Universe Today
The 20th Data Release (DR 20) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is Here!
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has officially launched its twentieth data release (DR20), featuring updated data from multiple observations projects.
Observing
Astronomy observing tips and guides
Recent Articles
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Penultimate Lunar Occultations Inbound for Jupiter, Venus and More in September
The Moon is busy in September. Coming off of eclipse season in August, the Moon visits no less than two planets, two bright stars and one open cluster in September, as it heads towards the Full Harvest Moon of 2026 on September 26th. No matter where on Earth you happen to be observing from this month, chances are, thereâs an occultation of a bright celestial object by the Moon coming to a sky near you.
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Astronomers See How a Centaur Can Become a Comet
In 1992, Centaur 450P/LONEOS had a close encounter with Saturn, shifting its orbit closer to the Sun. Now astronomers can observe how a small icy body transforms into a comet over time.
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Physicists Determine Cause of "Runaway" Supermassive Black Hole
Researchers at UCSB and UT Austin have determined that a galactic merger kicked a supermassive black hole into intergalactic space.
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SuperCDMS SNOLAB Starts Its Dark Matter Hunt
The search for dark matter has reached another milestone - in this case the start of science for one of the worldâs newest detectors. The Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (SuperCDMS) SNOLAB just began its scientific operations in Ontario, and over the course of the next few years, hope to find direct evidence of âlightâ dark matter for the first time.
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Astronomers Might Use Manganese to Clock the Age of Galaxies
Keeping track of time in the universe is a difficult task. Itâs constantly evolving and changing, and studying events that happened billions of years ago, while possible, isnât exactly easy. A recent paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society from astronomers at The Ohio State University has unlocked a whole new way to tell time in space by using a new, perhaps unexpected element - manganese.
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Roman Rises! Five Things to Know About NASA's New Space Telescope
NASA's newest eye on the sky, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, has begun its journey to unravel the secrets of dark matter, dark energy and Earthlike planets â months ahead of schedule.
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Some Comets are Naked, and One Just Got Caught Photo-Bombing
Japanese researchers got lucky when a comet they wanted to study was found photo-bombing archival images from Japan's Subaru Telescope. The Subaru, with its 8.2 meter mirror, happened to image comet 28P/Neujmin from just the right angle to accurately characterize its surface. Their work is part of the ongoing effort to understand comets and asteroids, why some of them share properties, and what that means for their formation and evolution as Solar System objects.
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Comet 220P McNaught Puts On An Encore Performance
It has been a busy month for astronomy. In the midst of an eclipse season bookended by the total solar eclipse on August 12th and the deep partial lunar eclipse coming right up this week on August 28th, an outbound comet hanging high in the dawn sky just refuses to die: 220P/McNaught.
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White Dwarf-Red Dwarf Binaries Power Cosmic Lasers
Researchers have helped unravel the mystery of why certain pairs of stars pulse with regular, long-period bursts of radio waves. The particular class of objects they observed come in pairs that always include a compact dead star, called a white dwarf, locked in orbit with an M dwarf, a red star smaller than our Sun.
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Catching An 'Almost Total' Lunar Eclipse on August 28th
So, did you miss the August 12th total solar eclipse? Like lots of humanity, we sat out the celestial drama of this month's solar eclipse, both total and partial. But the good news is, a large swath of the world can still catch the eclipse season spirit, with a deep, nearly total partial lunar eclipse next week. The event is the last eclipse of four (two lunar and two solar) for 2026. This also marks the current end of the second eclipse season for 2026, which began with the total solar eclipse on August 12th.
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Webb Captures the Treasure Chest at the Heart of the Carina Nebula
This NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month takes us to a fantastical realm within our home galaxy, where piercing starlight and billowing winds sculpt dust clouds into inventive shapes. This scene is from the Carina Nebula, which lies just 7500 light-years away in the constellation Carina (the Keel).
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A Quantum Trick for Spotting Gravitational Waves
Gravitational wave astronomy has seen plenty of improvements since the original signal was captured in 2015. Despite that, it remains an engineering challenge to actually create the detectors needed for the precise measurements that gravitational waves require. A new NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) grant is funding a concept from a team led by Paul Stankus at Brookhaven National Laboratory that could potentially solve some of those engineering problems - by using quantum mechanics.
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Webb Captures Clearest Image Yet of the Lion Nebula
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured images of NGC 2392 (also known as the Lion Nebula), which Hubble previously imaged in 2000.
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The Brightened Night Sky Nobody Actually Wanted
A new study modelling Reflect Orbital's proposed constellation of giant orbital mirrors finds their light pollution would be severe. A single 54 metre satellite would appear four magnitudes brighter than the full moon to anyone in its beam, and its scattered glow would outshine moonlight across the sky from 14 kilometres away, remaining visible from over 30 kilometres out. With the pilot satellite already approved by the FCC despite astronomer objections, and up to 50,000 mirrors planned by the mid-2030s, the research puts hard numbers on a fight over who controls the night sky, and who answers for what's lost when it disappears.
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Hubble Reveals that Star Formation is Slowing Down in the Andromeda Galaxy
A team of scientists led by the University of Washington has studied how star formation is declining in the Andromeda galaxy using highly detailed Hubble surveys.
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Amazing Views of Wednesday's Total Solar Eclipse
It was an eclipse for the ages. This past week, many an eclipse chaser and the âeclipse curiousâ made the journey to stand in the shadow of the Moon, for the only total solar eclipse of 2026. Viewers across northeastern Spain had thrilling views of a low to the horizon eclipse at sunset, while viewers to the north and across Iceland had dicier, cloudy skies to contend with. Here are amazing reader views of the eclipse, along with a few special ones from space.
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Percy Sees An 'Eclipse' of Earth, From Mars
Sure. It may not look like much. But sometimes, the 'wow' factor in an image lies in knowing just what you're seeing. While most of us are eagerly awaiting Wednesdayâs total solar eclipse across the North Atlantic and Spain, robotic emissaries on the Martian surface have recently given us a look at an astronomical occlusion of a different sort, as Phobos crossed in front of Earth.
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NASA's MAVEN Illuminates New Understanding of Auroras at Mars
NASA MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) mission scientists have uncovered a key puzzle piece in understanding certain types of auroras on Mars, finding that they form in a similar way to Earth-based auroras.
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SpaceX Junk Hits the Moon. Not a Good Sign
The spent upper stage from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has struck the Moon, illustrating the hazard posed by debris in cislunar space. This problem will increase as launches to orbit and to the Moon become more common in the coming years.