Astronomy, features and articles | Educational Science

May 31, 2019

If You're On the Moon, Does the Earth Appear to Go Through Phases?

If you lived on the moon, you'd have to give up lots of things you take for granted on Earth. The feeling of your feet planted firmly on the ground. Your ability to breathe outside without a helmet. And your night-sky view. Humans have spent millennia staring up at the...

Apr 30, 2019

This Asteroid Will Come Incredibly Close to Earth on Friday the 13th, 2029

COLLEGE PARK, Md. — The solar system has a sense of humor: A decade from now, on Friday, April 13, 2029, a large asteroid will streak across the sky — but it's a cause for excitement, not fear, scientists say. That asteroid, called Apophis, stretches about 1,100 feet (340 meters)...

Apr 30, 2019

Could Life on Earth Have Come from Another Star System?

Life may have traveled to Earth from afar, aboard an interstellar visitor like the weird, cigar-shaped object 'Oumuamua, researchers say. 'Oumuamua, which zoomed through the inner solar system last fall, is the first confirmed interstellar object ever observed in our neck of the woods. But that doesn't mean it was...

Apr 30, 2019

1st Evidence of a Black Hole Devouring a Neutron Star Sends Ripples Through Space-Time

The world’s largest gravitational-wave detectors may have just found the first evidence of a black hole devouring a neutron star. When massive objects like neutron stars or black holes collide, they send gravitational waves rippling through the fabric of space-time. It’s these telltale wrinkles in space-time that physicists detected using...

Apr 30, 2019

A Giant Hole in the Martian Atmosphere Is Venting All Its Water into Space

There's a hole in the Martian atmosphere that opens once every two years, venting the planet's limited water supply into space — and dumping the rest of the water at the planet's poles. That's the explanation advanced by a team of Russian and German scientists who studied the odd behavior...

Mar 31, 2019

Israel's Beresheet Spacecraft Crashes Into Moon During Landing Attempt

The robotic Beresheet spacecraft, built by SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), aimed to become the first Israeli craft, and the first privately funded mission, ever to land softly on the moon. But the little robot couldn't quite make it, crashing into the gray dirt around 3:25 p.m. EDT (1925...

Mar 31, 2019

There's a Tiny, Bright Magnetar Photobombing Our Galaxy's Supermassive Black Hole

There's a bright magnetar photobombing the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, frustrating astronomers' efforts to study the black hole — called Sagittarius A* — using X-ray telescopes. SagA* is the nearest known supermassive black hole to Earth. And while it's far smaller, quieter and dimmer...

Mar 31, 2019

The Most Distant Object Ever Explored Is Lumpy. And Astronomers Don't Know Why.

Ultima Thule is lumpy, and scientists aren't sure why. Just after midnight on Jan. 1, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft zoomed past Ultima Thule, a small, frigid object that lies about 1 billion miles (1.6 billion kilometers) beyond the orbit of Pluto. The photos New Horizons captured during that epic encounter...

Feb 28, 2019

Sneaky Meteor Evades Earthling Detection, Explodes with Force of 10 Atomic Bombs

On Dec. 18, 2018, a school bus-size meteor exploded over Earth with an impact energy of roughly 10 atomic bombs. According to NASA, the blast was the second-largest meteor impact since the organization began tracking them 30 years ago, bested only by the infamous fireball that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia,...

Feb 28, 2019

Astronomers Find Fossils of Early Universe Stuffed in Milky Way's Bulge

Astronomers peered into the dusky bulge of the Milky Way and found some of the oldest known stars in the universe. In a study to be published in the April 2019 issue of the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, researchers analyzed a cluster of old, dim stars...

Jan 31, 2019

Astrophysicists Find New Clue in Search for Universe's Missing Matter

Astronomers think they've found a new clue in their continuing quest to solve one of the most substantial mysteries of the cosmos: where about a third of the universe's matter is hiding. That missing matter isn't dark matter (a whole different head-scratcher), it's perfectly normal, run-of-the-mill matter that scientists simply...

Jan 31, 2019

Weird 'Snowman-Pancake' Asteroid Gets Its Close-Up. And It Really Is an Oddball.

The best-ever photos of Ultima Thule have made it down to Earth, and they heighten the intrigue about the frigid and faraway world. On New Year's Day, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft zoomed past the 21-mile-long (34 kilometers) Ultima Thule, setting a record for the most distant planetary encounter in history....

Jan 31, 2019

An Exploding Asteroid Blasted Across Mars' Surface in the Last 10 Years

Sometime in the last decade, something heavy slammed into the Martian atmosphere and shattered into a hard rain of superheated material. Those pieces fell to the Red Planet's surface, dotting the Martian dirt with a pattern of pockmarks. The impact craters, astronomer Phil Plait wrote on his Bad Astronomy blog,...

Dec 31, 2018

The Hunt Is On for Moons Around Ultima Thule

The most distant celestial object ever explored may well have moons, and astronomers are trying hard to find them. In the wee hours of Jan. 1, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft zoomed past the small, frigid object Ultima Thule, which lies more than 4 billion miles (6.4 billion kilometers) from Earth....

Dec 31, 2018

Ultrabright Quasar Lit Up the Early Universe

Astronomers have just discovered a galaxy with a supermassive black hole at its core, and it's located over 12.8 billion light-years away from Earth, just a billion years shy of the Big Bang. Known as a quasar, this object is the brightest of its kind ever seen in the distant...