Carolyn Collins Petersen
Hubble Shows That a Fast Radio Burst Came From a Giant Group of Galaxies
Way back when the cosmos was only five billion years old, a powerful explosion happened in a group of young…
Another Example of a Fantastic Einstein Ring
The most evocative astronomy images take us across space and time to stars and galaxies billions of light-years away. Nestled…
Uranus and Neptune are Actually Pretty Much the Same Color
In the late 1980s, the Voyager 2 spacecraft snapped the "canonical" up-close images of Uranus and Neptune. In those views,…
Hubble Watches an Exoplanet Atmosphere Change Over Three Years
If you want to know more about an exoplanet atmosphere, watch how it changes over time. That's the mantra of…
How a Small Town in Japan Fiercely Defends its Dark Skies
Light pollution ruins dark skies. It's a scourge that ground-based observatories have to deal with in one form or another.…
Organic Molecules Come from the Universe’s Cold Places
Life, as we all know, is based on chemistry. Prebiotic chemical building blocks existed on our planet for a long…
JWST Sets a New Record, Sees Newly Forming Stars in the Triangulum Galaxy
Our Milky Way bristles with giant molecular clouds birthing stars. Based on what we see here, astronomers assume that the…
Should We Be Preparing for First Contact?
First Contact. It's a topic guaranteed to inspire a mix of emotions in people. It's also one of the most…
Entropy is the Key to a Planet’s Habitability
We all know that to have life on a world, you need three critical items: water, warmth, and food. Now…
How Do Superflares Get So Powerful?
We live with a star that sends out flares powerful enough to disrupt things here on Earth. Telecommunications, power grids,…