“The James Webb Telescope: Are We Alone?” on The Whole Story With Anderson Cooper offers an inside look at the most powerful telescope ever built. The show premieres Sunday, June 16, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on CNN. A collision between giant asteroids likely occurred in a neighboring star system called Beta Pictoris in recent years, […]
The much-hyped planetary alignment of June may not have been the jaw-dropping naked-eye spectacle some made it out to be, but it still made for some stunning astrophotography. Josh Dury of Somerset, England caught the planetary parade on June 1, 2024, from atop Crooks Peak, a popular and historic outcropping of rock in the Mendip […]
The cosmos has put on a show for us this spring, from the total solar eclipse in April that impacted the entire continental U.S. to the geomagnetic storm that led to northern lights in May. Next up, a “parade of planets” will illuminate the sky. Starting June 3, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune […]
Folks who are expecting to see a dazzling parade of planets on Monday June 3 may be disappointed by what they end up seeing in the sky and, instead, experts are saying they should manage their expectations and wait until the end of the month to see the planetary alignment. The past couple of months […]
Delawareans have a good reason to wake up early on Monday to hopefully witness an event that’s out of this world. And that’s no exaggeration. The Great American Eclipse is long gone, and now the newest reason to sky gaze is to see the planetary alignment, also known as the “planetary parade.” But it all depends […]
Barely a month after April’s rare solar eclipse and weeks after a solar flare fueled northern lights, some media are hyping yet another celestial event — a “planetary parade.” On June 3, the planets Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune will be aligned. But don’t get too excited. Unlike Star Walk Astronomical News’ widely shared photo suggests, you won’t […]
Astronomers may have finally solved the mystery of how superdense dead stars called white dwarfs keep their heavy metal shells fresh — by cannibalizing what remains of their planetary systems. Our sun is destined to turn into a white dwarf in around five billion years, after it runs out of the hydrogen that fuels nuclear […]
Two lawmakers on Wednesday announced a newly relaunched group in Congress that will focus on issues related to planetary science and space exploration. The bipartisan Planetary Science Caucus is being led by Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., and Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb. The group aims to advance policies and promote federal investment in space science, which […]
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has seen Beta Pictoris as never before, capturing a previously unseen structure that gives the young planetary system a dusty cat’s tail. Located 63 light-years away, from us Beta Pictoris is a star around twice the size of the sun and eight times as bright, surrounded by a disk […]
Astronomers have discovered not one but two planetary systems with sun-like stars at their hearts. Both of these systems contain mini-Neptune planets and one harbors a huge “super-Jupiter” world, all of which are many times more massive than Earth. Studying the realms could lead to a better understanding of how planets form and evolve around […]