Archaeologists have identified Saktahnwaax, the first named mathematician-astronomer from the pre-Columbian Americas, via inscriptions found in a painted chamber at the Maya site of Xultun in Guatemala. According to a paper published in Antiquity by David Stuart of the University of Texas at Austin and his colleagues, the individual—whose name translates to “White-Chested Fox”—likely lived … Read more
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile has launched its ten-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), utilizing an 8.4-meter mirror and a 3.2-billion-pixel camera to create a high-resolution, time-lapse map of the southern sky. According to the Hungarian Research Network (HUN-REN), the project combines light-gathering capacity, agility, and a wide field of view … Read more
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured a high-resolution image of Centaurus A, a galaxy located 11 million light-years from Earth. The observation, marking the fourth anniversary of the telescope’s mission, reveals new details of a galactic merger that occurred 2 billion years ago, including the mechanics of its supermassive black hole and ongoing … Read more
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile has officially started the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), a 10-year effort to create the most detailed and comprehensive record of the universe’s history. Using the world’s largest digital camera, the project aims to map potentially billions of galaxies, find asteroids, and analyze the solar system … Read more
New research suggests dark matter may not have required a cold, calm start to facilitate the formation of the universe. A study indicates that dark matter particles could have originated at near-light speeds—behaving as “hot” matter—before cooling sufficiently to seed the cosmic structures, such as galaxies, that we observe today. This finding challenges the four-decade-old … Read more
Data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) indicates that 55 Cancri e, a super-Earth located 41 light-years away, is likely a hydrogen-rich lava world. According to a study published in Nature Astronomy, the planet’s atmosphere is linked to its molten interior, suggesting that volcanic outgassing plays a primary role in shaping its chemical composition. … Read more
Astronomers have discovered that the Milky Way’s spiral arms extend further into space than previously documented, according to a study led by researchers using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton. By measuring how X-rays from distant gamma-ray bursts reflect off interstellar dust clouds, the team established a new geometric … Read more
A Northrop Grumman Pegasus rocket carrying a specialized three-armed spacecraft successfully launched from the Marshall Islands on Friday, marking the start of a mission to rescue NASA’s Swift Observatory. The mission, commissioned by NASA at a cost of $30 million, aims to capture the aging telescope and boost its orbit to prevent it from burning … Read more
Planned deployments of up to 1.7 million satellites could cause “devastating consequences” for astronomy, according to new research from the European Southern Observatory (ESO). The study, published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, warns that these massive constellations pose an “existential threat” to telescopes by making the night sky significantly brighter and obscuring celestial views. How many … Read more
NASA has suspended scientific operations on the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory to prevent its orbital decay, currently working to deploy a robotic “reboost” mission to extend the life of the $250 million telescope. The agency’s effort involves the LINK robotic spacecraft, developed by Katalyst Space, which is designed to physically maneuver the aging satellite into … Read more