Some of us remember August 24, 2006, like it was yesterday. It was the day Pluto got booted from the exclusive “planets club”. I (Sara) was 11 years old, and my entire class began lunch break by passionately chanting, “Pluto is a planet,” in protest of the information we’d just received. It was a touching ...
The Milky Way is a breathtaking example of the wonders of cosmic creation within the vast and mysterious realm of the cosmos. The Milky Way’s music has been discovered by scientists and artists alike as they have investigated additional sensory qualities of the galaxy beyond the visual spectacle. This article will take readers on a ...
There are few things more peaceful and relaxing than a night under the stars. Through the holidays, many people head away from the bright city lights to go camping and stargazing. They revel in the dark skies, spangled with myriad stars. As a child, I loved such trips, and they helped cement my passion for ...
Are we alone? This question is nearly as old as humanity itself. Today, this question in astronomy focuses on finding life beyond our planet. Are we, as a species, and as a planet, alone? Or is there life somewhere else? Usually, the question inspires visions of weird, green versions of humans. However, life is more ...
The search for planets outside our Solar System — exoplanets — is one of the most rapidly growing fields in astronomy. Over the past few decades, more than 5,000 exoplanets have been detected and astronomers now estimate that, on average, there is at least one planet per star in our galaxy. Many current research efforts ...
Happy solstice everyone! The mid-year solstice in 2023 falls at 2:58 pm UTC on 21 June (or, in more advanced time zones like the one I’m writing from, in the early hours of 22 June). Depending on where you are reading this, this will either be your winter solstice (for those in the southern hemisphere) ...
We have long been fascinated with the idea of alien life. The earliest written record presenting the idea of “aliens” is seen in the satiric work of Assyrian writer Lucian of Samosata dated A.D. 200. In one novel, Lucian writes of a journey to the Moon and the bizarre life he imagines living there — ...
In the 1997 movie Contact, Ellie Arroway is a young radio astronomy scientist played by Jodie Foster. Ellie’s on a mission to discover alien life, and in one famous scene filmed at the Very Large Array, she sits at the edge of the observatory, listening to the radio sounds of the sky with antenna dishes in ...
Combining images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope over more than 20 years, a team of UA researchers has discovered that Eta Carinae, a very massive star system that has puzzled astronomers since it erupted in a supernova-like event in the mid-19th century, has a past that’s much more violent than they thought. The findings ...
Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), astronomers have revealed the closest pair of supermassive black holes to Earth ever observed. The two objects also have a much smaller separation than any other previously spotted pair of supermassive black holes and will eventually merge into one giant black hole. Located in the ...
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