Space

Featured Articles

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A Tale of Two Centennials

Were celebrating two centennials that are somewhat related...

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Just Wonderful Space Telescope News

JWST launches the first day of astronomy’s big meeting with news about science, technology, and galaxies!

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Artist impression of the debris disk surrounding star HD53143.

Artist impression of the debris disk surrounding star HD53143. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO); M. Weiss (NRAO/AUI/NSF)

Disks and Planet Formation

The connection between disks and planet formation continues to expand as astronomers view them in new detail.

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An artist’s rendering of a “hot Jupiter,” a type of gas giant planet that orbits very close to its star.

Hot Jupiters and Engulfed Planets

Screwball giant planets and ravenous stars kick off this week’s gathering of professional astronomers.

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Andromeda galaxy in far-infrared and radio light

The Andromeda galaxy, or M31, is shown here in far-infrared and radio wavelengths of light. Credit: ESA, NASA, NASA-JPL, Caltech, Christopher Clark (STScI), R. Braun (SKA Observatory), C. Nieten (MPI Radioastronomie), Matt Smith (Cardiff University)

Dusty Environments Near and Far

Dust! It’s not just collecting on your shelf, it is the topic for the last press conference at the 240th AAS.

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An engraving by the 19th-century artist Claude Mellan, based on telescope observations for an illustrated atlas of the Moon that never saw publication.

Thoughts from a Planetarian: Astral Poetics

The visual culture of astronomy, from illuminated manuscripts and frescoes to engravings and satellite imagery.

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Image by Leo Reynolds/Flickr

Thoughts from a Planetarian: Visualizing Numbers

On a two-ful Tuesday, our planetarian discusses how visualizations can make numbers more understandable.

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Artist’s illustration of the Local Bubble with star formation occurring on the bubble’s surface. Scientists have now shown how a chain of events beginning 14 million years ago with a set of powerful supernovae led to the creation of the vast bubble, responsible for the formation of all young stars within 500 light years of the Sun. (Image courtesy STScI and Leah Hustak.)

Living in a Bubble

It turns out that the Sun lives in a bubble—1,000 light years across!

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An image of the Whirlpool galaxy (M51); an iconic nearby galaxy, made using a Mosaic of images of one thousand galaxies, ten percent of the entire in the MaNGA sample. (Image courtesy Karen Masters and the SDSS collaboration.)

Mapping the Cosmos

How are astronomers planning to map our universe with the help of robots?

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