Space debris lands in North Carolina
Friday, May 31, 2024: A large piece of space debris was found on a hiking trail on a luxury campground in the mountains of North Carolina last week by groundskeeper Justin Clontz.
"It landed directly in the middle of the trail," Clontz told Space.com. "It was just wild. It was crazy-looking. I really didn't know what to think."
The debris is suspected to be a piece of a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft left over from the reentry of the Crew-7 mission to the International Space Station. Space.com's Brett Tingley went to see the debris for himself.
Another huge solar flare!
Tuesday, May 28, 2024: Old sunspot group AR3664, the most active sunspot region of the current solar cycle — the one responsible for the May 2024 solar storms, announced its return in explosive fashion. Yesterday (May 27), a powerful X-class solar flare erupted from the sun's southeastern limb, peaking around 3:08 a.m. EDT (0708 GMT).
Though sunspot group 3664 remains hidden from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory's view — scientists can track the sunspot's progress across the sun's far side by observing how it affects the sun's vibrations or seismic echoes, using helioseismology data. One full rotation of the sun takes 27 days. — Daisy Dobrijevic
Read more: Colossal X-class solar flare suggests return of sunspot group that fueled May's epic auroras (video)
Ghostly view of an infant sun
Monday, May 20, 2024: Like a young version of our own sun, HP Tau, an infant star is seen at the top of a trio of glittering stars in Hubble's latest image. These stars sparkle from within a hollow cavity in a billowing cloud of gas and dust, which itself shines a soothing blue by reflecting starlight in its thick swirls, much like how a street light illuminates the fog around it.
At just 10 million years old, HP Tau is the youngest of its siblings. It resides roughly 550 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus, and hasn't yet kicked off the nuclear fusion process upon which it will soon come to rely on for its energy, and for its light. — Sharmila Kuthunur
Related: Enchanting new Hubble Telescope image reveals an infant star's sparkle
A giant scoop out of the Red Planet
Thursday, May 16, 2024: A massive Mars impact crater dominates a new view from the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO).
The result of an ancient asteroid impact, the crater is located in Mars' Utopia Planitia. That's the largest known impact basin in the entire solar system, with a diameter of roughly 2,050 miles (3,300 kilometers), or twice the size of Earth's Sahara Desert from north to south. Interesting ice-related features on and below the surface of the crater lend insight on the Red Planet’s watery past. — Samantha Mathewson
Flying carpet of space dust
Wednesday, May 15, 2024: A new Hubble image highlights the intricacies of a distant galaxy glowing with a bright white core surrounded by complex dust structures.
A new image from the Hubble Space Telescope captures the sharpest view yet of the lenticular galaxy NGC 4753. The photo, released on Monday (May 13), offers a nearly edge-on view of the galaxy, revealing its bright central bulge. Lenticular galaxies are a cross between spirals and ellipticals; they exhibit an elliptical shape but have ill-defined spiral arms. Given NGC 4753's low-density environment and complex structure, this particular galaxy provides astronomers an opportunity to study different theories surrounding how lenticular galaxies form. — Samantha Mathewson
Auroramania!
Tuesday, May 14, 2024: Lest you think we forgot about all the auroras! Last Friday night and into the weekend, magnificent aurora could be seen at unprecedented latitudes across the globe. Sky watchers in all 50 of the United States and countless countries worldwide were witness to dazzling colors in a once-in-a-lifetime celestial event.
Space.com's References Editor Daisy Dobrijevic covers solar flares and aurora extensively, but, like many, never dreamed of seeing them outside her front door. "I may write about them a lot but I never once imagined I’d get a northern lights show of this magnitude above my hometown, Nottingham, U.K.," she wrote. Daisy snapped this photo with just her cell phone, a testament to the amazing ubiquity of the auroras over the weekend, as all of humanity looked up at the sky and gazed in wonder.
Salt lakes form Sentinel-2
Monday, May 13, 2024: The European Space Agency's (ESA's) Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite recently captured this false-color image of salt flats and lakes in southwest Bolivia, nearby to the Andes Mountains. Red portions of the image highlight vegetation dispersal in the arid region towards the southern end of the Altiplano.
Sentinel-2 and the Copernicus program are a project run by the European Union (EU) and ESA that builds and manages a fleet of Earth-observing Sentinel satellites. Eight missions have been launched to date, providing data about changes occurring to the oceans, land and atmosphere of our planet.
Decisions, decisions
Friday, May 10, 2024: The Curiosity rover on Mars has reached a crossroads. This photo was captured by Curiosity's Left Navigation Camera after a long treck over rocky terrain. Curiosity recently completed its survey of of Pinnacle Ridge, an area of upper Gediz Vallis ridge where the rover has been investigating. NASA operators had to choose whether the rover should continue along the south side of Pinnacle Ridge to collect additional science on the Gediz Vallis ridge rocks, or continue its path through the Gediz Vallis channel, towards a planned crossing spot. They chose to venture onward into the unknown.
Our galactic neighbor, Andromeda
Thursday, May 9, 2024: What you see here is a magical view of the Andromeda galaxy, our Milky Way galaxy's cosmic neighbor. It's an image constructed with data from the now-retired Spitzer space telescope, and indicates streams of dust around the central region of Andromeda are getting swept within. Inside the central region? A supermassive black hole lurks.
"It turns out these streams can help explain how black holes billions of times the mass of our Sun satiate their big appetites but remain 'quiet' eaters," a NASA statement explains.
And beyond all that -- it's also a stunning corner of our cosmos to admire for just a moment.
An X-Ray eye
Wednesday, May 8, 2024: This galactic eye staring at you from the infinite abyss is actually spiral galaxy NGC 4151. The galaxy lies about 43 million light-years from Earth, in the Cane Venatici constellation. According to NASA, the supermassive black hole at the center of NGC 4151 contains more than 20 million times the mass of our own sun.
This image is a composite created using the different spectral capabilities of three different high-powered telescopes. The central region, in blue, was captured with the Chandra X-ray Observatory. They red gasses surrounding the center are areas of hydrogen detected with radio observations from the Very Large Array, in New Mexico, and the yellow regions within show visible spectrum data of regions of recent star formations, and were captured using the 1-meter Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope on La Palma, in the Canary Islands.
Astronauts ready for flight
Tuesday, May 7, 2024: NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams stand side by side in front of Boeing's Astrovan II, which drove them to the launchpad for last night's Starliner launch to the International Space Station. The two had just exited the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where they got into their blue spacesuits ahead of their departure.
Unfortunately, last night's Starliner launch was scrubbed. About two hours before liftoff, launch operators detected problems with an oxygen relief valve on the Centaur Stage of the Atlas V rocket. Now, the launch is currently scheduled for no earlier than May 10.
It's not odd, it's irregular
Monday, May 6, 2024: This photo of the irregular galaxy NGC 4449 was submitted by Space.com reader Ron Brecher, who captured this image using his Celestron 14″ EDGE HD telescope.
The dwarf galaxy NGC 4449 is the first dwarf galaxy with an identified stellar stream . The star stream represents the remains of a smaller satellite galaxy merging with NGC 4449.
This isolated dwarf galaxy is about 12.4 million light-years away, and is classified as a "starburst galaxy," meaning it forms young stars at a very fast pace. Researchers have suspected the galaxy's hyperactivity and complexity might be due to it tangling with another galaxy.
National Space Day!
Friday, May 3, 2024: Happy National Space Day in the U.S.A.! Observed on the first Friday in May, National Space Day celebrates the accomplishments and benefits from history of spaceflight. The day is largely used to promote STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education, and inspire people about the cosmos.
Here, ISS Expedition 71 cosmonaut Nikolai Chub gives a thumbs-up during a recent EVA. During Chub's four-hour and 36-minute spacewalk on April 25, he and fellow cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko deployed a synthetic radar communications system and installed experiments to monitor external station corrosion.
Sunrise from space
Thursday, May 2, 2024: The sun peaks through Earth's thin layer of atmosphere, captured here from the International Space Station (ISS). The ISS spans about the size of an American football field, and sits above the planet in low-Earth orbit, at an average altitude of 254 miles (408 kilometers). As a result of this orbit, astronauts aboard the space station are able to witness a sunrise like the one pictured here every 45 minutes.
As the sun rises from behind our home planet in this photo, the faint light of our star reflects off Northrup Grumman's NG-20 Cygnus spacecraft docked with the station. Cygnus launched to the ISS Jan. 30, delivering over 8,000 pounds (3,600 kilograms) of supplies and research equipment.
Barred Spiral Galaxy
Wednesday, May 1, 2024: A new image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the barred spiral galaxy NGC 2217 (also known as AM 0619-271), swirling through space 65 million light-years away.
Called a "barred" galaxy because of the column of light reaching from opposite sides of the galactic center, these "bars" channel gasses from the galaxy's disk into its middle regions. These gasses then can form new stars, or serve as fuel for the galaxy's supermassive black hole. According to NASA, NGC 2217 is about the same size as our Milky Way galaxy, measuring roughly 100,000 light-years across, and can be found in the constellation of Canis Major.
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