later, the study authors found that the small clusters of cells grew as normal. Each embryo formed two cellular structures known as a blastocyst and an inner cell mass; if allowed to develop further, those would go on to become the placenta and fetus, respectively. The researchers had worried that without gravity, the inner cell mass would not be able to coalesce in one space within the blastocyst. 

The research is another piece of evidence that mammalian fertility works in the conditions of spaceflight. Past experiments have shown that mouse sperm flown in space produced viable offspring when returned to Earth. Although there is a large gap between this early stage of embryonic development and birth of a healthy animal, the study team plans to conduct such a test in the future. 

And, of course, this finding was in mice. Urquieta cautions that it’s hard to tell how mouse results translate to human health even when experiments take place within Earth’s normal gravity. “A general challenge in human spaceflight is that a lot of the research that we have is from animal models,” he says. ”How much of those results could be extrapolated to humans still remains a question.”

[Related: What happens to your body when you die in space?]

Even if a fetus can develop in space, several key challenges must be addressed for a human mother off Earth. The first is nutrition, because pregnant people need sufficient protein and levels of folic acid to support a healthy fetal development. “Providing macro and micronutrients in spaceflight is going to be challenging,” Urquieta says, in a space station environment where fresh foods are in short supply. Lunar or Mars colonies probably won’t even have the luxury of regular deliveries from Earth. 

Then there’s radiation. Not all the mouse embryos developed successfully in the new study, and the researchers suspect that radiation could be the cause. “We know that radiation is very damaging in general to cells, and especially during the first three or four weeks of pregnancy,” Urquieta says. The ISS orbits low enough that it’s shielded by Earth’s magnetosphere, he says, but on the moon or a trip to Mars, the full brunt of galactic cosmic radiation could become a problem. 

Being pregnant on Earth isn’t a garden stroll, either, and it would probably be even less comfortable in space. Certain well-documented physiological changes in microgravity include shifting bodily fluids in for instance, with blood collecting in the head and overall blood volume decreasing. “There’s also space motion sickness, nausea, and vomiting. We know that that is also something common in pregnancy,” Urquieta says. “It would definitely exacerbate the non-pleasant symptoms.” 

Ultimately, he says, he researchers who study reproduction in space need to think about crawling before they walk—finding general solutions for astronaut radiation exposure and nutritional needs at lunar bases before tackling the specific requirements of pregnant astronauts. But given the likely inevitability of human space pregnancies, he says, “I think it’s important we start the conversations, and also increase awareness that this is going to be a very, very complex and challenging issue to solve.” 

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There’s an aviation term called the “death spiral”—when pilots’ skewed sensory perceptions contradict the accurate readings on their instruments, causing confusion and leading to bad course corrections. As the name implies, this often leads to tragic consequences—many experts believe such an issue contributed to John F. Kennedy, Jr.’s fatal crash in 1999, as well as the 1959 tragedy that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper. Disorientation was also one of the causes in the 2021 helicopter crash that claimed Kobe Bryant’s life.

[Related: How pilots end up in a ‘death spiral’ ]

Such a scenario is terrifying enough on its own—but imagine a similar situation while floating in the vacuum of space. With no gravitational pull and few, if any, points of reference, working in such an environment could quickly become disorienting and potentially dangerous as astronauts lose their sense of direction.

Although NASA astronauts receive copious training to guard against spatial disorientation, the issue is still a huge concern, especially as private companies increasingly expand their own projects with both space tourism and governmental contracts. Thanks to a team of researchers, however, wearable sensors enhanced by vibrotactile feedback might one day help keep astronauts feeling grounded.

[Related: This US astronaut will have spent an entire year in orbit.]

“Long duration spaceflight will cause many physiological and psychological stressors which will make astronauts very susceptible to spatial disorientation,” Vivekanand P. Vimal, a research scientist at Brandeis University’s Ashton Graybiel Spatial Orientation Lab, explained in a recent profile. “When disoriented, an astronaut will no longer be able to rely on their own internal sensors which they have depended on for their whole lives.”

To explore these issues, Vimal and their colleagues conducted a series of trials involving 30 participants. The team taught 10 of them to treat their vestibular senses (which pick up onwhere they are in space and where they are going) with skepticism. Another 10 volunteers received the same training alongside the addition of vibrotactors—devices attached to their skin that buzz depending on their geospatial positioning. The final 10 participants only received the vibrotactors with no training whatsoever. Subjects then wore blindfolds and earplugs while white noise played in the background, and took their place inside an intentionally disorienting “multi-axis rotation device” (dubbed MARS).

Similar to an inverted pendulum, MARS first rotated upright subjects from side-to-side around a central axis to act as an analog to everyday gravitational cues on Earth. Subjects then used two joysticks to attempt to remain stabilized without swinging into either side’s crash boundary. A second phase involved the same parameters, but with the cockpit shifted on a horizontal angle (with the participants facing the ceiling) to better approximate a space environment without Earth’s gravitational reference points. Throughout each subject’s 40 trials, vibrotactors on 20 of the 30 participants buzzed if they shifted too far from a central balancing point, thus potentially queuing them to correct their position with their joysticks.

Vimal, alongside co-authors Alexander Sacha Panic, James R. Lackner, and Paul DiZio, published the results in a new study published on November 3 with Frontiers in Physiology. According to the team’s findings, all participants first felt disoriented during the analog tests due to conflicting input from their vestibular systems and vibrotactors. Those with prior training with their sensors performed best during the space phase, while training-only participants without the wearables “crashed” more often. This third group also accidentally destabilized themselves more frequently than the other two. However, the subjects performed far better while situated in the Earth analog position, with or without the vibrotactors’ aid—Vimal’s team suspects the devices may have been too weak, or participants needed more time to adjust to the devices. 

[Related: ISS astronauts are building objects not possible on Earth.]

With further testing and refinement, Vimal’s team believes engineers could integrate similar wearables into astronauts’ suits to provide orientation aid, both inside spacecraft and outside space stations. They may be small additions, but they are some that could save explorers from some very serious, scary, and possibly even fatal circumstances.

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The freshly released images from NASA’s Lucy spacecraft’s first asteroid flyby reveal that Dinkinesh is actually a binary pair. A binary asteroid pair has a larger main asteroid and a smaller satellite orbiting around it. In the weeks leading up to the flyby, the Lucy team had wondered if Dinkinesh was actually a binary system because Lucy’s instruments detected the brightness of the asteroid changing over time. This is a sign that something is getting in the way of the light, likely a body orbiting the main space rock. 

[Related: NASA spacecraft Lucy says hello to ‘Dinky’ asteroid on far-flying mission.]

From a preliminary analysis of the first available images, the team estimates that the larger asteroid body is roughly 0.5 miles at its widest and that the smaller body is about 0.15 miles in size.

Dinkinesh is another name for the Lucy fossil that this mission is named after. The 3.2 million-year-old skeletal remains of a human ancestor were found in Ethiopia in 1974. The name Dinkinesh means “marvelous” in the Amharic language. 

“Dinkinesh really did live up to its name; this is marvelous,” Hal Levison, Lucy principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute, said in a statement. “When Lucy was originally selected for flight, we planned to fly by seven asteroids. With the addition of Dinkinesh, two Trojan moons, and now this satellite, we’ve turned it up to 11.”

The November 1 encounter primarily served as an in-flight test of the asteroid-studying spacecraft. It specifically focused on testing the system that allows it to autonomously track an asteroid as it whizzes by at 10,000 miles per hour. The team calls this its terminal tracking system.

“This is an awesome series of images. They indicate that the terminal tracking system worked as intended, even when the universe presented us with a more difficult target than we expected,” Lockheed Martin guidance and navigation engineer Tom Kennedy said in a statement. “It’s one thing to simulate, test, and practice. It’s another thing entirely to see it actually happen.”

It will take up to a week for the remainder of the data from the flyby to be downloaded to Earth. This week’s encounter was carried out as an engineering check, but the team’s scientists are hoping this data will help them glean insights into the nature of small asteroids.

“We knew this was going to be the smallest main belt asteroid ever seen up close,” NASA Lucy project scientist Keith Noll said in a statement. “The fact that it is two makes it even more exciting. In some ways these asteroids look similar to the near-Earth asteroid binary Didymos and Dimorphos that DART saw, but there are some really interesting differences that we will be investigating.”

[Related: Why scientists are studying the clouds of debris left in DART’s wake.]

The Lucy team plans to use this first flyby data to evaluate the spacecraft’s behavior and  prepare for its next close-up look at an asteroid. This next encounter is scheduled for April 2025, when Lucy is expected to fly by the main belt asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson. This asteroid is named after American paleoanthropologist Donald Johnson, one the scientists who discovered the Lucy fossils.

Launched in October 2021, NASA’s Lucy mission is the first spacecraft set to explore the Trojan asteroids. This group of primitive space rocks is orbiting our solar system’s largest planet Jupiter. They orbit in two swarms, with one moving  ahead of Jupiter and the other lagging behind it. 

There are about 7,000 asteroids in this belt, with the largest asteroid estimated to be about 160 miles across. The asteroids are similar to fossils and represent the leftover material that is still hanging around after the giant planets including Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune formed.

Lucy will then travel into the leading Trojan asteroid swarm. After that, the spacecraft will fly past six Trojan asteroids, including binary asteroids like Dinkinesh: Eurybates and its satellite Queta, Polymele and its yet unnamed satellite, Leucus, and Orus. 

In 2030, Lucy will return to Earth for yet another bump that will gear it up for a rendezvous with the Patroclus-Menoetius binary asteroid pair in the trailing Trojan asteroid swarm. This mission is scheduled to conclude some time in 2033.

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On November 1, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft successfully completed its first asteroid flyby. The 56 feet-long spacecraft came within 230 miles of the asteroid Dinkinesh aka “Dinky.” This fairly small space rock is in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. 

[Related: Meet Lucy: NASA’s new asteroid-hopping spacecraft.]

Dinkinesh is the first of 10 asteroids the probe will visit over the next 10 years. The asteroid is about 10 to 100 times smaller than the Jupiter Trojan asteroids that are the main target of the Lucy mission. Dinkinesh is another name for the Lucy fossil that this mission is named after. The 3.2 million-year-old skeletal remains of a human ancestor were found in Ethiopia in 1974.

Lucy zoomed by Dinkinesh at about 10,000 miles per hour.  This encounter was the first in-flight test of the spacecraft’s terminal tracking system. 

“The Lucy operations team has confirmed that NASA’s Lucy spacecraft has phoned home after its encounter with the small main belt asteroid, Dinkinesh,” NASA wrote in a blog post. “Based on the information received, the team has determined that the spacecraft is in good health and the team has commanded the spacecraft to start downlinking the data collected during the encounter.”

It will take NASA up to a week to download the data on how Lucy performed during this first in-flight test during the encounter. NASA planned for the high-resolution grayscale camera onboard Lucy to take a series of images every 15 minutes. Dinkinesh has been visible to Lucy’s Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (L’LORRI) as a single point of light since early September. The team began to use L’LORRI to assist with the navigation of the spacecraft. 

Lucy’s thermal infrared instrument (L’TES) should also begin to collect data. Since L’TES was not designed to observe an asteroid quite as small as Dinkinesh, the team is interested to see if it can detect the half-mile wide asteroid and measure its temperature during the encounter.

Astronomers plan to use the data from this approach to gain a better understanding of small near-Earth asteroids and if they originate from larger main belt asteroids. 

Launched in October 2021, NASA’s Lucy mission is the first spacecraft set to explore the Trojan asteroids. These are a group of primitive space rocks orbiting our solar system’s largest planet Jupiter. They orbit in two swarms, with one ahead of Jupiter and the other lagging behind it. Lucy is expected to provide the first high-resolution images of what these space rocks look like. 

There are about 7,000 asteroids in this belt with the largest about 160 miles across. The asteroids are similar to fossils and represent the leftover material that is still hanging around after the giant planets including Uranus, Neptune, Jupiter, and Saturn formed.

[Related: New image reveals a Jupiter-like world that may share its orbit with a ‘twin.’]

In 2024, Lucy will return towards Earth for a second gravity push that will give it the energy needed to cross the solar system’s main asteroid belt. It is expected to observe asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson in 2025. This asteroid is named after American paleoanthropologist Donald Johnson, one the scientists who discovered the Lucy fossils.

It will then travel into the leading Trojan asteroid swarm. After that, the spacecraft will fly past six Trojan asteroids: Eurybates and its satellite Queta, Polymele and its yet unnamed satellite, Leucus, and Orus. 

In 2030, Lucy will return to Earth for yet another bump that will gear it up for a rendezvous with the Patroclus-Menoetius binary asteroid pair in the trailing Trojan asteroid swarm. This mission is scheduled to end some time in 2033.

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In the summer, astronomers spotted an airplane-sized asteroid—large enough to potentially destroy a city—on an almost-collision course with Earth. But no one saw the space rock until two days after it had zoomed past our planet. 

This asteroid, named 2023 NT1, passed by us at only one-fourth of the distance from Earth to the moon. That’s far too close for comfort. Astronomers weren’t going to let this incident go without a post-mortem. They’ve recently dissected what went wrong and how we can better prepare to defend our planet from future impacts, in a new paper recently posted to the preprint server arXiv.

We know from history that asteroids can cause world-shattering events and extinctions—just look at what happened to the dinosaurs. The study team estimated that, if NT1 hit Earth, it could have the energy of anywhere from 4 to 80 intercontinental ballistic missiles. “2023 NT1 would have been much worse than the Chelyabinsk airburst,” says University of California, Santa Barbara astronomer Philip Lubin, a co-author on the new work, referring to the meteor that exploded over a Russian city in 2013. As devastating as that would be, it’s “not an existential threat like the 10-kilometer hit that killed our previous tenants,” he adds.

The asteroid-monitoring system ATLAS, the “Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System”—four telescopes in Hawaii, Chile, and South Africa—discovered NT1 after the rock flew by. ATLAS’s entire purpose is to scour the skies for space rocks that might threaten Earth. So with this set of eyes on the sky, how did we miss it? 

It turns out that Earth has what Brin Bailey, UC Santa Barbara astronomer and lead author on the paper, calls a “blindspot.” Any asteroid coming from the direction of the sun gets lost in the glare of our nearest star.” There’s another way for asteroids to sneak up on us, too: the smaller the asteroid, the harder it is for our telescopes to spot them, even when the rocks come from parts in the sky away from the sun.

[Related: NASA’s first asteroid-return sample is a goldmine of life-sustaining materials]

“Currently, there is no planetary defense system which can mitigate short-warning threats,” Bailey says. “While NT1 has no chance of intercepting Earth in the future, it serves as a reminder that we do not have complete situational awareness of all potential threats in the solar system,” they add. That leads to Lesson #1: We simply need better detection methods for planetary defense. 

If we can manage to detect an asteroid with a few years’ warning, we might be able to redirect it with the technology recently tested by NASA’s Double-Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission.For a case with very little warning, such as NT1, though, we’d need a different approach—that’s Lesson #2. Bailey and colleagues propose a method they call “Pulverize It” (PI). 

PI’s plan is exactly what it sounds like: break the asteroid into tiny pieces, small enough to burn up in the atmosphere or fall to the ground as much less dangerous little rocks. They’d do this by launching one or multiple rockets to send arrays of small impactors to space. The impactors—six-foot-long, six-inch-thick rods—would smash into the asteroid like buckshot, efficiently dismantling it. “Had we intercepted it [NT1] even one day prior to impact, we could have prevented any significant damage,” claims Lubin.

It sounds simple enough, but some astronomers aren’t quite convinced. “I think the PI method is impractical even though it does not violate the laws of physics,” says University of California, Los Angeles astronomer Ned Wright, who was not involved in the new work. “When a building is demolished by implosion using explosive charges, a weeks-long testing and planning phase is needed in order to place the charges in the right locations and set up the proper timing. The PI method seeks to do this measuring, planning, and placing the explosives all within a period of 1 minute or so just before the spacecraft hits the asteroid.”

[Related: NASA’s first attempt to smack an asteroid was picture perfect]

Lubin points out that unlike a careful demolition on Earth, the goal is a sudden, bomb-like explosion—an event that needs less prep to pull off. But whether we use PI or another line of defense, it’s clear that we need to plan ahead. Not only is there the hazy threat of an asteroid coming out of nowhere, there are two specific, extremely risky events headed our way: asteroid Apophis’ near flyby in 2029, and close approaches from the even larger Bennu (recently sampled by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission) in 2054, 2060, and 2135.

“Humanity now possesses the technology to robustly detect and defend the planet if we choose to do so,” says Lubin. “And a variety of people are working hard to ensure we can.”

This story has been updated: An earlier version indicated that the asteroid-destroying impactors would be filled with explosives. While that may be an option, most forms of the “Pulverize It” method use non-explosive metal rods.

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Sometimes, amazing science happens in the background with little to no public attention. All those years of hard efforts and incremental progress are left unseen except by those living and working through it. Now, a new book detailing the making of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) aims to change that by sharing photographs, diagrams, and behind-the-scenes information of the science and pioneers behind the project. 

Inside the Star Factory: The Creation of the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA’s Largest and Most Powerful Space Observatory gives us a full-body summary of an astronomical feat that required more than 100 million hours of labor over the course of 30 years. It covers everything from the initial conception of the idea to the Christmas Day launch in 2021, providing a robust picture of what went into designing, engineering, and testing such a masterpiece. Science writer Christopher Wanjek provides an in-depth overview of the history of JWST, but even more, the book serves as an “illustrated guide [that] shows readers the heady world of scientific discovery at the very limits of human knowledge.”

All of the 100-plus images of the telescope’s construction were taken by Chris Gunn, who joined the project 15 years ago and was the only photographer given such extensive access to the development and launch of JWST. Over his long career, he’s focused on creating intricate images and videos related to science and technology, with previous experience capturing the last servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. His work puts faces to NASA’s biggest telescope endeavor, humanizing the entire assignment and showcasing those who dedicated so much of their time to a single goal. 

We had a chance to speak with Gunn about his new book to find out more about his process and experience. Here’s what he revealed. 

PopSci: How did you get involved with NASA and JWST? 

Gunn: I worked as a photographer on the last servicing mission to Hubble from 2006 to 2009. When that mission ended, I was asked to join the JWST team. I had never imagined being on such a long-term project. 

PopSci: What was the most challenging part about photographing the project? 

Gunn: The most challenging part about photographing this project was also the most exciting: the constantly evolving subject. Seeing parts of the observatory come together was amazing, but the trick was to keep a consistent look and feel in my photographs throughout the project. I started to pay more attention to the environments that I was shooting and bring elements of these environments into my compositions. When I could light my subjects, I took great care to do it subtly. Eventually, I realized that JWST’s geometry photographed beautifully but any distortion ate away at that beauty. Over time I became a more selective shooter with more restraint. 

PopSci: What’s your favorite moment (or moments) from your time with the team? 

Gunn: My favorite moments include the arrival of the first mirrors, the first time I saw the optical system deployed inside of NASA Johnson’s test chamber, and the mating of the optical system to the sunshield and main spacecraft bus. During each of these project milestones the cleanrooms were filled with a sense of awe and wonder. They aren’t particularly noisy in general, but they were super quiet for these moments. I had a sense that I was witnessing something great that humankind was achieving. 

PopSci: What were your go-to cameras and lenses? 

Gunn: One of the most interesting things about being on such a long-term project is seeing the progression in photographic technology as the years passed. I initially shot with Nikon’s D3s and D3X cameras, and finally settled on D4s for several years. Nikon’s 14-24mm 2.8 lens was my favorite lens early on. 

After the observatory was built, I switched to a medium-format Hasselblad-H camera boasting 50 megapixels. The Hassy gave me more resolution, and more importantly, allowed me to shoot with less distortion. Later in the project I acquired a mirrorless Hasselblad, which I used with adapted H lenses. The Hasselblad 50mm was probably my favorite lens as it offered a sharp, undistorted, and wide perspective. The medium format cameras also forced me to slow down and concentrate on composition. 

PopSci: Do you have a no. 1 photograph from the series? 

Gunn: I have quite a few favorites—they’re all in the book. If I had to choose one, it’s the image used for the cover. It was made at the tail end of a long day and depicts the one and only time that the secondary mirror was deployed using the flight motors. That’s the smaller mirror in the center. The center section of the primary mirror reflects the secondary mirror, and you can see the primary mirror in this reflection. Look closely and you also can see me in this reflection. The selfie was unintentional.

Buy Inside the Star Factory: The Creation of the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA’s Largest and Most Powerful Space Observatory here.

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As the darkest nights of the year approach in the Northern Hemisphere, the night skies will light up, giving us a chance to see three meteor showers. Our closest planetary neighbor Venus will also be particularly radiant this month. It is also the time of year to keep an eye out for the Aurora Borealis. Here are some of the events to look out for this month. If you happen to get any stellar sky photos, please tag us and include #PopSkyGazers.

[Related: Astronomers find 12 more moons orbiting Jupiter.]

November 2 to 3 – Jupiter at Opposition

The month kicks off with our solar system’s largest planet appearing at its biggest and brightest state of the year, which is called opposition. Jupiter hits opposition at 12 a.m. EDT on November 3 and will be visible in the eastern horizon for skygazers in the Northern Hemisphere. 

According to Larry Wassterman from the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, opposition occurs when a planet, Earth, and the sun lie along a straight line with Earth in the middle. The planet and the sun are on the opposite sides of Earth so they are considered in opposition. 

“The planet is as close to the Earth as possible and will appear as big and as bright as it can ever get. This is a great time to take a look and discover Jupiter in opposition for yourself. During Jupiter’s opposition, Earth will pass between Jupiter and the Sun, and the proximity will make Jupiter appear larger in the sky. On the day of opposition, Jupiter rises when the Sun sets,” Wassterman writes. 

November 5 and 6 – Southern Taurids Meteor Shower Predicted Peak 

November’s first meteor shower is predicted to peak November 5th and 6th. Both of the Taurids meteor showers don’t have very definite peaks. The meteors ramble along in space and are especially noticeable from late October into early November, when both the Southern and Northern Taurids overlap. 

According to EarthSky, under dark skies with no moon, both South Taurids produce about five meteors per hour and 10 total when the North and South Taurids overlap. Fireballs are also possible, like the ones that appeared in 2022. Taurid meteors are slower than those from other meteor showers, but can be very bright.  

The Taurids are visible almost everywhere on Earth, except for the South Pole. 

[Related: Meteorites older than the solar system contain key ingredients for life.]

November 9 – Moon and Venus Conjunction

Already the brightest planet in our solar system, Venus will shine particularly brilliantly early this month. Venus will put on a show in the eastern horizon at 2:55 AM EST. As the morning continues Venus will shift upwards, and be one teach one degree to the upper right by the time morning twilight begins at about  5:44 a.m. EST. For some viewers, the moon will pass in front of Venus, blocking it from view at this time. 

Visibility will be best in northern Canada, most of Greenland, Iceland, Svalbard, west Russia, most of Europe, parts of north Africa, and most of the Middle East.

November 11 through 13 – Northern Taurids Meteor Shower Predicted Peak

Due to the moon’s phases, the best chance for seeing the Northern Taurids this month is from November 11 through the 13. Ideal viewing times will be around midnight because the moon will only be about 2 percent full that night. The sky will be darker and more primed for you to spot any meteors under clear skies.

November 18 – Leonids Meteor Shower Predicted Peak

For the Leonids, the night sky will be free of moonlight when the shower is predicted to peak on November 18th. For best viewing, watch late on the night of November 17 until dawn on November 18. The morning of November 17 may also be worthwhile for viewing. It is possible to see 10 to 15 Leonid meteors per hour under a moonless sky. 

The Leonid meteor shower is famous for producing one of the greatest meteor storms in living history. On November 17, 1966, there were thousands of meteors per minute during a 15-minute span. Leonid meteor storms sometimes happen in cycles of 33 to 34 years, but this cycle did not occur during the 1990s as anticipated. 

The Leonids will be visible in both hemispheres.

[Related: The moon is 40 million years older than we thought, according to crystals collected by Apollo astronauts.]

November 27 – Full Beaver Moon

November’s full moon will reach peak illumination on November 27 at 4:16 a.m. EST. The moon will also appear very full and close on the night of November 26. According to the Farmer’s Almanac, it is called the Beaver Moon in reference to the time of year when beavers begin to shelter in their lodges, after storing up food for the winter. This was also when beavers pelts are at their thickest.

Some other names for November’s full moon include the Whitefish Moon or Adikomemi-giizis in Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe), the Little Winter Moon or Gahsá’kneh in Seneca, and the Leaf Fall Moon or Yapa Huktugere Nuti in the Catawba language.

The same skygazing rules that apply to pretty much all space-watching activities are key this month: Go to a dark spot away from the lights of a city or town and let the eyes adjust to the darkness for about a half an hour. 

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For the first time, astronomers using data from the Keck II telescope have detected the presence of an infrared aurora on the planet Uranus. The discovery could shed light on some of the unknown properties of the magnetic fields of our solar system’s planets. It could also help explain why a planet so far from the sun is hotter than it should be. The findings are described in a study published on October 23 in the journal Nature Astronomy. 

[Related: Uranus got its name from a very serious authority.]

The NIRSPEC instrument (Near InfraRed SPECtrograph) at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii  was used to collect 6 hours of observations of Uranus in 2006. The study’s authors carefully studied 224 images to find signs of a specific particle–ionized triatomic hydrogen or H3+. They found evidence of H3+ in the data after collisions with charged particles. The emission created an infrared auroral glow over Uranus’ northern magnetic pole. The image itself is an artist’s rendition of the infrared aurora, superimposed on a Hubble Space Telescope image of Uranus.

Uranian auroras vs. Earth auroras

Auroras on the planet Uranus are caused when charged particles from the sun interact with the planet’s magnetic field the same way they do on Earth. The particles are funneled along magnetic field lines toward the magnetic poles. When they enter the Uranian atmosphere, the charged particles bump into atmospheric molecules. This causes the molecules to glow. 

The dominant gasses in Uranus’ atmosphere are hydrogen and helium and they are at much lower temperatures than on Earth. The presence of these gasses at these temperatures cause Uranus’ auroras to predominantly glow at ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths. By comparison, auroras on Earth come from oxygen and nitrogen atoms colliding with the charged particles and the colors are mostly blue, green, and red and can generally be seen with the human eye at the right latitudes. 

Uranus and Neptune are unusual planets in our solar system because their magnetic fields are misaligned with the axes in which they spin. Astronomers haven’t found an explanation for this, but clues could lie in Uranus’s aurora. 

Measuring the infrared

In the study, a team of astronomers used the first measurements of the infrared aurora at Uranus since investigations into the planet began in 1992. The ultraviolet aurorae of Uranus was first observed 1986, but the infrared aurora has not been observed until now, according to the team. 

By analyzing specific wavelengths of light emitted from the planet. With this data, they can analyze the light called emission lines from these planets, which is similar to a barcode. In the infrared spectrum, the lines emitted by the H3+ particles will have different levels of brightness depending on how hot or cold the particle is and how dense this layer of the atmosphere is. The lines then act like a thermometer taking the planet’s temperature.

The astronomers found that there were distinct increases in H3+ density in Uranus’s atmosphere with little change in temperature. This is consistent with ionization that is caused by the presence of an infrared aurora. These measurements can help astronomers understand the magnetic fields on the other outer planets in the solar system. They could also scientists identify other planets that are suitable for supporting life.

[Related: Ice giant Uranus shows off its many rings in new JWST image.]

“The temperature of all the gas giant planets, including Uranus, are hundreds of degrees Kelvin/Celsius above what models predict if only warmed by the sun, leaving us with the big question of how these planets are so much hotter than expected? One theory suggests the energetic aurora is the cause of this, which generates and pushes heat from the aurora down towards the magnetic equator,” study co-author and University of Leicester PhD student Emma Thomas said in a statement. 

Clues to life on exoplanets

According to Thomas, most of the exoplanets astronomers have discovered are in the sub-Neptune category, so they are a similar size as Neptune and Uranus. Similar magnetic and atmospheric characteristics could also exist on these exoplanets. Uranus’s aurora directly connects to the planet’s magnetic field and atmosphere, so studying it can help astronomers make predictions about the atmospheres and magnetic fields and their suitability for supporting life.

These results may also provide insight into a rare phenomenon on Earth called geomagnetic reversal. This occurs when the north and south poles switch hemisphere locations. According to NASA, pole reversals are pretty common in Earth’s geologic history and the last one occurred roughly 780,000 years ago. Paleomagnetic records show that over the last 83 million years, Earth’s magnetic poles have reversed 183 times. They’ve also reversed at least several hundred times in the past 160 million years. The time intervals between these reversals have fluctuated, but average about 300,000 years.

“We don’t have many studies on this phenomena and hence do not know what effects this will have on systems that rely on Earth’s magnetic field such as satellites, communications and navigation,” said Thomas. “However, this process occurs every day at Uranus due to the unique misalignment of the rotational and magnetic axes. Continued study of Uranus’s aurora will provide data on what we can expect when Earth exhibits a future pole reversal and what that will mean for its magnetic field.”

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The Indian Space Research Organization, or ISRO, is on a roll. India’s national space agency accomplished the first ever landing of a spacecraft, the Vikram lander, near the lunar south pole on August 23. On September 2, ISRO launched Aditya-L1, the agency’s first solar probe. 

And on October 21, ISRO completed a successful launch abort system test for the Gaganyaan, a spacecraft India hopes will carry three national astronauts around Earth on an orbital mission by 2026. That’s an ambitious leap from uncrewed space missions, but if India succeeds, it will join a club of just three other nations that have sent their own astronauts and craft to space—Russia, the US, and China. 

“India is the most impressive, exciting space story of the year,” says Rich Cooper, vice president of communications and outreach for the Space Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes space industry and exploration. “In a year full of a lot of accomplishments, India has more than put itself on the map.”

India’s space program goes back decades. ISRO launched its first satellite, Rohini-1, into orbit on a rocket of Indian manufacture in 1980. The agency became known for launching satellites, and later more distant space missions—such as the Mangalyaan Mars orbiter launched in 2013—under disciplined budgets. ISRO also plans to send an orbiter to Venus in 2025, and a second Mars orbiter to the Red Planet in 2024.

[Related: Meet the first 4 astronauts of the ‘Artemis Generation’]

“The Indian space program has been under the radar, I think, because it has always operated well, but with lower stakes and lower budget,” says Laura Forczyk, a space industry analyst and founder of the consultancy company Astralytical. But IRSO’s ambitions are clearly and justifiably ramping up in the wake of the Vikram landing, she says, as “successfully landing a lander and a rover on the moon is something that very few countries in the world have ever done.”

And even those countries that have done it before sometimes stumble: in 1957 Russia placed the first satellite, Sputnik, in orbit, and four years later sent the first human, Yuri Gagarin, to space. But in 2023, around the same time India was celebrating the Vikram success, Russia failed to make a soft landing on the moon with its Luna 25 mission. 

India’s progress hasn’t been in a vacuum—it’s been studying the successes and failures of Russia, US, and China’s space programs since the beginning, according to Cooper. “There are 60-plus years of human spaceflight lessons to learn, and India has been a marvelous student at looking at those lessons,” he says. “They more than did their homework.”

The Gaganyaan program plans to proceed similarly to NASA’s Artemis program, with multiple system and spacecraft tests before the first human climbs aboard a rocket. The first uncrewed test flight, Gaganyaan 1, is scheduled for sometime in 2024, and a second Gaganyaan 2, is scheduled for 2025. 

[Related: Why do all these countries want to go to the moon right now?]

Gaganyaan 3, in 2026, aims to put a trio of Indian astronauts in orbit around Earth for three days. From there, ISRO hopes to build a space station by 2035, and send Indian astronauts to the moon by 2040. That’s a familiar expansion method, according to University of North Dakota space studies professor Michael Dodge, as it was proposed by Werner von Braun, the Nazi rocket scientist who became the architect of NASA’s Apollo program. “This is a strategy that has been around for a very long time, historically speaking, and it looks like India is pursuing that in a very sort of systematic way,” Dodge says. 

Whether India’s timeline for growing its space program will hold is another question. Forczyk notes that Gaganyaan 1 was supposed to launch in 2020, but faced delays both from COVID-19 and those typical of a complicated human spaceflight program. It may take ISRO more time and money than they expect, and she thinks the launch of Gaganyaan 1 will likely slip into 2025. 

But a crewed mission by 2026? “I think that’s completely feasible,” Forczyk says. As Russia’s influence wanes, and that of India’s close rival China’s rises, the crewed Gaganyaan program is “a means of growing their own standing in the world.”

Dodge notes that national prestige has always been a part of space exploration, going back to the original space race between the US and the Soviet Union. But that prestige is about two things, “One of them is technological prowess, and being able to demonstrate to the world that you were among the elite, and your capability to use and explore space,” he says. ”But the other is a geopolitical overlay.”

What excites Forczyk about ISRO’s plans, in contrast to India’s anti-satellite missile test in 2019, is that they are a peaceful way for India to cultivate national and geopolitical prestige. The success of the Indian civilian space program can serve as a model for other nations as they make their own bids to become space powers in the 21st century. 

“What we’re going to see is more countries that have historically not played a large role in space rise, because they see it as a means of demonstrating their technology, technological advancement,” Forczyk says. “A peaceful demonstration of advancement.” 

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When humans finally return to the moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program, they’ll arrive with a bevy of high-tech equipment to capture new, awe-inspiring glimpses of Earth’s satellite. But cameras have come a long way since the Apollo missions. In 2023, some incredibly advanced options are already almost moon-ready right off the shelf.

According to a recent update from the European Space Agency, engineers collaborating with NASA are finalizing a Handheld Universal Lunar Camera (HULC) with real-world testing in the rocky, lunar-esque vistas of Lanzarote, Spain. While resilient enough to travel to the moon, HULC’s underpinning tech derives from commercially available professional cameras featuring high light sensitivities and cutting-edge lenses. To strengthen the lunar documentation device, researchers needed to add a blanket casing that is durable enough to protect against ultra-fine moon dust, as well as the moon’s extreme temperature swings ranging between -208 and 250 degrees Fahrenheit. At the same time, the covering can’t impede usage, so designers also created a suite of ergonomic buttons compatible with astronaut spacesuits’ thick gloves.

[Related: Check out this Prada-designed Artemis III spacesuits.]

So far, HULC has snapped shots in near pitch-black volcanic caves, as well as in broad daylight to approximate the lunar surface’s vast spectrum of lighting possibilities. According to the ESA, HULC will also be the first mirrorless handheld camera used in space—such a design reportedly offers quality images in low light scenarios.

Even with the numerous alterations and adjustments, the HULC is still not quite ready for the Artemis III mission, currently scheduled for 2025. The ESA reports that at least one version of the camera will soon travel to the International Space Station for additional testing.

“We will continue modifying the camera as we move towards the Artemis III lunar landing,” Jeremy Myers, NASA lead on the HULC camera project, told the ESA on October 24. “I am positive that we will end up with the best product–a camera that will capture Moon pictures for humankind, used by crews from many countries and for many years to come.”

Images of Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong striding across the lunar surface during the Apollo 11 moonwalk instantly became iconic photographs in 1969, but they were only a preview of many more to come. Over the next three years, 10 more astronauts documented their visits to the moon using an array of video and photographic cameras. When humans finally return as part of the Artemis program, HULC will be in tow to capture new, awe-inspiring glimpses of Earth’s satellite.

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Despite being our closest planetary neighbor, Venus is a pretty inhospitable place. It is about 100 times hotter than Earth and spacecraft exploring its thick atmosphere have been crushed in only two hours. However, Venus may have once had tectonic plate movements that are similar to what occurred during Earth’s early days. The new finding gives astronomers some novel scenarios to evaluate regarding the possibility of early life on Venus, its evolutionary past, and the history of the solar system. The findings are described in a study published October 26 in the journal Nature Astronomy. 

[Related: We finally know why Venus is absolutely radiant.]

In the study, researchers used atmospheric data from Venus and computer modeling to show that the composition of the planet’s current atmosphere and surface pressure could have only resulted from an early form of plate tectonics. This process is critical to life and involves multiple continental plates pushing, pulling, and sliding beneath one another. 

On Earth, these plate tectonics have intensified over billions of years. This process has formed new continents, mountains, and led to the chemical reactions that stabilized Earth’s surface temperature. It also created an environment that is more conducive for life to develop.

Venus went in the opposite direction and has surface temperatures of 867 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to melt lead. Astronomers have always believed that Venus has a “stagnant lid.” This means that the planet’s surface only has a single plate with minimal amounts of give, so most of the gasses remain trapped beneath the outer crust lid.

The team used current data on Venus’ atmosphere as the endpoint for these models and started by assuming Venus has had a stagnant lid through its entire existence. They were quickly able to see that computer simulations recreating the planet’s current atmosphere didn’t match up with where Venus is now. 

Next, the team simulated what would have had to happen on Venus for the planet to get to its current state. They eventually matched the numbers almost exactly when they accounted for limited tectonic movement early in Venus’ history followed by the stagnant lid model that exists today.

Due to the abundance of nitrogen and carbon dioxide present in Venus’ atmosphere, the team believes that Venus must have had plate tectonics about 4.5 billion to 3.5 billion years ago after the planet formed. They suggest that like on Earth, this early tectonic movement would have been limited in terms of the number of plates moving around and in how much they shifted. The process also would have been occurring on Venus and Earth at the same time. 

“One of the big picture takeaways is that we very likely had two planets at the same time in the same solar system operating in a plate tectonic regime—the same mode of tectonics that allowed for the life that we see on Earth today,” study co-author and Brown University planetary geophysicist Matt Weller said in a statement. 

[Related: A private company wants to look for life just above Venus.]

According to the team, this further bolsters the possibility that microbial life existed on ancient Venus. It also shows that at one point, both Earth and Venus were even more alike than scientists previously thought before diverging. Both planets are about the same size, have the same mass, density, and volume and live in the same solar neighborhood.

The work also shows the possibility that plate tectonics on all planets might simply come down to timing, so life itself may also be a product of the perfect timing. 

“We’ve so far thought about tectonic state in terms of a binary: it’s either true or it’s false, and it’s either true or false for the duration of the planet,” study co-author and Brown University geobiologist and geophysicist Alexander Evans said in a statement. “This shows that planets may transition in and out of different tectonic states and that this may actually be fairly common. Earth may be the outlier. This also means we might have planets that transition in and out of habitability rather than just being continuously habitable.”

Understanding the transition of tectonic states will be important for future studies of nearby moons and distant exoplanets. Jupiter’s fourth largest moon Europa has already shown evidence of Earth-like plate tectonics.

“We’re still in this paradigm where we use the surfaces of planets to understand their history,” Evans said. “We really show for the first time that the atmosphere may actually be the best way to understand some of the very ancient history of planets that is often not preserved on the surface.”

Future NASA DAVINCI missions will measure gasses in Venus’ atmosphere and could help solidify this study’s findings and the details of how this happened may hold important implications for Earth.

“That’s going to be the next critical step in understanding Venus, its evolution and ultimately the fate of the Earth,” Weller said. “What conditions will force us to move in a Venus-like trajectory, and what conditions could allow the Earth to remain habitable?”

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Gravitational wave observatories, such as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), are exercises in extreme sensitivity. LIGO’s two experimental ears—one in Louisiana, another in Washington state—listen to ripples in space-time left behind by objects that include black holes and neutron stars. To do this, LIGO carefully watches for minute fluctuations in miles-long laser beams. The challenge is that everything from rumbling tractors to the weather to quantum noise can cause disturbances of their own. A huge part of gravitational wave observation is the science of weeding out unwanted noise.

Now, following a round of upgrades, both of LIGO’s ears can hear 60 percent more events than ever before. Much of the credit goes to a system that corrects for barely perceptible quantum noise by very literally squeezing the light.

Physicists and engineers have been tinkering with light-squeezing in the lab for decades, and their work is showing real results. “It’s not a demonstration anymore,” says Lee McCuller, a physicist at Caltech. “We’re actually using it.” McCuller and his colleagues will publish their work in the journal Physical Review X on October 30.

Gravitational waves are an odd curiosity of how gravity works, as predicted by general relativity. As a falling rock casts ripples in water, sufficiently spectacular events—say, two black holes or two neutron stars merging together—cast waves in the fabric of space-time. Listening into those gravitational waves allows astronomers to peek at massive objects like black holes and neutron stars that are otherwise difficult to see clearly. Scientists can only pull this off thanks to devices like LIGO.

LIGO’s ears are shaped like very large Ls, their arms precisely 4 kilometers (2.49 miles) long. A laser beam, split in two, travels each down one of the arms. Those beams bounce off a mirror at the far end, and return back to the vertex, where they can be recombined into a single beam. Tiny shifts in space-time—gravitational waves—can subtly stretch and squeeze either arm, etching patterns in the recombined beam’s light.

The length shifts are extremely subtle, far too slight to even dream of seeing with the naked eye. The task of detecting such a slight shift becomes even trickier when LIGO detectors are prone to earthquakes, weather, and human activity, all of which create noise that rattles the mirrors or shakes up the laser beams.

Physicists have developed ways of cutting out all that noise. They can keep the arms in a vacuum, devoid of all other matter, to prevent sound waves. They can suspend mirrors to isolate them from vibrations. They can measure the noise of the outside world and adjust the instruments accordingly, like a very large noise-cancelling headset. 

But something that these methods cannot filter out is quantum physics. Even in a perfect vacuum, the inherent randomness of the universe at its tiniest scales—particles popping in and out of existence—makes its mark. “You’ve got a natural fluctuation on the level of your measurement that can mask a weak gravitational wave signal,” says Patrick Sutton, an astrophysicist at Cardiff University, a member of the LIGO-Virgo collaboration who wasn’t an author of the new study.

[Related: We’ve recorded a whopping 35 gravitational wave events in just 5 months]

LIGO detected the first-ever confirmed gravitational waves in 2016. Around the same time, its operators were thinking about ways to weed out the quantum disturbances. Physicists can manipulate light by trapping it within a crystal and “squeezing” it. They installed such a crystal on both LIGO detectors in time for the observatory’s third round of detections, which began in 2019.

The upgrade enabled LIGO to work with laser light with higher frequencies. But squeezing light like this came at a cost: making it more difficult to read lower-frequency light. This is problematic, because the gravitational waves from events we can detect—such as black hole mergers—tend to produce a good deal of lower-frequency light in LIGO.

So, after COVID-19 forced LIGO to shut down in mid-2020, its operators added a new chamber to their squeezing setup. This chamber allows a more adaptive approach, manipulating different properties of light at different frequencies. To do this, the chamber must trap light for 3 milliseconds—enough time for light to travel hundreds of miles. The chamber began operation when LIGO’s fourth, current observing run switched on earlier this year.

“It took a lot of engineering and design work and careful thinking to make this an upgrade that does its job and improves squeezing, but doesn’t introduce new noise,” McCuller says.

Both of LIGO’s detectors can now pick up gravitational waves from further into the cosmos and from a wider swath of space. LIGO now hears about 60 to 70 percent more events, according to Sutton. Better sensitivity also allows astronomers to measure gravitational waves with greatly increased precision, which lets them test the theory of general relativity. “It’s a significant jump,” Sutton says.

[Related: Astronomers now know how supermassive black holes blast us with energy]

LIGO’s fellow detector in Europe, Virgo, is implementing the same frequency-dependent squeezing based on its scientists’ own research. “We don’t currently know of any other technique that can improve upon this one,” McCuller says. “In terms of new techniques, this is the best one we actually know how to use at the moment.”

All the gravitational wave events we’ve seen so far came from two black holes or two neutron stars emerging: loud, violent events that leave equally violent splashes. But gravitational wave listeners would like to use gravitational waves to listen to other events, too, such as supernovas, gamma ray bursts, and pulsars. We aren’t quite there yet, but squeezing may get us closer by letting us take full advantage of the hardware we have.

“The key there is just to make the detectors ever more sensitive—bring that noise down and down and down—until, eventually we start seeing some,” Sutton says. “I think those will be very exciting days.”

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Humans have been changing the atmosphere from Earth’s surface for nearly two centuries—but now in the Space Age, we’re altering it from outer space, too. Atmospheric scientists recently found traces of unexpected metals in the stratosphere, the second-lowest layer of the atmosphere where ozone resides and meteors burn up into shooting stars. The researchers determined that this pollution came from spacecraft as they reenter Earth’s atmosphere, in research published last week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

This study is “the first observational evidence that space activities are a very significant source of particulate pollution to the stratosphere” says Slimane Bekki, an atmospheric scientist at LATMOS not involved in the new work. “More importantly, nobody knows the impacts of these particles on the ozone layer,” he adds, pointing out the importance of this molecule in shielding humans from dangerous UV radiation.

Usually, mission planners’ main concern is to ensure that space debris doesn’t hit the ground, where it could hurt people or structures—but, as this research points out, what evaporates in the stratosphere could still be making an impact, even if it’s not a literal one. That material has to exist somewhere, and it looks like it’s lingering in the stratosphere. “We are finding this human-made material in what we consider a pristine area of the atmosphere. And if something is changing in the stratosphere—this stable region of the atmosphere—that deserves a closer look,” said co-author and Purdue atmospheric scientist Dan Cziczo in a press release. 

[Related on PopSci+: Rocket fuel might be polluting the Earth’s upper atmosphere]

The research team flew through the stratosphere across the continental US in aircraft specially designed to fly at high altitudes, equipped with air-analyzing instruments in their nose cones. These unique planes— NASA’s ER-2 and WB-57—cruise at around 65,000 feet, almost double the altitude of typical passenger jets. Flying as high as 70,000 feet, the research craft can go above 99 percent of the mass of Earth’s atmosphere.

Within the stratosphere, the collecting equipment on these planes recorded traces of the heavy metals niobium and hafnium. These elements aren’t found naturally in the atmosphere, but they are typically used in rockets and spacecraft shells. The team also measured higher-than-expected concentrations of over 20 metals, including copper, lithium, aluminum, and lead. All told, about 10 percent of aerosol particles in the stratosphere contain metals. 

Atmospheric scientists aren’t sure exactly how these changes will affect Earth. The stratosphere contains tiny blobs of sulfuric acid, which are now infused with the metals from old spacecraft. The presence of those metals could change the chemistry of the stratosphere, including how big the sulfuric acid drops grow. Even small tweaks high up could affect the way light bends, the transfer of heat, or how crystals of ice grow. 

The big question is how these changes will affect human life on the surface. Unfortunately, there’s no clear answer to that, but in the past small stratospheric changes have led to big impacts—like adding CFCs that ate away at the ozone layer. Eventually, there may need to be additional environmental precautions for spaceflight to prevent harm to the stratosphere.

[Related: This beautiful map of Earth’s atmosphere shows a world on fire]

“The only way for these particles not to appear in the upper atmosphere is for the satellites not to be launched in the first place,” explains University of Exeter atmospheric scientist Jamie Shutler, who was not part of the research team. “The possible ways forward are to launch less, make the satellites last for longer (so we need to launch less), or encourage industry to make the constituents of satellites public knowledge (so we can guide manufacturers as to the potential harmful effects).” He adds that this new finding “confirms our concern” about stratospheric contamination.

But before we can solve this problem, “the concept that reentry can affect the stratosphere has to be thought about,” says lead author Daniel Murphy, atmospheric scientist at NOAA. He emphasized that this idea is still incredibly new and will require much more research to understand the scale and potential consequences of this pollution.

Potential impacts are expected only to grow as the rate of spacecraft launches and reentries accelerate. In the last five years, space agencies and private companies have launched more than 5,000 satellites, noted Martin Ross, co-author on the work and climate scientist at The Aerospace Corporation, in a press release. “Most of them will come back in the next five, and we need to know how that might further affect stratospheric aerosols,” he said. The team expects that the proportion of particles containing metal could grow from 10 to more than 50 percent in the next few decades, especially thanks to upcoming plans to reduce space debris by hurling it back into the atmosphere.

Those efforts and upcoming launches, though, need to be aware of the possible effects on Earth—and researchers need to do more work to determine the extent of those effects. “Understanding our planet is one of the most urgent research priorities there is,” said Cziczo.

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Against all odds and expectations, both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are still going strong after nearly half a century of hurtling through—and far past—the solar system. To help boost the potential for the probes’ continued operations, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have beamed out two software updates across the billions of miles separating them from the historic spacecraft. If successful, the pair of interstellar travelers could gain at least another five years’ worth of life, if not more.

On October 20, NASA announced plans to transmit a software patch to protect Voyager 1 and 2 against a glitch that occurred within the former’s system last year. In May 2022, NASA started noticing inaccurate readings coming from Voyager 1’s attitude articulation and control system (AACS). A few months later, engineers determined the AACS was accidentally writing commands into memory instead of actually performing them.

Although engineers successfully resolved an original data issue within Voyager 1 in 2022, the new patch will hopefully ensure such a problem won’t arise again in either probe. Receiving the patch will take over 18 hours to reach transmitters; Voyager 2 will get the patch first to serve as a “testbed for its twin” in case of unintended consequences like accidentally overwriting essential code. Given Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are respectively 15 billion and 12 billion miles from Earth, engineers consider the farther craft’s data more valuable, as it still remains the farthest traveling human-made object. The NASA-JPL team will issue a command on October 28 to test the patch’s efficacy.

[Related: The secret to Voyagers’ spectacular space odyssey.]

The second planned tune-up for Voyager 1 and 2 involves the small thrusters responsible for controlling the probes’ communication antennas. According to NASA, spacecraft can generally rotate in three directions—left and right, up and down, as well as wheellike around a central axis. During these movements, propellant automatically flows through incredibly narrow “inlet tubes” to maintain the antennas’ contact with Earth.

But each time the propellant is used, miniscule residue can stick within the inlet tubings—while not much at first, that buildup is becoming problematic after the Voyager probes’ (many) decades’ of life. To slow the speed of buildup, engineers have edited the probes’ operational commands to allow both craft the ability to rotate nearly 1 degree farther in each available direction. This will reduce how often their thrusters need to fire. When engineers do need to enable thrusters, they now plan to fire them for longer periods of time, thus reducing the overall number of usages. 

[Related: How is Voyager’s vintage technology still flying?]

“This far into the mission, the engineering team is being faced with a lot of challenges for which we just don’t have a playbook,” Linda Spilker, Voyager mission project scientist, said via NASA’s update. “But they continue to come up with creative solutions.”

Experts estimate both the fuel lines and software adjustments could extend the Voyager program’s lifespan by another five years. According to NASA, however, “additional steps in the coming years to extend the lifetime of the thrusters even more.”

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The moon is our closest neighbor in space and the only celestial body humans have set foot on, yet we are still learning about it. In fact, Earth’s moon might actually be 40 million years older than scientists previously believed. By conducting an atom-by-atom analysis on crystals that were brought back by Apollo astronauts in 1972, a team of geochemists and plenary scientists now calculate that the igneous orb is at least 4.46 billion years old. The findings are described in a study published today in the journal Geochemical Perspectives Letters.

Intertwined fates

Heck is a curator for the meteorite collection at the Field Museum in Chicago and a professor at the University of Chicago. He says that studying the moon also helps us understand our own planet because of the topographical differences.

“Earth’s surface is much, much younger because there’s so much geologic activity [here] from volcanism and weathering,” explains Heck. “The moon’s surface is essentially an archive of solar system dynamics. This is a record that we don’t have on Earth, but our planet’s evolution is tied to these impacts that happened in the early solar system.”

A historical perspective

In the study, the team looked at moon dust brought back by the Apollo 17 crew. The 1972 lunar landing included NASA geologist Harrison Schmidt, who collected multiple rocks to study back on Earth. His samples contain very small crystals that were created billions of years ago and can help indicate when the moon was formed.

The energy created by the impact from the object that struck Earth and created the moon melted the rock that eventually became the lunar surface. That offers a clue to the elements that existed on the celestial body since its emergence versus the ones that appeared much later. For example, zirconium, a silver metal found on both the Earth and the moon, could not form and survive on the molten lunar surface: Any zircon crystals that are currently present on the moon must have formed after the magma ocean cooled. Determining the age of these structures can thus reveal the minimum possible age for the moon, assuming that they emerged right after the impact.

Looking atom by atom

Researchers have previously suggested that the moon is older than estimated, but this new study is the first to use an analytical method called atom probe tomography to pinpoint the age from the oldest known lunar crystal retrieved by humans.

“In atom probe tomography, we start by sharpening a piece of the lunar sample into a very sharp tip using a focused ion beam microscope, almost like a very fancy pencil sharpener,” study co-author and planetary scientist Jennika Greer said in a statement. “Then, we use UV lasers to evaporate atoms from the surface of that tip. The atoms travel through a mass spectrometer, and how fast they move tells us how heavy they are, which in turn tells us what they’re made of.”

This atom-by-atom analysis revealed how much of the zircon crystals had undergone radioactive decay—a process where atoms that have an unstable configuration shed some protons and neutrons. They then transform into different elements, like how uranium decays into lead. Based on the amount of conversion and the known half-lives of different chemical isotopes, experts can estimate the age of the sample.

“Radiometric dating works a little bit like an hourglass,” Heck said in a statement. “In an hourglass, sand flows from one glass bulb to another, with the passage of time indicated by the accumulation of sand in the lower bulb. Radiometric dating works similarly by counting the number of parent atoms and the number of daughter atoms they have transformed to. The passage of time can then be calculated because the transformation rate is known.”

The team working with the Apollo 17 sample found that the proportion of lead isotopes (the daughter atoms created during the decay) indicated that the crystals were about 4.46 billion years old, so the moon must at least be that old too. While this puts the moon’s age back 40 million years, that’s still a very short time compared to the universe’s roughly 13.7 billion-year history. 

“It’s amazing being able to have proof that the rock you’re holding is the oldest bit of the moon we’ve found so far. It’s an anchor point for so many questions about the Earth. When you know how old something is, you can better understand what has happened to it in its history,” Greer said.

From Apollo to Artemis

In future studies, clues pulled from these decades-old samples could be pooled with those from samples taken by upcoming Artemis lunar missions. Artemis III is scheduled for 2025 and will land on and explore the lunar South Pole. The Apollo 17 mission collected samples from the Taurus-Littrow valley on the eastern edge of Mare Serenitatis, so crystals from a different region of the moon could yield unimaginable discoveries. 

[Related: Scientists have new moon rocks for the first time in nearly 50 years]

“I am convinced that there is older stuff on the moon—we just haven’t found it yet. I even think we have older zircons in the Apollo samples. This is really the power of sample return,” says Heck. 

A mixture of new samples and future advances in technology could further anchor the timeline of how our solar system was formed and beyond.  “Maybe in 50 or 100 years or even later, new generations of scientists will have the tools we can only dream about today to address scientific questions we can’t even think about today,” says Heck. “These templates are a legacy for future generations.”

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NASA plans to return humans to the moon in 2025 with the Artemis III mission. Before that, the space agency will conduct a vital preliminary mission in November 2024, when the Artemis II mission flies a crew of astronauts in lunar orbit for the first time since the 1970s. But the “important first step” toward those goals, as NASA put it in a recent blog post, is the planned launch of the IM-1 mission carrying the NOVA-C lunar lander in a few weeks. It will attempt to land several NASA science experiments near Malapert A, a crater in the southern lunar polar region. Those studies could help NASA prepare for astronaut operations in the area in 2025. 

Unlike the Artemis missions, though, NOVA-C isn’t a big NASA project. Instead, the truck-sized craft designed to ferry small payloads to the lunar surface was built, and will be operated by, the small Texas-based company Intuitive Machines. 

If it succeeds in landing near the lunar south pole, NOVA-C will be the first US soft landing on the moon since the 1970s, and the first ever commercial landing on the moon that hasn’t crashed or failed. So why is a small spacecraft built by a relatively small company a key part of NASA’s big moon program?

“There is a pattern that we have now seen of NASA trying to move to more commercial solutions and services, rather than do it all on their own,” says Wendy Whitman Cobb, a space policy expert and instructor at the US Air Force School of Advanced Air and Space Studies. It’s much like NASA’s Commercial Crew and Cargo programs, which contracted with SpaceX to fly astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station aboard its Dragon space capsules. 

[Related: Why do all these countries want to go to the moon right now?]

Now NASA is turning to commercial companies to prepare the way for humanity’s return to the moon. Intuitive Machines was one of the first companies to receive a contract—for $77 million— under NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS program, back in 2019. NASA designed CLPS to fund private sector companies interested in building small, relatively inexpensive spacecraft to fly experiments and rovers to the moon, allowing NASA to simply purchase room on the spacecraft rather than developing and operating it themselves. 

In the case of NOVA-C, five NASA payloads will ride along with devices from universities including Louisiana State and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. ”The NASA payloads will focus on demonstrating communication, navigation and precision landing technologies, and gathering scientific data about rocket plume and lunar surface interactions, as well as space weather and lunar surface interactions affecting radio astronomy,” the space agency wrote in a blog post about the mission. 

“We don’t still don’t know a lot about the moon,” Whitman Cobb adds. The moon has variable gravity depending on where there are more metallic materials. “Finding out where those places are, how lunar dust is going to kick up when you’re trying to land or take off—all of these things are really key.”

That’s why NASA is sending payloads to ride along with NOVA-C. But the reason NOVA-C is landing where it is, about 300 kilometers from the south pole, has more to do with how the whole world is now thinking about the moon.

NOVA-C was originally destined to land in the Oceanus Procellarum, one of the large, dark areas known as mares, or “seas,” on the lunar surface. But in May, NASA and Intuitive Machines announced the change in plans and the new target near the south pole. 

[Related: We finally have a detailed map of water on the moon]

”The decision to move from the original landing site in Oceanus Procellarum was based on a need to learn more about terrain and communications near the lunar South Pole,” NASA announced in a blog post at the time. “Landing near Malapert A also will help mission planners understand how to communicate and send data  back to Earth from a location that is low on the lunar horizon.”

The reasons NASA wants to land near the lunar south pole with Artemis, and why the recent and successful Chandrayaan 3 mission of India, and the failed Russian Luna 25 mission, both targeted the lunar south pole are twofold: research and resources, according to Richard Carlson, a lunar geologist who retired from the Carnegie Institute for Science in 2021.  

“Both north and south polar regions have permanently shadowed craters where water has been detected from orbit,” he says. ”The real question is whether that water is a one micron surface coating of water on a few grains, or whether it’s a substantial abundance of water. Water of course being useful for a lot of things, from drinking water to turning it into hydrogen and oxygen, which is rocket fuel.”

The other motivation for going to the south pole is that it’s geologically very different from where the Apollo missions landed, according to Carlson. “They all landed on a pretty small portion of the moon on the Earth facing side of the moon on the nice flat mares, and that’s a rather unusual part of the moon geologically,” he says. ”If you think of studying the Earth this way, the Apollo lunar program would have basically landed on, let’s say, just North America, and that’s it.”

The lunar south polar region is much more geologically varied, with tall mountains and ridges, as well as rocks dug out from deep within the moon and scattered over the region by impact craters billions of years ago, Carlson says. But of course, such a landscape has its downsides for spacecraft coming from Earth. 

“You look at the pictures of the places that they selected [for Artemis III] and I wouldn’t want to land there. I mean, they’re really rough,” he says. “If we land on a rock, the spacecraft is going to fall over.” Sending small, uncrewed craft like NOVA-C to the moon’s south polar ahead of Artemis astronauts will test how difficult landing there really is. 

After all, as Witman Cobb notes, touching down anywhere on the moon is really hard. Before the failed Luna 25 landing on August 21, there were two failed commercial lunar landings. The Israeli company SpaceIL saw its Beresheet lander crash land in 2019, while the Hakuto-R M1 lander from Japanese company ispace crashed in April. 

”We haven’t seen a commercial company be successful in landing on the moon yet,” Whitman Cobb says. ”That’s really fascinating when you think about our capability of landing humans on the moon in the 1960s, and 1970s. That today, with all of the technology that we now have, this is still a really, really difficult thing to do.”

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Best overall		Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ		SEE IT	A solid build and specs, paired with smartphone-guided sky recognition technology, makes this telescope perfect for starry-eyed explorers.
Best for viewing planets		Sky-Watcher Skymax 102mm Maksutov-Cassegrain Telescope		SEE IT	This telescope punches above its weight class in size and power, making it an ideal scope for checking out neighboring orbs.
Best for kids		Orion Observer II 60mm AZ Refractor Telescope Starter Kit		SEE IT	The entire package is designed to inspire kids during the window where they stare curiously out of the windows.

Telescopes under $500 can provide a passport to the universe without emptying your wallet. In their basic function, telescopes are our connection to the stars. For millennia, humankind has gazed skyward with wonder into the infinite reaches of outer space. And as humans are a curious bunch, our ancestors devised patterns in the movements of celestial bodies, gave them names, and built stories around them. The ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, and Greeks indulged in star worship. But you don’t have to follow those lines to geek out over the vastness of the night sky. It’s just so cool. Fortunately, whatever your motivation for getting under the stars, there is an affordable option for you on our list of the best telescopes under $500.

• Best overall: Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ
• Best for viewing planets: Sky-Watcher Skymax 102mm Maksutov-Cassegrain Telescope
• Best for astrophotography: William Optics Guide Star 61
• Best for kids: Orion Observer II 60mm AZ Refractor Telescope Starter Kit
• Best budget: Popular Science by Celestron Travel Scope 70 Portable Telescope

How we chose the best telescopes under $500

The under-$500 telescope market is crowded with worthy brands and models, so we looked at offerings in that price range from several well-known manufacturers in the space. After narrowing our focus based on personal experience, peer suggestions, critical reviews, and user impressions, we considered aperture, focal length, magnification, build quality, and value to select these five models.

The best telescopes under $500: Reviews & Recommendations

To get the best views of the stars, planets, and other phenomena of outer space, not just any old telescope will get the job done. There are levels of quality and a wide range of price points and features to sort through before you can be sure you’re making the right purchase for what you want out of your telescope, whether it’s multi-thousands, one of the best telescopes for under $1,000, or one of our top picks under $500.

Best overall: Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ

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Why it made the cut: Solid build and specs, paired with the remarkable StarSense Explorer app, make this telescope a perfect introduction to celestial observation.

Specs

• Focal length: 650mm
• Aperture: 130mm, f/5
• Magnification: 65x, 26x

Pros

• App aids in finding stars
• Easy to operate
• Steady altazimuth mount

Cons

• Eyepieces are both low power

Newbies to astronomy today can have a decidedly different experience than beginners who started stargazing before smartphones were a thing. Instead of carting out maps of the night sky to find constellations, the StarSense Explorer series from Celestron, including the DX 130AZ refractor, makes ample use of your device to bring you closer to the stars. 

With your smartphone resting in the telescope’s built-in dock, the StarSense Explorer app will find your location using the device’s GPS and serve up a detailed list of celestial objects viewable in real time. Looking for the Pleiades cluster? This app will tell you how far away it is from you and then lead you there with on-screen navigation. The app also includes descriptions of those objects, tips for observing them, and other useful info. 

The StarSense Explorer ships with an altazimuth mount equipped with slow-moving fine-tuning controls for both axes so you can find your target smoothly. And for those times you want to explore the night sky without tethering a smartphone, the scope’s red dot finder will help you zero in on your targets. The two eyepieces, measuring 25mm and 10mm, are powerful enough to snag stellar views of the planets but not quite enough to see the details a high-powered eyepiece would deliver.

Best for viewing planets: Sky-Watcher Skymax 102mm Maksutov-Cassegrain Telescope

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Why it made the cut: This telescope punches above its weight class in size and power, making it an ideal scope for viewing planets.

Specs

• Focal length: 1300mm
• Aperture: 102mm, f/12.7
• Magnification: 130x, 52x

Pros

• Great for viewing planets and galaxies
• Sharp focus and contrast
• Powerful

Cons

• Not ideal for deep-space viewing

Let’s be real—most consumers in the market for a moderately priced telescope are in it to gain spectacular views of the planets and galaxies, but probably not much else. And it’s easy to see why. Nothing makes celestial bodies come alive like viewing them in real time, in all their colorful glory.

If that sounds like you, allow us to direct you to the Sky-Watcher Skymax 102, a refracting telescope specializing in crisp views of objects like planets and galaxies with ample contrast to make them pop against the dark night sky. The Skymax 102 is based on a Maksutov-Cassegrains design that uses both mirrors and lenses, resulting in a heavy-hitting scope in a very compact and portable unit. A generous 102mm aperture pulls in plenty of light to illuminate the details in objects, and the 1300mm focal length results in intense magnification.

Two included wide-angle eyepieces measuring 25mm and 10mm deliver 130x and 52x magnification, respectively. The package also includes a red-dot finder, V-rail for mounting, 1.25-inch diagonal viewing piece, and a case for transport and storage. Look no further if you’re looking for pure colors across a perfectly flat field in a take-anywhere form factor.

Best for astrophotography: William Optics GuideStar 61 

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Why it made the cut: Top-notch specs and an enviable lens setup make this telescope ideal for astrophotography.

Specs

• Focal length: 360mm
• Aperture: f/5.9
• Magnification: 7x (with 2-inch eyepiece)

Pros

• Well-appointed specs
• Sturdy, durable construction
• Carrying case included

Cons

• Flattener is an extra purchase

Sometimes you want to share more than descriptions of what you see in the night sky, and that’s where this guidescope comes in, helping you to focus on the best full-frame image. You can go as deep into the details (not to mention debt) as your line of credit will allow in your quest to capture the most impressive images of space. Luckily, though, this is a worthy option at a reasonable price. 

The Williams Optics Guide Star 61 telescope is a refracting-type scope with a 360mm focal length, f/5.9 aperture, and 61mm diameter well-suited to capturing sharp images of planets, moon, and bright deep-sky objects. The GS61 shares many specs with the now-discontinued Zenith Star 61, including focal length, aperture, and diameter, as well as the FPL53 ED doublet lens for high-contrast images.

The scope’s optical tube is about 13 inches long and weighs just 3 lbs.—great for traveling with the included carrying case—with a draw-tube (push-pull) focuser for coarse focusing and a rotating lens assembly for fine focus. Attaching a DSLR camera to the Guide Star 61 is a fairly easy job, but note that the flattener for making that connection is a separate purchase.

Best for kids: Orion Observer II 60mm AZ Refractor Telescope Starter Kit

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Why it made the cut: The entire package is designed to get kids exploring space right out of the box.

Specs

• Focal length: 700mm
• Aperture: 60mm, f/11.7
• Magnification: 70x, 28x

Pros

• Capable of detailed views of moon and planets
• Lightweight construction
• Lots of handy accessories

Cons

• Not enough optical power to reach deep space

Parents have a limited window of time to recognize and develop their kids’ interests, so kindle a fascination with the stars through a star projector and then fan it with a telescope. That’s what makes the Orion Observer II such a great buy. Seeing the craters on the moon or the rings of Saturn for the first time can affirm your kids’ curiosity about space and expand their concept of the universe—and they can get those goosebumps while learning through this altazimuth refractor telescope.

The Orion Observer II is built to impressive specifications, with a 700mm focal length that provides 71x magnification for viewing the vivid details of planets in our solar system. True glass lenses (not plastic) are a bonus at this price point, and combined with either included Kellner eyepieces (25mm and 10mm), the telescope delivers crisp views of some of space’s most dazzling objects. 

Kids and parents can locate celestial objects with the included red-dot finder. The kit also includes MoonMap 260, a fold-out map that directs viewers to 260 lunar features, such as craters, valleys, ancient lava flows, mountain ranges, and every U.S. and Soviet lunar mission landing site. An included copy of Exploring the Cosmos: An Introduction to the Night Sky gives a solid background before they go stargazing. And with its aluminum tube and tripod, the entire rig is very portable, even for young ones, with a total weight of 4.3 pounds. Find more options for the best telescopes for kids here. (And/or go the opposite direction with a microscope for kids—a love of science begets more science.)

Best budget: Popular Science by Celestron Travel Scope 70 Portable Telescope

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Popular Science has teamed up with Celestron on a line of products. The decision to include this model in our recommendations was made by our reviewer independently of that relationship, but we do earn a commission on its sales—all of which helps power Popular Science.

Why it made the cut: With its feature set, portability, and nice price point, this scope is ready for some serious stargazing without a serious investment.

Specs

• Focal length: 400mm
• Aperture: 70mm, f/5.7
• Magnification: 168x

Pros

• Bluetooth remote shutter release
• Ships with two eyepieces
• Pack included

Cons

• Lacks optical power for deep space

Getting out of town, whether camping in the wilderness or driving in the countryside, is one of the attractions of stargazing. Out in the great wide open, far away from streetlights, the stars explode even to the naked eye. Add a handy telescope like the Popular Science Celestron Travel Scope 70 Portable Telescope—our pick for the best portable telescope under $500—and you’ll see much farther into space. The fact that it’s as affordable as it is moveable just adds to the value.

The Popular Science Celestron Travel Scope 70 Portable Telescope is a well-equipped refractor telescope built for backpacking and adventuring but without skimping on cool gadgets. Whether you’re gazing at celestial or terrestrial objects, the smartphone adapter will aid you in capturing images with your personal device, with an included Bluetooth remote shutter release.

Designed with portability and weight in mind, the entire package fits into an included pack with a total of 3.3 pounds—that includes the telescope, tripod stand, 20mm and 10mm eyepieces, 3x Barlow lens, and more. Download Celestron’s Starry Night software to help you get the most from your astronomy experience. 

Here are some other options from the Celestron and Popular Science collaboration:

• Popular Science StarSense Explorer DX 100AZ Smartphone App-Enabled Telescope
• Popular Science AstroMaster 80mm – Portable Refractor Telescope
• Popular Science StarSense Explorer DX 5” Smartphone App-Enabled Telescope 
• Popular Science by Celestron Outland X 12x50mm Monocular with Tripod, Smartphone Adapter, and Bluetooth remote

What to consider when buying the best telescopes under $500

Optics

There are three types of optics available on consumer telescopes, and they will help you achieve three different goals. Refractor telescopes use a series of glass lenses to bring celestial bodies like the moon and near planets into focus easily. Reflector telescopes—also known as Newtonian scopes for their inventor, Sir Isaac Newton—swap lenses for mirrors and allow stargazers to see deeper into space. Versatile compound telescopes combine these two methods in a smaller, more portable form factor, with results that land right in the middle of the pack. 

Aperture

Photographers will recognize this: The aperture controls the amount of light entering the telescope, like on a manual camera. Aperture is the diameter of the lens or the primary mirror, so a telescope with a large aperture draws more light than a small aperture, resulting in views into deeper space. F-ratio is the spec to watch here. Low f-ratios, such as f/4 or f/5, are usually best for wide-field observation and photography, while high f-ratios like f/15 can make deep-space nebulae and other bodies easier to see and capture. Midpoint f-ratios can get the job done for both.

Mounts

All the lens and mirror power in the world won’t mean much if you attach your telescope to a subpar mount. In general, the more lightweight and portable the tripod mount, the more movement you’ll likely get while gazing or photographing the stars. Investing in a stable mount will improve the viewing experience. The two common mount types are alt-az (altitude-azimuth) and equatorial. Altazimuth mounts operate in the same way as a camera tripod, allowing you to adjust both axes (left-right, up-down), while equatorial mounts also tilt to make it easier to follow celestial objects.

FAQs

Final thoughts on the best telescopes under $500

• Best overall: Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ
• Best for viewing planets: Sky-Watcher Skymax 102mm Maksutov-Cassegrain Telescope
• Best for astrophotography: William Optics Guide Star 61
• Best for kids: Orion Observer II 60mm AZ Refractor Telescope Starter Kit
• Best budget: Popular Science by Celestron Travel Scope 70 Portable Telescope

Although this group of sub-$500 scopes is fairly diverse, the Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ stands out in our best telescopes under $500 as the best place to start your interstellar journey due to its versatility and sky recognition app, which make for a fun evening of guided tours through the star patterns, no experience necessary. 

Why trust us

Popular Science started writing about technology more than 150 years ago. There was no such thing as “gadget writing” when we published our first issue in 1872, but if there was, our mission to demystify the world of innovation for everyday readers means we would have been all over it. Here in the present, PopSci is fully committed to helping readers navigate the increasingly intimidating array of devices on the market right now.

Our writers and editors have combined decades of experience covering and reviewing consumer electronics. We each have our own obsessive specialties—from high-end audio to video games to cameras and beyond—but when we’re reviewing devices outside of our immediate wheelhouses, we do our best to seek out trustworthy voices and opinions to help guide people to the very best recommendations. We know we don’t know everything, but we’re excited to live through the analysis paralysis that internet shopping can spur so readers don’t have to.

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Of all the pyrotechnics that blast through the cosmos, fast radio bursts (FRBs) are among the most powerful—and mysterious. While our radio telescopes have picked up hundreds of known FRBs, radio astronomers recently detected one of the most fascinating bursts yet. Not only does it come from a greater distance than any FRB observed before, it’s the most energetic, too.

A superlative FRB like this defies our already murky understanding of the bursts’ origins. FRBs are sudden surges of radio waves that typically last less than a second, if not mere milliseconds. And they are very, very high-energy: They can deliver as much energy in milliseconds as the sun emits in three days. Despite all that, we don’t know for certain how they form.

The new event, what astronomers lovingly call FRB 20220610A, first appeared as a blip in the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder, an arrangement of antennae in the desert about 360 miles north of Perth. When astronomers measured the burst’s redshift, they calculated that it left its source about 8 billion years ago, as they described in a paper published today in Science. 

After pinpointing the burst’s origin in the sky and following up with visible light and infrared telescopes, the authors managed to develop a blurry image of merging galaxies.

[Related: Two bizarre stars might have beamed a unique radio signal to Earth]

“The further you go out in the universe, of course, the fainter the galaxies are, because they’re farther away. It’s quite difficult to identify the host galaxy, and that’s what they’ve done,” Sarah Burke Spolaor, an astronomer who studies FRBs at West Virginia University, who was not an author of the study.

FRBs aren’t exciting just because they’re loud. To reach us, a burst from outside the Milky Way must traverse millions or billions of light-years of the near-empty space between galaxies. In the process, they’ll encounter an extremely sparse smattering of ionized particles. This is the stuff that prevents the bulk of the cosmos from being completely empty—what astronomers call the intergalactic medium, which might make up as much as half of the universe’s “normal” matter.

“We don’t know much about it, because it’s so tenuous that it’s difficult to detect,” says Daniele Michilli, an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who also wasn’t a study author.

As an FRB crosses the intergalactic medium on its long voyage, the particles cause its radio waves to scatter, which leaves fingerprints that astronomers can pick apart. In this way, scientists can use FRBs to investigate the intergalactic medium. More faraway bursts like FRB 20220610A could allow astronomers to study the medium across wide swathes of the universe.

[Related: How astronomers traced a puzzling detection to a lunchtime mistake]

“It’s very exciting, definitely one of the great applications of fast radio bursts,” says Ziggy Pleunis, an astronomer who studies FRBs at the University of Toronto, who was also not part of the authors’ group. “Fast radio bursts currently are really the only thing that we know that interacts with the intergalactic medium in a meaningful enough way that we can measure properties.”

In the future, astronomers might even be able to use FRBs to study how the universe expands. To unweave that mystery, however, astronomers will need to detect FRBs from even deeper into the cosmic past than FRB 20220610A. “For a lot of applications, it’s still not quite far away enough,” Pleunis says. “But it certainly bodes well.” 

There’s a balancing act involved: Over a sufficiently long distance, the particles in the intergalactic medium will peel an FRB apart until it disperses into background noise. To survive, an FRB must be brighter and more energetic; in turn, by taking stock of how much a burst has dispersed, astronomers can estimate its original energy. 

By computing the numbers for FRB 20220610A, they found that it was the most energetic burst Earth has seen so far. (Another recently observed burst, FRB 20201124A, comes within the same order of magnitude, but FRB 20220610A is the record-holder.) A burst with this much energy throws something of a wrench into astronomers’ understanding, such as it is, of what creates FRBs in the first place.

We, again, don’t have a definitive answer to that question. Complicating the question, some FRBs are one-off flashes, while others repeat, hinting that the two types of FRBs may have two different origins. (To wit, FRB 20220610A seems to have been a one-off. But that other high-energy FRB, FRB 20201124A, seems to repeat.)

Nevertheless, astronomers have simulated a few scenarios, largely involving neutron stars. Perhaps FRBs burst from near a neutron star’s surface, or perhaps FRBs erupt from shockwaves through the material that neutron stars throw up.

But when this paper’s authors ran the numbers with their new FRB, they found that neither of those two scenarios could easily create an burst with this much energy—suggesting that theoretical astronomers have even more work to do before they can satisfactorily explain these events.

“What always strikes me about fast radio bursts is, every time we observe a new one, it breaks the mold of previous ones,” Spolaor says.

The post Oldest radio burst ever found could tell us what exists between galaxies appeared first on Popular Science.

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Jupiter and its dynamic atmosphere are ready for another closeup in a new image taken with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Using the telescope’s data, scientists have discovered a new and never-before-captured high-speed jet stream. The jet stream sits over Jupiter’s equator above the main cloud decks, barrels at speeds twice as high as a Category 5 hurricane, and spans more than 3,000 miles. The findings were described in a study published October 19 in the journal Nature Astronomy.

[Related: This hot Jupiter exoplanet unexpectedly hangs out with a super-Earth.]

Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system and its atmosphere has some very visible features, including the infamous Great Red Spot, which is large enough to swallow the Earth. The planet is ever-changing and there are still mysteries in this gas giant that scientists are trying to unravel. According to NASA, the new discovery of the jet stream is helping them decipher how the layers of Jupiter’s famously turbulent atmosphere interact with each other. Now, JWST is helping scientists look further into the planet and see some of the lower and deeper layers of Jupiter’s atmosphere where gigantic storms and ammonia ice clouds reside. 

“This is something that totally surprised us,” study co-author Ricardo Hueso said in a statement.  “What we have always seen as blurred hazes in Jupiter’s atmosphere now appear as crisp features that we can track along with the planet’s fast rotation.” Hueso is an astrophysicist at the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, Spain.

The research team analyzed data from JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) that was obtained in July 2022. The Early Release Science program was designed to take images of Jupiter 10 hours apart (one Jupiter day) in four different filters. Each filter detected different types of changes in the small features located at various altitudes of Jupiter’s atmosphere.

The resulting image shows Jupiter’s atmosphere in infrared light. The jet stream is located over the equator, or center, of the planet. There are multiple bright white spots and streaks that are likely very high-altitude cloud tops of condensed convective storms. Jupiter’s northern and southern poles are dotted by auroras that appear red and extend to the higher altitudes of the planet. 

“Even though various ground-based telescopes, spacecraft like NASA’s Juno and Cassini, and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have observed the Jovian system’s changing weather patterns, Webb has already provided new findings on Jupiter’s rings, satellites, and its atmosphere,” study co-author and University of California, Berkeley astronomer Imke de Pater said in a statement.  

The newly discovered jet stream travels at roughly 320 miles per hour and is located close to 25 miles above the clouds, in Jupiter’s lower stratosphere. The team compared the winds observed by JWST at higher altitudes with the winds observed at deeper layers by the Hubble Space Telescope. This enabled them to measure how fast the winds change with altitude and generate wind shears.

[Related: Jupiter formed dinky little rings, and there’s a convincing explanation why.]

The team hopes to use additional observations of Jupiter to determine if the jet’s speed and altitude change over time. 

“Jupiter has a complicated but repeatable pattern of winds and temperatures in its equatorial stratosphere, high above the winds in the clouds and hazes measured at these wavelengths,” Leigh Fletcher, a study co-author and planetary scientists at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. “If the strength of this new jet is connected to this oscillating stratospheric pattern, we might expect the jet to vary considerably over the next 2 to 4 years–it’ll be really exciting to test this theory in the years to come.”

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The recent “ring of fire” solar eclipse looked stunning across portions of North and South America and we now have a new view of the stellar event. The Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite created the image of the eclipse on Saturday October 14, depicting the mostly blue Earth against the darkness of space, with one large patch of the planet in the shadow of the moon. 

[Related: Why NASA will launch rockets to study the eclipse.]

Launched in 2015, DSCOVR is a joint NASA, NOAA, and U.S. Air Force satellite. It offers a unique perspective since it is close to 1 million miles away from Earth and sits in a gravitationally stable point between the Earth and the sun called Lagrange Point 1. DSCOVR’s primary job is to monitor the solar wind in an effort to improve space weather forecasts. 

A special device aboard the satellite called the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) imager took this view of the eclipse from space. According to NASA, the sensor gives scientists frequent views of the Earth. The moon’s shadow, or umbra, is falling across the southeastern coast of Texas, near Corpus Christi.

An annular solar eclipse occurs when the moon moves between Earth and the sun. The sun does not vanish completely in this kind of eclipse. Instead, the moon is positioned far enough from Earth to keep the bright edges of the sun visible. This is what causes the “ring of fire,” as if the moon has been outlined with bright paint.

While this year’s event could be seen to some degree across the continental United States, the 125-mile-wide path of annularity began in Oregon around 9:13 AM Pacific Daylight Time. The moon’s shadow then moved southeast across Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico, before passing over Texas and the Gulf of Mexico. It continued south towards Mexico’s Yucatan, Peninsula, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and Brazil

Unlike the colorful Aurora Borealis, eclipses are much easier to predict. Scientists can say when annular and solar eclipses will happen down to the second centuries in advance. The precise positions of the moon and the sun and how they shift over time is already known, so scientists can see how the moon’s shadow will fall onto Earth’s globe. Advances in computer technology have also enabled scientists to even chart eclipse paths down to a range of a few feet.

[Related: We can predict solar eclipses to the second. Here’s how.]

The next annular solar eclipse will be at least partially visible from South America on October 2,2024. One of these ‘ring of fire’ eclipses will not be visible in the United States until June 21, 2039. However, a total solar eclipse will darken the sky from Maine to Texas on April 8, 2024. There is still plenty of time to get eclipse glasses or make a pinhole camera to safely watch the next big celestial event. 

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A giant seismic event on Mars—a “marsquake”—that shook the Red Planet last year had an unexpected source, surprising astrophysicists from around the world. They suspected a meteorite strike. Instead, enormous tectonic forces within Mars’s crust, which caused vibrations that lasted for six hours, caused the quake and not a meteorite strike. The findings are described in a study published October 17 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

[Related: Two NASA missions combined forces to analyze a new kind of marsquake.]

NASA’s InSight lander recorded the magnitude 4.7 marsquake on May 4, 2022, which scientists named S1222a. Its seismic signal was similar to those of previous quakes that were caused by meteorite impacts, so the team began to search for an impact crater. 

In the new study, a team from the University of Oxford worked with the European Space Agency, Chinese National Space Agency, the Indian Space Research Organisation, and the United Arab Emirates Space Agency to scour more than 55 million square miles on Mars. Each group examined the data coming from its own satellites to look for a crater, dust cloud, or other signature of a meteorite impact. Because the search came up empty, they now believe that S1222a was caused by the release of huge tectonic forces from within the Martian interior. 

That doesn’t mean Mars’s tectonic plates are moving the way they do during an earthquake. The best available evidence suggests the planet is remaining still. “We still think that Mars doesn’t have any active plate tectonics today, so this event was likely caused by the release of stress within Mars’ crust,” study co-author and University of Oxford planetary geophysicist Benjamin Fernando said in a statement. “These stresses are the result of billions of years of evolution; including the cooling and shrinking of different parts of the planet at different rates.”

While Fernando explains that scientists do not fully understand why some parts of Mars seem to have more stress than others, these results can help them investigate further. “One day, this information may help us to understand where it would be safe for humans to live on Mars and where you might want to avoid!” he said.

S1222a was one of the last events recorded by NASA’s InSight mission before its end. The InSight lander launched in May 2018 and survived “seven minutes of terror” to touch down on Mars, where it studied the planet’s interior and seismology for years. The last of the spacecraft’s data was returned in December 2022, after increasing dust accumulation on its solar panels caused InSight to lose power. 

[Related: InSight says goodbye with what may be its last wistful image of Mars.]

In its four years and 19 days of service, InSight recorded more than 1,300 marsquakes. At least eight of these events were from a meteorite impact; the largest two formed craters that were almost 500 feet in diameter. If the S1222a event was formed by an impact, the team estimates that the crater to be would have been at least 984 feet in diameter.

The team is applying knowledge from this study to other work, including future missions to our moon and the tectonics that are similar to California’s famed San Andreas fault located on one of Saturn’s moons named Titan. They also hope that it encourages additional major international collaborations to study the Red Planet and beyond. 

“This has been a great opportunity for me to collaborate with the InSight team, as well as with individuals from other major missions dedicated to the study of Mars,” study co-author and New York University Abu Dhabi astrophysicist Dimitra Atri said in a statement. “This really is the golden age of Mars exploration!”

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Last Friday, NASA launched the Psyche spacecraft toward an asteroid of the same name. Psyche is blazing a trail as the first mission to a metal asteroid, and it’s also about to blaze a literal blue trail. The source of its bright wake—the probe’s remarkable propulsive system—will switch on within the first 100 days of the mission.

A mechanism known as a Hall thruster will propel the Psyche through space. This thruster glows blue as it ionizes xenon, a noble gas also used in headlights and plasma televisions, to move the spacecraft forward. This is the first time this tech, which has only been available for NASA spaceflight since 2015, has been used to travel beyond the moon—but what makes it so special, and why is Psyche using it?

When planning a space mission, engineers are focused on efficiency. Carrying chemical fuel along for the massive interplanetary journey would be like trying to drive around the entire world while having to keep all the gasoline you need in the trunk, because there are no rest stops along the way—it’s just not feasible. To get to its destination, Psyche would need thousands and thousands of pounds of chemical propellant.

[Related: How tiny spacecraft could ‘sail’ to Mars surprisingly quickly]

To get around this problem, engineers turned to electric thrusters. These come in many flavors: “There are many different types of electric thrusters, almost as many as there are different makers of cars,” explained NASA’s Psyche chief engineer Dan Goebel in a blog post. But space travel uses two kinds in particular, known as ion thrusters and Hall thrusters. “They can probably be considered the Tesla versions of space propulsion,” Goebel wrote. Rather than burning fuel, electric thrusters rip off the electrons from the propellant’s atoms in a process known as ionization. Then they chuck those ions out at some 80,000 miles per hour. This generates a higher specific impulse—which Goebel says is “equivalent to miles per gallon in your car,” but for spacecraft—than chemical fuels, enabling a thruster-powered spacecraft to go farther on less propellant.

Ion thrusters use high electric voltages to make a plasma (the fourth state of matter) and spew ions into space. NASA’s Dawn mission used these to get to dwarf planet Ceres, but they’re not the fastest—according to NASA, it would take the spacecraft four days to go from 0 to 60 miles per hour. Definitely not race car material! 

[Related: Want to learn about something in space? Crash into it.]

Hall thrusters, on the other hand, use a magnetic field to swirl electrons in a circle, producing a beam of ions. They don’t get quite as good “mileage” as ion thrusters, but they pack a bigger punch. The Psyche team picked this system because it allowed them to make a smaller, and therefore more cost-efficient, spacecraft. 

For the thrusters to work, the spacecraft needs power—which it gets from the sun, via solar panels—and something to ionize. For Psyche, that’s xenon gas. “Xenon is the propellant of choice because it’s inert (it doesn’t react with the rest of the spacecraft) and is easy to ionize,” explained Goebel. It also gives the thrusters their remarkable blue shine. Psyche carries about 150 gallons of the stuff, and gets about 10 million miles per gallon. 

Now that the mission has launched, the team will spend the next 100 days checking out all the spacecraft’s systems to ensure they’re ready for the journey. At some point in this period, those glimmering blue thrusters will turn on.

If Psyche proves to be a success, Hall thrusters will be likely to make an appearance on future space missions. They offer “the right mix of cost savings, efficiency, and power, and could play an important role in supporting future science missions to Mars and beyond,” said Steven Scott, program manager for the Psyche mission at the company Maxar, which built the thrusters, in a press release. Thanks to these propulsive devices, Psyche should reach its destination in the asteroid belt in just 3.5 years—and we can’t wait to see what lies at the end of its electric blue trail.

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We had a great time checking out the Oct. 14 solar eclipse, but the next one that’s visible here in the U.S. won’t be until April 2024. Lots of interesting things will be happening in the sky between then and now, and you’ll need a good telescope to check them out. Right now, Amazon has substantial discounts on Celestron x PopSci telescopes that were already a solid value. There are three different options currently available depending on your star-gazing needs. Then, when the next eclipse rolls around, you can buy a dedicated solar eclipse filter and get a better look than all those jealous people with their (still pretty cool) pinhole cameras.

Popular Science StarSense Explorer DX 5” Smartphone App-Enabled Telescope $498 (was $599)

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This is the biggest and most powerful scope in the Celestron x PopSci lineup, and it’s just over $100 off right now. Its five-inch aperture and high-end coatings provide a clear, low-aberration image of the night sky. More importantly, it’s compatible with the Celestron app, which can help you find cool things going on in the sky above you and then help you locate them with your scope so you don’t have to go blindly hunting around the heavens. That’s especially important with a scope this powerful.

Popular Science StarSense Explorer DX 100AZ Smartphone App-Enabled Telescope $269 (was $349)

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This 100mm refractor provides a very solid field of view for astrophotography. It’s light and easy to move around, and it’s compatible again with Celestron’s app to guide you around the night sky. Plus, the integrated hood helps combat errant light from hitting the front element of the scope and causing image-ruining glare.

Popular Science AstroMaster 80mm – Portable Refractor Telescope $151 (was $239)

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This model is meant specifically for beginners, and the price makes it very appealing with this discount. The short tub provides a relatively loose view of celestial objects, so beginners won’t get frustrated trying to find specific areas. Plus, the short tube design keeps it small and light, so this is a great scope to keep as a backup for quick jaunts out into dark sky country without lots of gear.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Popular Science has teamed up with Celestron on a line of products. We do earn a commission on its sales—all of which helps power Popular Science.

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Best overall		Sega Toys Homestar Flux		SEE IT	Get a scientifically accurate recreation of the night sky at home.
Best for adults		BlissLights Sky Lite 2.0		SEE IT	Skip the kid stuff without breaking the bank.
Best budget		Infmetry Star Projector		SEE IT	This star light is designed ofor gaming rooms, home theaters,

Beyond a few bright celestial objects, the rise of light pollution has made it difficult for most people to experience a genuinely starry night sky—and that’s where star projectors come in. If artificial lights have obscured your view of the Milky Way, these compact devices provide a fun and comfortable way to observe the cosmos. All you need is a dark room with a power outlet and you’re ready to bask in the wonders of the universe. Many also function as night lights or pattern projectors that can spruce up a room without the celestial theme. While nothing can replace the awe-inspiring feeling of seeing millions of stars in person, the best star projectors can still leave you transfixed.

• Best scientifically accurate: Sega Toys Homestar Flux
• Best portable: NEWSEE Northern Lights Star Projector
• Best for adults: BlissLights Sky Lite
• Best for kids: Gdnzduts Galaxy Projector
• Best budget: Infmetry Star Projector

How we chose the best star projectors

I’ve been fortunate to visit areas less affected by light pollution, so I know what it’s like to gaze upon the grandeur of our galaxy. As an editor at TechnoBuffalo, I visited NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif., to learn about the Mars rover. I also took a guided tour of the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, where I saw enormous satellites used to communicate with faraway spacecraft. Over the last 10 years, I’ve written about gadgets and space for outlets like CNN Underscored, TechnoBuffalo, and Popular Science, and this guide, in a way, allows me to write about both. If you’re searching for a projector for movie night, you’re in the wrong place (though we do have a guide for the best projectors for indoors and outdoors). But if you enjoy the stars of the sky as much as you do the stars of the screen, read on.

The best star projectors: Reviews & Recommendations

Whether you’re looking to liven up your space with colorful lights or follow in the footsteps of Carl Sagan, a star projector is a novel way to explore the cosmos. When making our picks, we found a balance between fantastical projectors, options for kids and adults, and a more scientifically accurate model that’s great for those who love astronomy.

Best overall: Sega Toys Homestar Flux

SEE IT

Why it made the cut: Sega’s Homestar Flux features the most scientifically accurate images out of all the star projectors we picked.

Specs 

• Dimensions: 6.3 x 6.3 x 5.9 inches (LWH)
• Weight: 1.36 pounds
• Power: USB

Pros 

• Supports multiple discs
• Projects up to 60,000 stars at once
• Great educational tool

Cons 

• Expensive

Sega’s Homestar Flux is the closest thing to a planetarium if you’re a fan of astronomy and intend to use your star projector as an educational tool. It can project up to 60,000 stars at once and covers a circle with a 106-inch diameter. Unlike the other star projectors on this list, Sega’s model supports interchangeable discs, allowing owners to explore different parts of the universe in incredible detail. The Homestar Flux comes with two discs, the Northern Hemisphere and the Northern Hemisphere with constellation lines; it also supports additional discs that feature the Andromeda Galaxy, the southern hemisphere, and more. 

These discs contain data from different missions of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the United States Naval Observatory (USNO). While Sega’s projector is pricey, it features the most scientifically accurate experience and is a must-have for would-be astronomers.

Best portable: NEWSEE Northern Lights Star Projector

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Why it made the cut: NEWSEE’s Northern Lights Star Projector lets you take the magic of the stars with you everywhere.

Specs 

• Dimensions: 4.7 x 4.7 x 4.8 inches (LWH)
• Weight: 1.15 pounds
• Power: USB-C

Pros 

• Battery powered
• 360-degree projection
• White noise mode
• Bluetooth streaming

Cons 

• Don’t expect high-fidelity audio

NEWSEE’s Northern Lights Star Projector is the only model we’re recommending that can be taken anywhere. The battery-powered projector can run for a couple of hours before needing to be recharged—though because it has a USB-C port, you can plug it into a portable charger to extend its life. The projector sits on a stand and can be rotated so that you can find the best angle for your room. This flexibility comes in handy because you may be using the projector in multiple rooms because of its portability.

You can program NEWSEE’s projector to display one of four different star patterns, and play five different white noises. This star projector can even be used as a Bluetooth speaker for playing any music from your digital library. However, you shouldn’t get your hopes up where audio fidelity is concerned—consider this a fun bonus feature. If you want to take a star projector to a friend’s place or on vacation, this is the one to grab.

Best for adults: BlissLights Sky Lite

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Why it made the cut: The Sky Lite from BlissLights will help you set the mood with the right lighting.

Specs 

• Dimensions: 5.95 x 2.91 x 5.95 (LWH)
• Weight: 1.68
• Power: AC adapter

Pros 

• Adjustable brightness
• Tilting base
• App controlled

Cons 

• Projector design is easy to tip over

The Sky Lite from BlissLights is an excellent option for adults because it offers brightness controls, and several lighting effects, making it easy to set the proper mood. While star projectors generally become the center of attention in whatever room they’re in, the Sky Lite is excellent as complementary lighting, casting colorful auroras during dinner, movie nights, and parties. Additionally, the Sky lite 2.0 supports a rotation feature and a shutoff timer so that you can have your magical night under the stars before nodding off to bed. 

Best for kids: Gdnzduts Galaxy Projector

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Why it made the cut: This galaxy projector features brightness controls and a shutoff timer, plus it doubles as a colorful night light.

Specs 

• Dimensions: 6.45 x 6.45 x 4.92 (LWH)
• Weight: 0.61 pounds
• Power: USB

Pros 

• Built-in speaker
• Shutoff timer
• Brightness controls

Cons 

• Doesn’t show constellations

This simple galaxy projector features 21 lighting effects, a shutoff timer, brightness controls, and doubles as a night light. That way, you can find the right effect you like, adjust the brightness, and set a timer before bed. You can also toggle the lasers on and off, turning off the stars and letting the nebula-like effect lull you to sleep. The Galaxy Projector also comes with a remote, making it easy for kids to operate. Whether you want to inspire your kid’s imagination or keep them feeling safe with a night light, the Galaxy Projector is an excellent choice.

Best budget: Infmetry Star Projector

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Why it made the cut: Infmetry’s Star Projector offers an array of features at an affordable price.

Specs 

• Dimensions: 7.1 x 7.1 x 7.5 inches (LWH)
• Weight: 1.37 pounds
• Power: USB

Pros 

• Affordable
• Five brightness modes
• Shutoff timer

Cons

• No nebula or aurora features

Infantry’s Star Projector casts 360 degrees of light through a precut dome, creating a night sky-like effect. This model also supports five brightness modes, a breathing mode, and four colors (white, yellow, blue, and green). There’s also a shutoff timer, so you can fall asleep with the projector on and wake up with it off. It’s not nearly as captivating as the other options on this list, but for the price, it’s a fun way to introduce someone to the wonders of the universe.

What to consider when buying the best star projectors

Generally, cheap star projectors are novelties that emit a mix of colorful swirling LED lights and class 2 lasers, which are low-power visible lasers—the same type used in laser pointers. While most models aren’t scientifically accurate, they provide a fanciful escape and can offer a calming experience. However, if you’re serious about astronomy and willing to spend more, you can find a star projector that can turn your room into a personal planetarium.

Most models we researched offer features like brightness and color controls, image rotation, and an automatic shut-off timer. We found picking the right star projector is more about finding the experience that matches your mood. Are you looking for the cosmic color of nebulae? What about scientifically accurate constellations? Whatever you’re after, there’s a star projector for everyone.

Projection type

You’d think that a star projector only projects, well, stars. But many of them can cover the broad cosmic spectrum and mimic everything from nebulae to auroras to constellations. As we mentioned, picking the right one is about capturing your interest and imagination. A projector that can cast a nebula or aurora is an excellent choice if you want to create a calming environment before going to sleep. A star projector with more scientifically accurate images is ideal for studying and educational use.

Brightness control

A good star projector uses an LED bulb and offers multiple brightness settings. While star projectors are most effective in a dark room, the models that project nebula and aurora make for great complementary lighting, such as during a party or movie night. They also make for good night lights and can help create a calming environment that encourages rest.

Color settings

In addition to adjusting brightness, most star projectors offer different color settings, similar to smart light bulbs. Users can create a scene that fits their mood through advanced color settings and change it with the press of a button. A green aurora may be suitable for calm and tranquility, while yellow may be ideal for happiness and optimism. Most star projectors allow color adjustments through a controller or smartphone app and support millions of color options.

Still vs. rotating

Star projectors generally offer different viewing modes: still and rotating. A projector that operates in still mode will cast light onto a surface and remain static. A projector with a rotating feature will put on a more dynamic light show by slowly rotating the lights. Many of the models we looked at are capable of switching between still and rotating modes.

Extra features

Beyond simply projecting lights onto a wall, some star projectors include extra features like white noise, app support, and shutoff timers. Some models can even be synced with your music so that you can put on a cosmic light show. While these features aren’t necessary, they make specific models more appealing, especially if you intend to use a star projector in a child’s room, because it can act as a night light and white noise machine and then shut off after a few hours.

FAQs

Final thoughts on the best star projectors

• Best scientifically accurate: Sega Toys Homestar Flux
• Best portable: NEWSEE Northern Lights Star Projector
• Best for adults: BlissLights Sky Lite
• Best for kids: Gdnzduts Galaxy Projector
• Best budget: Infmetry Star Projector

Star projectors are a fun and affordable way to add bright, colorful lights to your bedroom. That said, most are nothing more than novelties and put on light shows that vaguely resemble nebulae and auroras. If you’re searching for something with more scientifically accurate imagery, you can find some excellent options if you don’t mind spending more money. Better yet, we recommend traveling to a place unaffected by light pollution and experiencing the feeling of seeing millions of stars in person.

Why trust us

Popular Science started writing about technology more than 150 years ago. There was no such thing as “gadget writing” when we published our first issue in 1872, but if there was, our mission to demystify the world of innovation for everyday readers means we would have been all over it. Here in the present, PopSci is fully committed to helping readers navigate the increasingly intimidating array of devices on the market right now.

Our writers and editors have combined decades of experience covering and reviewing consumer electronics. We each have our own obsessive specialties—from high-end audio to video games to cameras and beyond—but when we’re reviewing devices outside of our immediate wheelhouses, we do our best to seek out trustworthy voices and opinions to help guide people to the very best recommendations. We know we don’t know everything, but we’re excited to live through the analysis paralysis that internet shopping can spur so readers don’t have to.

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On Saturday, October 14, you’ll be able to watch an annular “ring of fire” eclipse as the moon passes in front of the sun at a distance where it’s unable to cover all of Earth’s nearest star. But only an exclusive crowd will be able to witness the event in its fully blazing glory—unless you know where to look.

Although it may be too late to travel to one of the best locations to watch this year’s final solar eclipse, nearly everyone in all 50 US states will have a chance to catch at least a glimpse (sorry western Alaska and western Hawaii). The 125-mile-wide path of annularity, however, will stretch from Oregon to Texas and cross just nine states before continuing on to Central and South America. You’ll only be able to see the sun form a fiery halo around the moon along that route. If you’re outside its range, you can simply load up one of several official livestreams to see what you’re missing.

How to watch the October 14, 2023 eclipse in person

The path of annularity will enter the US in Oregon at 12:13 p.m. Eastern Time (9:13 a.m. Pacific Time) and leave Texas at 1:30 p.m. ET (12:03 p.m. Central Time). The “ring of fire,” will pass over 29 national park sites and dozens of other pieces of public land. Worldwide, about 33 million people will be able to see it firsthand, while everyone else will have to settle for a less dramatic experience.

No matter where you are, make sure you’re wearing protective glasses to avoid damaging your eyes if you plan to look directly at the eclipse, or make a pinhole camera to project the event onto a sheet of paper. And of course, weather conditions may make it hard or impossible to see anything, so take note of the forecast.

If you want to know exactly what to expect where you are, astronomy website Time and Date has an interactive map that will help you set your eclipse-viewing plans. Once you’ve opened the map, click the magnifying glass icon on the left to open the search menu. Type the name of any city or town into the search bar and select it from the list that populates underneath. A pin will appear on the map and a box full of eclipse data will show up under the search bar.

That data will show you how much of the moon will cover the sun at that location, when the eclipse will begin and end there, when maximum coverage will occur, and the weather forecast for that spot on the globe. If you click the play icon next to the duration, you’ll go to another page where you can watch a simulation of what the eclipse will look like at that exact spot.

How to watch the annular “ring of fire” eclipse online

Just because you aren’t part of the 0.41 percent of people in the world who will be able to physically bear witness to the celestial spectacle doesn’t mean you’re stuck with whatever’s happening in the sky above you. All you have to do is turn your eyes away from the wonders of the natural world and look at a screen—there are four livestreams we think will offer an exquisite show.

The Exploratorium’s livestreams

The San Francisco-based Exploratorium will be broadcasting two livestreams starting at 8 a.m. PT (11 a.m. ET), one from their telescopes in Valley of the Gods, Utah, and another from their telescopes in Ely, Nevada. They will also broadcast Spanish-language coverage of the event starting at 9 a.m. PT (12 p.m. ET) on YouTube.

According to Time and Date, annularity—the “ring of fire”— will last 4 minutes and 46 seconds at the Valley of the Gods. There are morning clouds in the forecast, though, so the view might be obscured, but this has the potential to be the most scenic livestream on our list. 

• Eclipse start: 9:10 a.m. Mountain Time (11:10 a.m. ET)
• “Ring of fire” start: 10:29 a.m. MT (12:29 p.m. ET)

In Ely, meanwhile, annularity will last for 3 minutes and 38 seconds. The weather is expected to be partly cloudy, so the eclipse could be hard to see.

• Eclipse start: 8:07 a.m. PT (11:07 a.m. ET)
• “Ring of fire” start: 9:24 a.m. PT (12:24 p.m. ET)

Time and Date’s livestream

Time and Date’s eclipse chasers will be broadcasting a livestream from Roswell, New Mexico. There, according to the website’s own interactive map, the annularity will last for 4 minutes and 41 seconds. It’s expected to be sunny there, so the view should be clear.

• Eclipse start: 9:15 a.m. MT (11:15 a.m. ET)
• “Ring of fire” start: 10:38 a.m. MT (12:38 p.m. ET)

NASA’s livestreams

NASA, of course, will also be livestreaming the eclipse, with feeds from Kerrville, Texas, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, starting at 11:30 a.m. ET. Annularity will last 4 minutes and 14 seconds at Kerrville, according to Time and Date.

• Eclipse start: 10:22 a.m. CT (11:22 a.m. ET)
• “Ring of fire” start: 11:50 a.m. CT (12:50 p.m. ET)

At Albuquerque, which is supposed to have sunny skies during the eclipse, annularity will last 4 minutes and 48 seconds.

• Eclipse start: 9:13 a.m. MT (11:13 a.m. ET)
• “Ring of fire” start: 10:34 a.m. MT (12:34 p.m. ET)

The space agency will also be broadcasting a live feed of three rocket launches that are part of its Atmospheric Perturbations around the Eclipse Path (APEP) mission to study how Earth’s ionosphere responds to a sudden drop in sunlight. You might want to cue that one up in a different browser window alongside the eclipse, or set up picture-in-picture on your device.

Whatever you do, just know that your scheduling calculations and technological machinations are probably way less complicated than all the math scientists do to predict the paths of future eclipses.

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The powdery material that NASA officials unveiled on Wednesday looked like asphalt or charcoal, but was easily worth more than its weight in diamonds. The fragments were from a world all their own—pieces of the asteroid Bennu, collected and returned to Earth for analysis by the OSIRIS-REx mission. The samples hold chemical clues to the formation of our solar system and the origin of life-supporting water on our planet.

The clay and minerals from the 4.5 billion-year-old rock had been preserved in space’s deep freeze since the dawn of the solar system. Last month, after a seven-year-long space mission, they parachuted to a desert in Utah, where they were whisked away by helicopter. 

And now those pristine materials sit in an airtight vessel in a clean room at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, where researchers like University of Arizona planetary scientist Dante Lauretta are getting their first chance to study the sample up close. 

“The electron microscopes were fired up and ready” by September 27, Lauretta said in a news conference. “And boy did we really nail it.” (Lauretta, the principal investigator, gave the mission its name, which stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer.) The preliminary investigation of a tiny fraction of the sample revealed it is rich in water, carbon, and organic compounds.

Carbon is essential for all living things on Earth, forming chemical bonds with hydrogen, oxygen, and other elements necessary to build proteins and enzymes. “We’re looking at the kinds of minerals that may have played essential roles in the origin of life on Earth,” Lauretta said. 

The Bennu sample contained about 4.7 percent carbon, as measured by the Carnegie Institution for Science, according to Daniel Glavin, the OSIRIS-REx sample analysis lead at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. This is “the highest abundance of carbon” the Carnegie team has measured in an extraterrestrial sample, Glavin said. “There were scientists on the team going ‘Wow, oh my God!’ And when a scientist says that ‘Wow;’ that’s a big deal.”

[Related: This speedy space rock is the fastest asteroid in our solar system]

The Bennu sample is also flush with organic compounds, too, which glowed like tiny stars within the dark sample when exposed to a black light. “We picked the right asteroid—and not only that, we brought back the right sample,” Glavin said. “This stuff is an astrobiologist’s dream.”

Asteroids like Bennu were most likely responsible for all of Earth’s wet features—the water in oceans, lakes, rivers, and rain probably arrived when space rocks landed on our young planet some 4 billion years ago. Bennu has water-bearing clay with a fibrous structure, which according to Lauretta, was the key material that ferried H₂O to Earth.

Under magnification, the clay has a sinuous shape. “We call this serpentine because they look like serpents or snakes inside the sample, and they have water locked inside their crystal structure,” he said. “That is how we think water got to the Earth.”

This is only the start. The OSIRIS-REx science team, as they catalog the sample, have months of more detailed work ahead. After six months, they will publish the catalog; scientists from around the world will be able to propose studies using the materials—though more than half the sample will be kept in reserve for research to take place years or even decades in the future. 

[Related: NASA’s mission to a weird metal asteroid will blast off … soon]

They have more than a half-pound of material to work with. OSIRIS-REx recovered an estimated 250 grams of Bennu material, more than four times the 60 grams the mission had targeted. And as the science team began dissembling the sample return capsule at Johnson Space Center, they discovered what NASA is calling bonus material: bits of Bennu adhering to the collector head and lid of the sealed canister that brought the bulk of the sample home. 

”The first thing we noticed was that there was black dust and particles all around the outer edge,” Lauretta said. “Already this is scientific treasure.”

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The 2018 winner of PopSci’s annual Best of What’s New continues to impress. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is still edging closer to the sun than any other spacecraft has ever achieved, and it’s setting new speed records in the process. According to a recent status update from the space agency, the Parker Solar Probe has broken its own record (again) for the fastest thing ever made by human hands—at an astounding clip of 394,736 mph.

The newest milestone comes thanks to a previous gravity-assist flyby from Venus, and occurred on September 27 at the midway point of the probe’s 17th “solar encounter” that lasted until October 3. As ScienceAlert also noted on October 9, the Parker Solar Probe’s speed would hypothetically allow an airplane to circumnavigate Earth about 15 times per hour, or skip between New York City and Los Angeles in barely 20 seconds. Not that any passengers could survive such a journey, but it remains impressive.

[Related: The fastest human-made object vaporizes space dust on contact.]

The latest pass-by also set its newest record for proximity, at just 4.51 million miles from the sun’s plasma “surface.” In order not to vaporize from temperatures as high as nearly 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit, the Parker Solar Probe is outfitted with a 4.5-inch-thick carbon-composite shield to protect its sensitive instruments. These tools are measuring and imaging the sun’s surface to further researchers’ understanding of solar winds’ origins and evolution, as well as helping to forecast environmental changes in space that could affect life back on Earth. Last month, for example, the probe raced through one of the most intense coronal mass ejections (CMEs) ever observed. In doing so, the craft helped prove a two-decade-old theory that CMEs interact with interplanetary dust, which will improve experts’ abilities in space weather forecasting.

Despite its punishing journey, NASA reports the Parker Solar Probe remains in good health with “all systems operating normally.” Despite its numerous records, the probe is far from finished with its mission; there are still seven more solar pass-bys scheduled through 2024. At that point (well within Mercury’s orbit), the Parker Solar Probe will finally succumb to the sun’s extreme effects and vaporize into the solar winds— “sort of a poetic ending,” as one mission researcher told PopSci in 2021.

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The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is showing off its imaging prowess again, this time with a stellar image of NGC 346. This is the brightest and biggest star-making region in a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way called the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The SMC is about 21,000 light-years away in the southern constellation Tucana. 

[Related: JWST takes a jab at the mystery of the universe’s expansion rate.]

The image that looks like Edgar Allan Poe’s ominous raven in some angles was taken using Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). The blue wisps of light show emissions from molecules like silicates and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The red fragments highlight dust that is warmed by the largest and brightest stars in the center.

An arc at the center left might be a reflection of light from the star near the center of the arc, and similar curves appear to be associated with strats at the lower left and upper right. The bright patches and filaments denote areas with large numbers of protostars. While looking for the reddest stars, the research team found 1,001 pinpoint sources of light. Most of these are young stars still snuggled up in their dusty cocoons.

This SMC is more primeval than the Milky Way since it possesses fewer heavy elements. According to NASA, these elements are forged in stars through nuclear fusion and supernova explosions, compared to our own galaxy.

“Since cosmic dust is formed from heavy elements like silicon and oxygen, scientists expected the SMC to lack significant amounts of dust,” NASA wrote in a press release. “However the new MIRI image, as well as a previous image of NGC 346 from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera released in January, show ample dust within this region.”

Astronomers can combine JWST’s data in both the near-infrared and mid-infrared data to take a fuller census of the stars and protostars within this very dynamic region of space. This could help us better understand the galaxies that have existed billions of years ago, during an era known as Cosmic Noon. During Cosmic Noon, star formation was at its peak. Heavy element concentrations were lower, which we can see when we study the SMC.

[Related: The Whirlpool Galaxy’s buff, spiral arms grab JWST’s attention.]

This raven-like image is not the first JWST image that is picture perfect for spooky season. In September 2022, it released chilling new images of 30 Doradus aka the Tarantula Nebula. The nebula’s arachnid inspired nickname comes from its similar appearance to a burrowing tarantula’s silk-lined home. The Tarantula Nebula is about 161,000 light-years away from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy, which is home to some of the hottest and biggest stars known to astronomers.

JWST has also imaged the “bones” of  IC 5332, a spiral galaxy over 29 million light years away from the Earth in the constellation Sculptor. The uniquely shaped galaxy has a diameter of roughly 66,000 light years, making it slightly larger than our Milky Way galaxy. The MIRI aboard the new telescope observes the furthest reaches of the universe and can see infrared light, so it’s able to peer through the galaxy’s clouds of dust and into the “skeleton” of stars and gas underneath its signature arms. MIRI basically was able to take an x-ray of a galaxy, revealing IC 5332’s bones and a world that looks different, yet somewhat the same.

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On October 10, the European Space Agency (ESA) published some interim data from its nearly a decade-long Gaia mission. The data includes half a million new and faint stars in a massive cluster, over 380 possible cosmic lenses, and the position of over 150,000 asteroids within the solar system. 

[Related: See the stars from the Milky Way mapped as a dazzling rainbow.]

Launched in December 2013, Gaia is an astronomical observatory spacecraft with a mission to generate an accurate stellar census, thus mapping our galaxy and beyond. A more detailed picture of Earth’s place in the universe could help us better understand the diverse objects that make up the known universe. 

500,000 new stars and cluster cores

In 2022, Gaia’s third data release (DR3) contained data on over 1.8 billion stars, which built a rather complete view of the Milky Way and beyond. Even with all that data, there were still gaps in the ESA’s mapping. Gaia still hadn’t fully explored areas of the sky that were particularly densely packed with stars, overlooking the stars that shine a little less brightly than their neighbors. 

A key example of this is in globular clusters. These are some of the oldest objects in the known universe and are especially valuable for looking back into our cosmic past. However, their bright cores can sometimes overwhelm telescopes trying to get a clear view. 

Gaia selected Omega Centauri to help fill in the gaps in the stellar map. Omega Centauri is the largest globular cluster that can be seen from Earth and is a good example of one of the galaxy’s more ‘typical’ clusters. Gaia enabled a special mode to truly map a wider patch of sky that is surrounding the cluster’s core whenever the cluster came into view.

“In Omega Centauri, we discovered over half a million new stars Gaia hadn’t seen before – from just one cluster!” study co-author and astrophysicist from the Leibniz-Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) Katja Weingrill said in a statement. “We didn’t expect to ever use it for science, which makes this result even more exciting.”

The data also allowed the team to detect new stars that are too close together to be properly measured.

“With the new data we can study the cluster’s structure, how the constituent stars are distributed, how they’re moving, and more, creating a complete large-scale map of Omega Centauri. It’s using Gaia to its full potential—we’ve deployed this amazing cosmic tool at maximum power,” study co-author and AIP astrophysicist Alexey Mints said in a statement. 

The half million new stars showed that Omega Centauri is one of the most crowded regions that Gaia has explored so far. 

Currently, Gaia is exploring eight more regions using these same techniques. The scoop from those exploration will be included in Gaia Data Release 4. It should help astronomers truly understand what is happening within these cosmic building blocks and more accurately confirm the age of our galaxy.

Spotting gravitational lenses 

Gravitational lensing happens when the image of a faraway object in space becomes warped by a disturbing mass, such as a galaxy or star, sitting between the observer and the object. The mass in the middle acts like a giant lens that can magnify the brightness of light and cast multiple images of the faraway source onto the sky. 

[Related: Gravitational Lens Splits Supernova’s Light 4 Different Ways.]

“Gaia is a real lens-seeker,” study co-author and Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Bordeaux astrophysicist Christine Ducourant  said in a statement. “Thanks to Gaia, we’ve found that some of the objects we see aren’t simply stars, even though they look like them.”

Some of the objects here are not ordinary stars, but distant quasars. These quasars are extremely bright, high-energy galaxies powered by black holes. To date, Gaia has found 381 candidates for lensed quasars. This is a “goldmine” for cosmologists, says Ducourant , and the largest set of candidates ever detected at once. 

Detecting lensed quasars is challenging, since a lensed system’s constituent images can clump together on the sky in misleading ways.

“The great thing about Gaia is that it looks everywhere, so we can find lenses without needing to know where to look,” study co-author and Université Côte d’Azur astrophysicist Laurent Galluccio said in a statement. “With this data release, Gaia is the first mission to achieve an all-sky survey of gravitational lenses at high resolution.”

Asteroids and The Milky Way

One of the studies in this data release reveals more about 156,823 asteroids, pinpointing their positions over nearly double the previous timespan. In the fourth Gaia data release, the team plans to complete the set and include comets, planetary satellites, and double the number of asteroids.

[Related: Smashed asteroid surrounded by a ‘cloud’ of boulders.]

Another study maps the disc of the Milky Way by tracing the weak signals seen in starlight, faint imprints of the gas and dust that floats between the stars. The Gaia team stacked six million spectra to study these signals and the data will hopefully allow scientists to finally narrow down the source of these signals.

“This data release further demonstrates Gaia’s broad and fundamental value—even on topics it wasn’t initially designed to address,” study co-author and ESA Project Scientist Timo Prusti said in a statement. “Although its key focus is as a star surveyor, Gaia is exploring everything from the rocky bodies of the solar system to multiply imaged quasars lying billions of light-years away, far beyond the edges of the Milky Way. The mission is providing a truly unique insight into the Universe and the objects within it, and we’re really making the most of its broad, all-sky perspective on the skies around us.”

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On October 14, the Western Hemisphere will witness an annular solar eclipse. The moon will be too small and far away in our view to totally block out the sun’s disc. Instead, it will blot out its center, leaving a ring at the edges. The best locations to view that ring of fire in the sky will be along a path that cuts through Oregon, Texas, Central America, Colombia, and finally northern Brazil. You might decide to visit Albuquerque, New Mexico, where you’ll experience exactly 4 minutes and 48 seconds of an annular eclipse.

And if you’re seeking a true total eclipse, you only have to wait another six months. On April 8, 2024, at 2:10 p.m. Eastern (12:10 p.m. local time), Mazatlan, Mexico will become the first city in North America to see most of the sun vanish in shadow. The path of totality then arcs through Dallas and Indianapolis into Montréal, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland in Canada. We know all of these precise details—and more—thanks to our knowledge of where the moon and sun are situated in the sky at any given moment.

In fact, we can predict and map eclipses farther into the future, even centuries from now. Because they know the precise positions of the moon and the sun and how they shift over time, scientists can project the moon’s shadow onto Earth’s globe. And with cutting-edge computers, it’s possible to chart eclipse paths down to a range of a few feet.

A solar eclipse needs three things. It results when the moon blocks the sun’s light from our vantage point on Earth. So to predict an eclipse, you must know where and how the sun, moon, and Earth move in relation to each other. This isn’t quite as elementary as it may seem, because the solar system isn’t flat. The moon’s orbit slants about 5 degrees in relation to the sun’s path, which astronomers call the ecliptic. While our satellite passes between Earth and the sun around once a month—which we call a new moon—the two rarely seem to cross paths.

Solar eclipses can only occur when the moon is at one of the two points where the moon’s orbit crosses the ecliptic, known as a node. If the moon is new at this crossing, the result is a solar eclipse.

In centuries past, trying to predict eclipses meant predicting minute details of finicky orbits. But as astronomers learned more about how celestial objects moved, they began tabulating what they call ephemerides: predictions of where the moon, sun, and planets will be in the sky. Ephemerides are still the key to eclipse prediction.

[Related: Make a classic pinhole camera to watch the upcoming solar eclipse]

“All you need is the ephemeris data…you don’t have to actually track the orbit,” says C. Alex Young, a solar physicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

With ephemeris data, astronomers can pinpoint dates and times when the moon and sun cross paths. Once you know that date, mapping an eclipse is relatively straightforward. Ephemerides let scientists project the moon’s shadow onto Earth’s sphere; with 19th-century mathematics, they can calculate the shape and latitude of two features of that shadow, the umbra and penumbra. Then, by knowing what time it is and where Earth is angled in its rotation, it’s possible to determine the longitudes. Putting these together produces an eclipse map.

In the past, astronomers printed the ephemerides in almanacs, long tomes filled with page after page of coordinate tables. Just as all of astronomy has advanced into an era of computers, so have ephemerides. Scientists today mathematically model the paths of the moon, sun, planets, other moons, asteroids, and much more.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) regularly publishes a new compendium of celestial locations every few years. The most recent edition, 2021’s DE440, accounts for details like the moon’s core and mantle sloshing around and slowing its rotation. “Generally speaking, we know where the moon is from the Earth to about a meter, maybe a couple of meters,” says Ryan Park, an engineer at JPL. “We typically know where the sun is to maybe a couple hundred meters, maybe 300 meters.”

[Related: How to look at the eclipse without damaging your eyes]

Ephemerides serve other purposes, especially when planning spaceflight missions. But it’s largely due to more sophisticated ephemeris data that we can now reliably predict the motions of the moon for the centuries ahead. In fact, you can find detailed maps of solar eclipses nearly a millennium in the future. (If you’re lucky enough to be in Seattle on April 23, 2563 or in Amsterdam on September 7, 2974, prepare for total eclipse day.)

But these maps, like most eclipse maps, show the path of totality or annularity as a smooth line crossing Earth’s surface. That isn’t an accurate representation. “This was designed for pencil and paper calculation, so it makes a lot of simplifying assumptions that are just a tiny bit wrong,” says Ernie Wright, who makes eclipse maps for NASA Goddard, “for instance that the moon is a perfectly smooth sphere.”

Both the moon and Earth are jagged at the edge. Earth’s terrain can block some views of the sun, and the moon has its own patchwork of mountains and valleys. In fact, sunbeams passing through lunar vales create the Baily’s beads and “diamond ring” often seen at an eclipse’s edge. “We now have detailed terrain information of these mountains from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter,” Young says.

Wright has helped devise a new way of mapmaking that swaps the Victorian-age mathematics out for modern computer graphics. His method turns Earth’s surface into a map of pixels, each one with different latitude, longitude, and elevation, with the sun and moon in the sky above. Then, the method calculates which pixels see which parts of the moon block which parts of the sun. 

“You then make a whole sequence of maps at, say, one-second intervals for the duration of the eclipse,” Wright says. “You end up with a frame sequence that you can put together to make a movie of the shadow.” This new technique—only possible with modern computers and ultraprecise ephemerides—may allow us to make eclipse maps that clearly show whether you can see an eclipse from, say, your house. 

“I think that’s going to provide a whole new set of maps in the future that are going to be much more accurate,” says Young. “It’s going to be pretty exciting.”

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NASA’s Artemis III astronauts are apparently going to look incredibly fashionable walking the lunar surface. On October 4, the commercial aerospace company Axiom Space announced a new collaboration with luxury fashion house Prada to design spacesuits for the upcoming moon mission currently scheduled for 2025.

According to Wednesday’s reveal, Prada’s engineers will assist Axiom’s systems team in finalizing its Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) spacesuit while “developing solutions for materials and design features to protect against the unique challenge of space and the lunar environment.” Axiom CEO Michael Suffredini cited Prada’s expertise in manufacturing techniques, innovative design, and raw materials will ensure “not only the comfort of astronauts on the lunar surface, but also the much-needed human factors considerations absent from legacy spacesuits.”

[Related: Meet the first 4 astronauts of the ‘Artemis Generation’.]

NASA first unveiled an early prototype of the AxEMU spacesuit back in March, and drew particular attention to the fit accommodating “at least 90 percent of the US male and female population.” Given the Artemis mission has long promised to land the first woman on the lunar surface, such considerations are vital for astronauts’ safety and comfort.

In Wednesday’s announcement, Lorenzo Bertelli, Prada’s Group Marketing Director, cited the company’s decades of technological design and engineering experience. Although most well known for luxury fashion, Prada is also behind the cutting-edge Luna Rossa racing yacht fleet.

“We are honored to be a part of this historic mission with Axiom Space,” they said. “It is a true celebration of the power of human creativity and innovation to advance civilization.”

Despite Prada’s association with high fashion, the final AxEMU design will undoubtedly emphasize safety and function over runway appeal. After all, astronauts will need protection against both solar radiation and the near-vacuum of the lunar surface, as well as ample oxygen resources and space for HD cameras meant to transmit live feeds back to Earth. According to the BBC earlier this year, each suit will also incorporate both 3D-printing and laser cutters to ensure precise measurements tailored to each astronaut.