Two NASA missions finally launched from the California coast and soared toward the stars late Tuesday night, overcoming a week of delays to get to orbit. Both aim to unravel mysteries about the universe — one by peering far from Earth, the other by looking closer to home. The rocket’s chief passenger is SPHEREx, a…
Astronomers say they have discovered more than 100 new moons around Saturn, possibly the result of cosmic smashups that left debris in the planet’s orbit as recently as 100 million years ago. The gas giant planets of our solar system have many moons, which are defined as objects that orbit around planets or other bodies…
Two NASA missions will have to wait longer for a launch aboard a single rocket. Both aim to unravel mysteries about the universe — one by peering far from Earth, the other by looking closer to home. SpaceX on Saturday night announced on the website X around two hours before the scheduled launch time of…
Astronomers have been carefully watching 2024 YR4, a space rock with a heightened chance of hitting Earth in 2032. But fear not: NASA announced on Monday that it posed a threat no longer — the odds that the asteroid would smash into our planet have dropped to nearly zero. “I knew this was likely to…
Astute skywatchers may have already seen the striking line of planets across the night sky in January. This week Mercury joins the queue. Now every other world in our solar system will be visible among the stars at the same time — if you know where to look. According to Gerard van Belle, director of…
Deep in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, physicists have uncovered evidence of a ghostly subatomic particle catapulting through space at a speed they once could only dream of. “What we have discovered is, we think, the most energetic neutrino ever recorded on Earth,” said Paul de Jong, a physicist at the University of Amsterdam…
You may hear about a large asteroid headed toward Earth. Don’t panic. Just after Christmas Day, astronomers spotted something zipping away from Earth: a rock somewhere between 130 feet and 330 feet long that they named 2024 YR4. Over the next few weeks, they simulated its possible future orbits. They now say, based on the…
For a few months last fall, a school-bus-size space rock named 2024 PT5 gained fame as Earth’s new “mini-moon.” Astronomers rushed to study the object while it was still close enough to Earth to observe in detail. Now, one team has concluded that 2024 PT5 is a chunk of the real moon. The rock was…
The Eaton fire, raging uncontained to the northeast of Los Angeles, raced up Mount Wilson on Thursday, at one point threatening the historic Mount Wilson observatory and a host of antennas and transmitters used for communications and local television broadcasts. The fire, near Pasadena and Altadena, had burned through more than 13,600 acres and destroyed…
