Category: Astronomy

Over thirteen billion years ago, the universe was not the glittering expanse of stars and galaxies we know today. It was dark. Quiet. Mysterious. Cloaked in a thick fog of…

High in the Chilean Andes, 16,000 feet above sea level, the world’s most powerful radio telescope array is listening—not to alien messages, but to the quiet, invisible whispers of baby…

Some of the universe’s greatest mysteries are hidden in plain sight. Dark matter—an invisible substance that outweighs everything we can see in space—makes up nearly 85% of the total matter…

For more than twenty years, astronomers have puzzled over a strange cosmic riddle. The laws of physics said there had to be more matter—normal matter, the kind that makes up…

High above the Earth, aboard a satellite orbiting in silence, a Chinese space telescope has been peering deep into the cosmos—watching a flickering beacon that pulses every 12.4 seconds from…

In the deep silence of space, where time stretches and matter bends under immense gravity, two neutron stars — the collapsed remnants of once-massive suns — spiral toward an inevitable,…

Far beyond the glare of city lights, nestled deep in the constellation Taurus some 460 light-years away, a baby star is quietly forming. Hidden in a cradle of gas and…

On a rocky plateau in South Africa’s remote Karoo region, 64 radio dishes stand vigil beneath a wide, unpolluted sky. They belong to MeerKAT, Africa’s most advanced radio telescope, and…

In a quiet pocket of space, 450 light-years from Earth, a pair of infant stars are whispering secrets of creation. Amid clouds of gas and dust swirling around them, something…

It begins with a shimmer—a warped sliver of light, bent by the invisible gravity of galaxies so massive they distort the very fabric of space-time. But that shimmer, that gravitational…

When NASA launched the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) in 2018, it had one primary mission: to find new worlds beyond our solar system. With four wide-angle cameras scanning the…

When NASA’s Perseverance rover touched down on the dusty floor of Jezero Crater in February 2021, it wasn’t landing in just any crater. Jezero was chosen because it once held…

In the vast darkness more than 300 million light-years away, a galaxy is being reshaped by invisible forces as powerful as they are beautiful. It drifts like a jellyfish through…

The vast expanse of space is far from serene. It’s a chaos of radiation, cosmic rays, and violent starlight—conditions that would obliterate most molecules in a heartbeat. Yet, drifting silently…

When the Apollo astronauts set foot on the Moon in the late 1960s and early ’70s, they expected dust, rocks, and silence. What they didn’t expect was color—especially not the…

High above our planet, orbiting aboard the International Space Station, a sleek new instrument has opened a window into the heart of our solar system’s most powerful force: the Sun.…

In the quiet observatories nestled among Russia’s Crimean hills and the snow-lined ridges of the Caucasus Mountains, astronomers have spent decades peering into the sky, tracking the slow, restless heartbeat…

In the vast darkness of the cosmos, stars live long lives, but even they are not immortal. When a massive star dies, it doesn’t go gently. It explodes in a…

Somewhere in the Milky Way, just 60 light-years from Earth, a cold and lonely giant circles its star in an orbit shaped like a stretched football. Temperatures on this massive…