What could bears and space telescopes possibly have in common? Last month, both the Hubble Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (known as TESS) ended up in a sort of hibernation. When faced with some kind of threat, ...

We’ve all seen beautiful images of outer space, with vivid swirls and bright stars resting on a black abyss. With how quick it is to snap a color photo on an iPhone, you might think that sophisticated space telescopes churn ...

In the new IMAX film Deep Sky, a protostar shines from the center of a dark cloud, the phantom galaxy swirls, and the dusty space clouds of the Cosmic Cliffs of Carina tower like mountain peaks. Also, scientists cry. The ...

High altitude balloons have drawn a lot of fire lately. In February, the US military shot down a spy balloon potentially operated by the Chinese government and an “unidentified aerial phenomenon” that was later revealed to likely be a hobbyist ...

A team of more than 1,000 astronomers and college students just took a step closer to solving one of the long-lasting mysteries of astronomy: Why is the sun’s outer layer, known as the corona, so ridiculously hot? The solar surface ...

Astronomy sheds light on the far-off, intangible phenomena that shape our universe and everything outside it. Artificial intelligence sifts through tiny, mundane details to help us process important patterns. Put the two together, and you can tackle almost any scientific ...

It took years of design and engineering toil to successfully get the largest-ever telescope mirror into space. Now, the James Webb Space Telescope’s trademark, 6.5-meter-in-diameter, gold-coated array orbits the sun 1.5 million kilometers above Earth, routinely providing stunning, previously inaccessible ...

Black holes remain among the most enigmatic objects in the universe, but the past few years have seen astronomers develop techniques to directly image these powerful vacuums. And they keep getting better at it. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, ...

Since 1995 scientists have found more than 5,000 exoplanets—other worlds beyond our solar system. But while space researchers have gotten very good at discovering big planets, smaller ones have evaded detection. However, a novel astronomy detection technique known as microlensing ...

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has taken some new images of a star that exploded during the Reagan Administration. The space telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) helped capture the images of a world renowned supernova called Supernova 1987A (SN 1987A) ...