Carolyn Collins Petersen
The Sun’s Magnetic Field Might Only Be Skin Deep
It's coming back! Sunspot AR3664 gave us an amazing display of northern lights in mid-May and it's now rotating back…
Mars InSight Has One Last Job: Getting Swallowed by Dust on the Red Planet
Normally you don't want dust to get into your spacecraft. That was certainly true for the InSight mission to Mars,…
A Weather Satellite Watched a Space Rock Burn Up Above Spain and Portugal
It's been a momentous May for skywatchers around the world. First the big auroral event of May 10-11, next a…
The Largest Camera Ever Built Arrives at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory
It's been 20 years in the making, but a 3200-megapixel camera built especially for astrophysics discoveries has finally arrived at…
Webb Sees Black Holes Merging Near the Beginning of Time
A long time ago, in two galaxies far, far away, two massive black holes merged. This happened when the Universe…
Why Hot Jupiters Spiral into Their Stars
Exoplanets are a fascinating astronomy topic, especially the so-called "Hot Jupiters". They're overheated massive worlds often found orbiting very close…
The Highest Observatory in the World Comes Online
The history of astronomy and observatories is full of stories about astronomers going higher and higher to get better views…
Earth Had a Magnetosphere 3.7 Billion Years Ago
We go about our daily lives sheltered under an invisible magnetic field generated deep inside Earth. It forms the magnetosphere,…
Neutron Stars Could be Capturing Primordial Black Holes
The Milky Way has a missing pulsar problem in its core. Astronomers have tried to explain this for years. One…
NASA Restores Communications with Voyager 1
The venerable Voyager 1 spacecraft is finally phoning home again. This is much to the relief of mission engineers, scientists,…