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Latest by G. Torbet

This artist impression illustrates how astronomers using the Gemini North telescope, one half of the International Gemini Observatory operated by NSF’s NOIRLab, have made multiple detections of rock-forming elements in the atmosphere of a Jupiter-sized exoplanet, WASP-76b. The so-called “hot Jupiter” is perilously close to its host star, which is heating the planet’s atmosphere to astounding temperatures and vaporized rock-forming elements such as magnesium, calcium and iron, providing insight into how our own Solar System formed.

This exoplanet is over 2,000-degrees Celsius, has vaporized metal in its atmosphere

The puffy, scorching-hot planet has elements in its atmosphere that would normally form rocks, but are so hot that they have vaporized.
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its black-and-white navigation cameras to capture panoramas of “Marker Band Valley” at two times of day on April 8. Color was added to a combination of both panoramas for an artistic interpretation of the scene.

See a postcard from Mars taken by the Curiosity rover

The image combines two different views of the same area and is colorized to show off the undulating martian landscape in a region called the Marker Band Valley.
During a 2005 flyby, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft took high-resolution images of Enceladus that were combined into this mosaic, which shows the long fissures at the moon’s south pole that allow water from the subsurface ocean to escape into space.

The search for habitable moons in the solar system is heating up

Recent research has found phosphorus, one of the building blocks for life, at Saturn's icy moon Enceladus.
An artist's illustration shows that the stars in the TOI 1338 system make an eclipsing binary — they circle each other in our plane of view.

Tatooine-like exoplanet orbits two stars in rare astronomical discovery

Astronomers recently discovered a planet which orbits two stars, meaning it would have two suns in its sky like Tatooine.
NASA astronaut and Expedition 69 Flight Engineer Steve Bowen is pictured outside the International Space Station during his eighth career spacewalk, during which he routed cables and installed insulation to ready the orbital outpost for its next set of roll-out solar arrays.

How to watch ISS astronauts install a new solar array tomorrow

Tomorrow two astronauts will head out of the International Space Station to install a new solar array. Here are the details on how to watch the spacewalk.
a woman peering into a telescope

NASA’s latest method for hunting exoplanets? Enlisting amateurs

NASA has a new program that gathers data from millions of amateur astronomers, and it could be a game-changer for astronomy.
The jellyfish galaxy JO206 trails across this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, showcasing a colorful star-forming disk surrounded by a pale, luminous cloud of dust. A handful of foreground bright stars with crisscross diffraction spikes stands out against an inky black backdrop at the bottom of the image. JO206 lies over 700 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Aquarius.

Hubble image of the week shows an unusual jellyfish galaxy

This week's image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows an unusual type of galaxy named for its aquatic look-alike: a jellyfish.
Astronaut Woody Hoburg watches as a new roll-out solar array deploys after he and fellow NASA spacewalker Stephen Bowen (out of frame) successfully installed it on the space station.

Astronauts install a fifth new solar array at the International Space Station

Two astronauts performed a spacewalk yesterday, heading outside the International Space Station (ISS) to install a new solar array.
Artist's impression of Cheops, ESA's Characterising Exoplanet Satellite, in orbit above Earth.

CHEOPS planet-hunter detects four rarely seen mini-Neptunes

Though they are thought to be the most common planet type in our galaxy, mini-Neptunes are rarely spotted because they are hard to detect.
This image captures the streak of an Earth-orbiting artificial satellite crossing Hubble's field of view during an observation of "The Mice" interacting galaxies (NGC 4676). A typical satellite trail is very thin and will affect less than 0.5% of a single Hubble exposure. Though in this case the satellite overlaps a portion of the target galaxy, the observation quality is not affected. That's because multiple exposures are taken of the same target. And the satellite trail is not in other frames. Developers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, have software that identifies the bad pixels from the satellite photobombing, the extent to which they affect the image, and then flags them. When flagged, scientists can recover the full field of view. Even as the number of satellites increases over the decade, these tools for cleaning the images will still be applicable.

Hubble scientists create tool for erasing satellite trails from images

Astronomers worry about how satellites could impact scientific research. Now, researchers have created a tool to deal with satellite streaks in Hubble images.
Gemini North, part of the International Gemini Observatory operated by NSF’s NOIRLab, is back observing the night sky following the repair and refurbishment of its primary mirror. The telescope’s debut observation captured the supernova dubbed SN 2023ixf (lower left), which was discovered on 19 May by Japanese astronomer Koichi Itagaki. This dazzling point of light, the closest supernova seen in the past five years, is located along one of the spiral arms of the Pinwheel Galaxy (Messier 101).

Gemini North telescope’s chipped mirror has been repaired

The large Gemini North telescope suffered damage last year when its primary mirror was chipped. Now it's back and has captured an image of the Pinwheel Galaxy.
A delicate tracery of dust and bright star clusters threads across this image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. The bright tendrils of gas and stars belong to the barred spiral galaxy NGC 5068, whose bright central bar is visible in the upper left of this image. NGC 5068 lies around 17 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo.

Peer inside the bar of a barred spiral galaxy in new James Webb image

The newest image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows a stunning display of dust and stars that form the bar of the barred spiral galaxy NCG 5068.
Saturn's geologically active moon, Enceladus.

James Webb spots huge plumes of water from Saturn’s moon Enceladus

The entire moon of Enceladus is just over 300 miles across. And yet the plume Webb observed spanned more than 6,000 miles.
NASA's Ingenuity helicopter.

NASA lost contact with Mars Ingenuity helicopter for a week — but it’s OK now

NASA recently lost contact with the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars for a week, and the team had to work fast to avoid a collision with the rover.
An artist's impression of the Juice spacecraft fully deployed.

Juice spacecraft has overcome its stuck antenna issue and is ready for Jupiter

The European Space Agency's Juice spacecraft is now fully deployed and on its way to study the icy moons of Jupiter.
An artist's concept of the Kepler spacecraft.

Astronomers discover three exoplanets in final data from Kepler Space Telescope

The Kepler Space Telescope was retired in 2018, after discovering 2,600 confirmed exoplanets. But now there are three more to add to the mission's total,
An artist's impression of the MBR Explorer spacecraft approaching an asteroid.

UAE to send its first mission to solar system’s main asteroid belt

Following its mission to Mars, the United Arab Emirates plans to send spacecraft to the asteroid belt to investigate the history of the solar system.
The Axiom Mission-2 and Expedition 69 crew members pose for a portrait together during dinner time aboard the International Space Station. In the center front row, is Expedition 69 crew member and UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi flanked by (from left) Axiom Mission-2 crew members Commander Peggy Whitson, Mission Specialist Ali Alqarni, Pilot John Shoffner, and Mission Specialist Rayyanah Barnawi. In the back (from left) are, Expedition 69 crew members Roscosmos cosmonaut Dmitri Petelin, NASA astronaut Stephen Bowen, Roscosmos cosmonauts Andrey Fedyaev and Sergey Prokopyev, and NASA astronaut Woody Hoburg. Not pictured is NASA astronaut Frank Rubio.

How to watch the Axiom-2 mission depart from the ISS on Tuesday

This Tuesday, the crew of the second ever all-private mission to the International Space Station will be returning to Earth. Here's how to watch the departure.
This image reveals the fine structures of a sunspot in the photosphere. Within the dark, central area of the sunspot’s umbra, small-scale bright dots, known as umbral dots, are seen. The elongated structures surrounding the umbra are visible as bright-headed strands known as penumbral filaments. Umbra: Dark, central region of a sunspot where the magnetic field is strongest. Penumbra: The brighter, surrounding region of a sunspot’s umbra characterized by bright filamentary structures.

Horrifying up-close images of a sunspot captured by the Inouye Solar Telescope

A new set of images from the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope shows the surface of the sun -- including frankly disturbing images of sunspots seen up close.
james webb chandra images chandrawebb2 1

See stunning images combining James Webb and Chandra X-ray data

NASA has shared a new view of some famous space images, by combining infrared data from Webb with X-ray data from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory.
NASA scientists used microwave observations to spot the first polar cyclone on Uranus, seen here as a light-colored dot to the right of center in each image of the planet. The images use wavelength bands K, Ka, and Q, from left. To highlight cyclone features, a different color map was used for each.

Astronomers spot cyclones at Uranus’ pole for the first time

Uranus is usually portrayed as a generally featureless blue ball, but when seen using radio telescopes, the pole reveals a swirling cyclone. 
A Hubble Space Telescope image of the globular star cluster, Messier 4. The cluster is a dense collection of several hundred thousand stars. Astronomers suspect that an intermediate-mass black hole, weighing as much as 800 times the mass of our Sun, is lurking, unseen, at its core.

Hubble goes hunting for elusive medium-sized black holes

There's something odd about the black holes discovered to date. We've found hardly any black holes in the intermediate mass range, and it's not clear why.
A snippet of the mosaic of Belva Crater taken by the Perseverance rover.

See a 3D view of a martian crater captured by the Perseverance rover

The Perseverance rover recently used its Mastcam-Z instrument to collect over 150 images of Mars' Belva Crater, which have been stitched into a mosaic.
The two young, low-mass proto-stars HR 5999 and HR 6000 illuminate nearby dust, creating the reflection nebula Bernes 149. These stars grew out of the dusty dark cloud of Lupus 3, part of a larger complex of as many as nine dark clouds.

Image of darkness and light shows new stars being born in Lupus 3 nebula

A gorgeous new image of a nebular 500 light-years away gives a peek into the process of star formation.
This illustration of Comet 238P/Read shows the main belt comet sublimating—its water ice vaporizing as its orbit approaches the Sun. This is significant, as the sublimation is what distinguishes comets from asteroids, creating their distinctive tail and hazy halo, or coma. It is especially important for Comet Read, as it is one of 16 identified main belt comets found in the asteroid belt, as opposed to the colder Kuiper Belt or Oort Cloud, more distant from the Sun. Comet Read was one of three comets used to define the class of main belt comets in 2006.

James Webb investigates mystery of where Earth’s water comes from

The first water may have been brought to our planet by a comet. Now, James Webb is investigating comets to see if they could carry water vapor.
Saturn during Equinox

Saturn takes the crown for planet with the most moons

Previously, Jupiter was the champion with its 95 known moons, but Saturn has pulled into the lead thanks to the recent discovery of 62 new moons there.
Exoplanet LP 791-18 d, illustrated in this artist’s concept, is an Earth-size world about 90 light-years away. A more massive planet in the system, shown as a small blue dot on the right, exerts a gravitational tug that may result in internal heating and volcanic eruptions, like on Jupiter’s moon Io.

Astronomers discover Earth-sized exoplanet covered in volcanoes

Astronomers have discovered an Earth-sized planet that is highly volcanically active, which means it could possibly support life.
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover captured this mosaic of a hill nicknamed “Pinestand.” Scientists think the tall sedimentary layers stacked on top of one another here could have been formed by a deep, fast-moving river.

Perseverance rover finds evidence of an ancient river on Mars

The Perseverance rover has identified evidence of what was once one of the deepest and fast-flowing rivers yet discovered on the planet.
Artist’s impression of a black hole accretion.

Astronomers just spotted the largest cosmic explosion ever seen

Astronomers recently observed the largest cosmic explosion ever seen, believed to be caused by supermassive black hole devouring a large cloud of gas.
This image shows the IRAS 11051-7706 object in the Chamaeleon constellation. New stars are born in the colourful clouds of gas and dust seen here. The infrared observations underlying the image reveal new details in the star-forming regions that are usually obscured by the clouds of dust. The image was produced with data collected by the VIRCAM instrument, which is attached to the VISTA telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. The observations were done as part of the VISIONS survey, which will allow astronomers to better understand how stars form in these dust-enshrouded regions.

1 million images get stitched together to form an atlas of star birth

Stars are born in dense clouds of dust and gas called, adorably enough, stellar nurseries. Now, researchers have created an atlas of five of these regions.
This artist’s concept depicts the planet GJ 1214 b, a “mini-Neptune” with what is likely a steamy, hazy atmosphere. A new study based on observations by NASA’s Webb telescope provides insight into this type of planet, the most common in the galaxy.

James Webb telescope gets a view of the ‘white whale’ of exoplanet research

Located 50 light-years away, the planet GJ 1214 b has defied 15 years of attempted observations due to its hazy nature.
This image of the dusty debris disk surrounding the young star Fomalhaut is from Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). It reveals three nested belts extending out to 14 billion miles (23 billion kilometers) from the star. The inner belts – which had never been seen before – were revealed by Webb for the first time.

James Webb gets a stunning view of a far-off planetary system

As well peering back at the earliest galaxies in the universe, the James Webb Space Telescope is also letting astronomers learn more about how planets form.
a slice of 3D printed cheesecake

3D printed cheesecake? Inside the culinary quest to make a Star Trek food replicator

Scientists at Columbia University are trying to crack the code for 3D-printed food, and their first success was a 3D-printed cheesecake
Uranus is surrounded by its four major rings and 10 of its 27 known moons in this color-added view that uses data taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1998. A study featuring new modeling shows that four of Uranus’ large moons likely contain internal oceans.

4 of Uranus’s icy moons could have liquid water oceans

Using data from the Voyager mission, researchers found that four of Uranus's moons likely have liquid water oceans beneath icy crusts.