Astronomy news

• James Webb Space Telescope discovers how black holes feed themselves

  19-07-2026 14:00 via space.com
  
  Thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have been given a glimpse of the mechanisms that supermassive black holes use to feed themselves. The observations could help scientists discover how supermassive black holes with masses millions, often even billions, of times that of the sun grew so fast so soon after the Big Bang.While all large galaxies have supermassive black holes at their hearts, some are slumbering giants, consuming little surrounding gas and dust, while others
  
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• Get stabilized views of the cosmos with the Canon 18x50 IS binoculars, now almost 30% off

  20-07-2026 16:27 via space.com
  
  The Canon 18x50 IS binoculars are ideal for stargazing and are able to deliver clarity on night sky objects, thanks to their image stabilization. The 50mm objective lenses are the benchmark for stargazing binoculars and are able to deliver bright views of the night sky. They are currently 30% off their retail price.You can get the Canon 18x50 IS all-weather binoculars on sale for $1195 from Amazon.When it comes to stargazing, image-stabilized binoculars are a cut above the rest. Even at high mag
  
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• Ancient sandstorm leaves behind wreckage on Mars | Space photo of the day for July 20, 2026

  20-07-2026 16:00 via space.com
  
  NASA's Curiosity rover snapped this image on the surface of Mars, and scientists think it's the wreckage of an ancient sandstorm.(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)NASA's Curiosity rover has uncovered evidence of ancient sandstorms on the Red Planet. What is it?Scientists think ancient Mars was quite different than it is today. While we might know it now as a barred, reddish wasteland, billions of years ago it actually had an atmosphere. Scientists even think that it had flowing rivers and exp
  
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• Rocket launch costs have dropped 96% since 1960. How low can they go?

  20-07-2026 15:00 via space.com
  
  The costs of space launch have fallen 96% in the past six decades and have the potential to plummet by nearly as much by 2040, a new study finds.However, such an improvement might get hampered by a number of challenges, such as the rise of space debris in orbit or a single company monopolizing commercial space launch, researchers added.Although previous analyses of space launch suggested that costs had dropped over time, one major problem with these prior studies was that they "considered the co
  
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• Did Viking 1 find life on Mars 50 years ago? Here's why the debate continues

  20-07-2026 14:00 via space.com
  
  In looking back and commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Viking missions to Mars, one is struck by the bold and audacious undertaking.Twin spacecraft missions — each consisting of a lander and an orbiter — made their way to Mars and into the history books. The Viking 1 lander planted its legs on the terrain of Chryse Planitia 50 years ago today, on July 20, 1976, while its Viking 2 counterpart touched down at Utopia Planitia on Sept. 3 of that year.Among their duties, the dual l
  
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• An artificial 'Saturn's ring' of satellites could soon fill the sky, astronomers warn

  20-07-2026 12:00 via space.com
  
  A bright "Saturn's ring" of satellites could circle the night sky if plans to launch a million data center spacecraft and tens of thousands of space mirrors come to pass. This ring, traversing the sky for hours after dusk and before dawn, would outshine every star and planet, and be visible from every spot on Earth.Hugh Lewis, a professor of astronautics at the University of Birmingham in, the U.K., told Space.com that the only way to accommodate the high number of data center constellations tha
  
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• 'Aliens' at 40: James Cameron's sequel is a sci-fi icon, but did you know he quit the movie twice?

  19-07-2026 19:00 via space.com
  
  Where does James Cameron's "Aliens" rank among the other Alien movies? That depends on who you ask. Some might say it's the best, while others put it just behind the original (spoiler alert: it's the best). Regardless, there's no denying that this 1986 film shifted gears, moving the franchise from horror to horror-tinged sci-fi action and paving an alternate path for the future.As Cameron stated in an interview with Lofficier, the plan always was "to do a film that was not as scary... it's scary
  
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• Should we trust AI in the search for alien life? Scientists aren't so sure

  19-07-2026 17:00 via space.com
  
  Artificial intelligence could easily fall into the trap of identifying non-life as life on other worlds, claim two researchers from Michigan State University who have tested AI on simulated life in a computer program."We had previously seen that AI has a big Achilles heel when it is trying to classify things that are unlike the things in its training examples," Michigan's Christoph Adami told Space.com. "We call these 'out-of-distribution' samples and it is just incredibly easy to get AI to misc
  
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• How Christopher Nolan's 'Interstellar' turned general relativity into the bad guy

  19-07-2026 16:00 via space.com
  
  The biggest blockbusters of 2014 threw up a varied rogues' gallery of bad guys. In "Transformers: Age of Extinction", it was a reincarnated version of Optimus Prime's perma-nemesis, Megatron, while Captain America faced off against a reborn Hydra infiltrating the upper echelons of the US government in "The Winter Soldier". For Spider-Man, it was Electro, while Maleficent showed up in live-action to give Sleeping Beauty nightmares. Christopher Nolan has never been one to go with the Hollywood cro
  
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• 10 places in the US and Canada to see August's partial solar eclipse and Perseid meteor shower in 1 trip

  19-07-2026 15:00 via space.com
  
  Aug. 12, 2026, offers a rare double-header for skywatchers across northeastern North America: a partial solar eclipse during the afternoon followed, hours later, by the peak of the Perseid meteor shower beneath dark summer skies. The eclipse is part of a total solar eclipse happening in eastern Greenland, western Iceland and northern Spain. "The neat thing about seeing a partial eclipse, especially one that is total somewhere else, is that you get to join in with the whole event that's going on,
  
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• Scientists told them, 'No, it's too dangerous,' but they did it anyway: Inside Japan's super-close asteroid flyby

  19-07-2026 12:00 via space.com
  
  Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft returned spectacular images of a near-Earth asteroid following a super-close flyby on July 5, but heated debate was needed before teams signed off on the daring attempt.When images of the asteroid Torifune arrived on the morning of July 6 Japan time, Makoto Yoshikawa and his team at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) got two surprises at once. Torifune turned out to be a contact binary, in which two chunks of rock have come together under gravity, and the
  
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• Another reusable rocket? Japan launches, lands RV-X prototype (video)

  18-07-2026 16:00 via space.com
  
  Japan has succeeded in the first-ever flight test of its RV-X experimental reusable rocket prototype. The launch — or hop, considering its duration and distance — took place at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Noshiro test facility on July 11 and lasted about 40 seconds. The 24-foot-tall (7.3 meters) test vehicle, powered by a single engine, rose just over 33 feet (10 m) in the air and traveled a horizontal distance of approximately 50 feet (15 m) across the site's con
  
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• This Week In Space podcast: Episode 219 — SpaceX Goes to War!

  18-07-2026 15:40 via space.com
  
  On Episode 219 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik discuss the space headlines for the past few weeks.It's been busy, and some exciting things are happening! A couple ofcompanies are moving into the space solar power arena — something we'velong advocated — and that's welcome progress. Starship is set to flyStarship test number 13, and a lot is riding on this — the system isoverdue for some proof of concept to keep up with NASA's HLS contract.An exoplanet spotted a d
  
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• 'We knew we had a lot to live up to': As 'Aliens' turns 40, we chat with the legendary VFX masters who created the Alien Queen (interview)

  18-07-2026 15:00 via space.com
  
  It's almost inconceivable that 40 years have passed since what's been called the greatest sci-fi action film of all time (and not just by us) assaulted theaters with the juiced-up sequel to Ridley Scott's 1979 classic, "Alien." Director James Cameron's propulsive vision for a gung-ho military-style movie would call upon Stan Winston Studio's elite creature effects crew from 1984's "The Terminator" — a team that would later work on "Predator," "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," "Jurassic Park,"
  
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• 'We knew we had a lot to live up to': As 'Aliens' turns 40, we chat to the legendary VFX masters who created the Alien Queen (interview)

  18-07-2026 15:00 via space.com
  
  It's almost inconceivable that 40 years have passed since what's been called the greatest sci-fi action film of all time (and not just by us) assaulted theaters with the juiced-up sequel to Ridley Scott's 1979 classic, "Alien." Director James Cameron's propulsive vision for a gung-ho military-style movie would call upon Stan Winston Studio's elite creature effects crew from 1984's "The Terminator" — a team that would later work on "Predator," "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," "Jurassic Park,"
  
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• Beyond the Perseids: 6 meteor showers worth watching this summer

  18-07-2026 12:00 via space.com
  
  The Perseids may be the summer meteor shower everyone marks on the calendar, but they are not the only reason to look up this season. From mid-July through late August, Earth plows through several other streams of comet and asteroid debris, triggering a series of lesser-known meteor showers across Northern Hemisphere skies. Most will not deliver the dazzling hourly rates of the Perseids, and moonlight will spoil some peak nights in 2026. But for patient skywatchers under dark skies, these lesser
  
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• Remembering 'Ulysses 31', the '80s cartoon that transported 'The Odyssey' to outer space

  18-07-2026 00:00 via space.com
  
  It's not known whether "Ulysses 31" was on Christopher Nolan's radar in his teenage years, but it's intriguing to think it could have influenced the director's decision to take on Homer's "The Odyssey". This animated space opera, a French/Japanese co-production, delivered a crash course in Greek mythology to a generation of kids who grew up in the '80s. And, although it looks more like "Star Wars" than Homer's original tale, it had a decent stab at transferring the Classics to the 31st century (
  
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• These 'metallic' dunes on Mars look like sci-fi. What are they really?

  17-07-2026 23:00 via space.com
  
  If you still picture Mars as a monotonous red desert, it may be time for an update.The European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter has been capturing some of the Red Planet's most surreal landscapes, and its latest images reveal a sprawling field that looks like molten metal frozen across the floor of an ancient Mars crater.The shimmering "waves" aren't metal at all, however. They are dark sand dunes dusted with seasonal frost, much of it carbon dioxide, or "dry ice," that settles on the surfac
  
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• The Perseid meteor shower starts this week. Here's why you should look up now

  17-07-2026 21:00 via space.com
  
  People keep asking me about the total solar eclipse on August 12. That's understandable. For anyone in the Northern Hemisphere, it is shaping up to be a joyous day of astronomy. Totality will cross eastern Greenland, western Iceland and northern Spain, but much of Europe will see a very deep partial eclipse, and even parts of North America will see a small bite taken from the sun. Then, just hours later, the Perseid meteor shower will peak beneath perfectly moonless skies. What a double-act! The
  
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• 'Aliens' at 40: Here are 26 reasons why James Cameron's sequel is still the greatest sci-fi action movie of all time

  17-07-2026 20:00 via space.com
  
  Making a sequel to Ridley Scott's 1979 classic "Alien" should have been a disaster. This was a movie that defined a whole new sub-genre of outer-space horror, a perfectly structured scarefest that also introduced one of cinema's greatest-ever monsters to the world.Luckily, James Cameron — then one of Hollywood's hottest properties off the back of "The Terminator" — has never been a shrinking violet, and was brave enough to face the Xenomorph challenge head-on. Reinventing the franchi
  
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• Earth's largest particle accelerator opens new window into the early universe just after the Big Bang: 'A culmination of a decades-long quest'

  17-07-2026 19:00 via space.com
  
  After more than two decades of searching, scientists have finally observed a phenomenon in a hot and dense particle 'soup' similar to that which filled the cosmos moments after the Big Bang. The observation could help cosmologists better understand the incredibly hot and dense state of the universe in its earliest moments.The world's most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), regularly creates this so-called quark-gluon plasma by smashing together the atomic nuclei of h
  
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• Vikram-1, India's 1st private orbital rocket, launches on historic debut flight

  17-07-2026 18:00 via space.com
  
  An Indian company will make history early Saturday morning (July 18), and you can watch the action live.Skyroot Aerospace plans to launch its Vikram-1 rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, on the Indian barrier island of Sriharikota, on Saturday at 2 a.m. EDT (0600 GMT; 11:30 a.m. India Standard Time). Vikram-1 is the first-ever privately built Indian orbital rocket, so its liftoff could blaze a new trail for the nation and for commercial spaceflight.You can watch the launch live here at S
  
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• 'The dawn of a new space era': Vikram-1, India's 1st private orbital rocket, aces debut launch

  17-07-2026 18:00 via space.com
  
  An Indian company just made spaceflight history.Skyroot Aerospace successfully launched its Vikram-1 rocket to low Earth orbit (LEO) early Saturday morning (July 18), making India just the third country with a private orbital launch capability. The other two are established space powers — the U.S. and China."It is the dawn of a new space era," one of Skyroot's commentators said during the company's launch webcast on Saturday.(Image credit: Skyroot Aerospace)Skyroot Aerospace is based in th
  
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• Making history: Watch Vikram-1, India's 1st private orbital rocket, launch early on July 18

  17-07-2026 18:00 via space.com
  
  An Indian company will make history early Saturday morning (July 18), and you can watch the action live.Skyroot Aerospace plans to launch its Vikram-1 rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, on the Indian barrier island of Sriharikota, on Saturday at 2 a.m. EDT (0600 GMT; 11:30 a.m. India Standard Time). Vikram-1 is the first-ever privately built Indian orbital rocket, so its liftoff could blaze a new trail for the nation and for commercial spaceflight.You can watch the launch live via Skyro
  
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• 'The Starry Night' in space: Dark Energy Camera channels a cosmic Van Gogh (video)

  17-07-2026 17:00 via space.com
  
  Reboots and remakes may be all the rage in Hollywood with mixed degrees of success (we don't talk about the Nightmare on Elm Street reboot ... ever), but they aren't so popular in other forms of art such as painting. However, a recent cosmic rework of one of art's most well-regarded pieces could be just as breathtaking as its original counterpart.That's all thanks to the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), which has captured a vibrant view of the Corona Australis molecular cloud, that shows the star-for
  
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• Smoke from devastating Canada wildfires visible from space | Space photo of the day for July 17, 2026

  17-07-2026 16:00 via space.com
  
  Smoke from wildfires across Canada travels across both Canada and the U.S. in this satellite image captured by NOAA-21 on July 14, 2026.(Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory/Lauren Dauphin)The wildfires tearing across Canada are so extreme that the smoke billowing upward can be seen from space. What is it?Over 850 wildfires are currently devastating Canada, as reported by the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center. The fires are spreading across Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Ontario; most remain c
  
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• The Perseid meteor shower is here! How to see the best shooting stars this summer

  17-07-2026 15:00 via space.com
  
  Look up! The Perseid meteor shower is finally active, bringing the potential for gorgeous shooting stars and fireballs as Earth plunges into the trail of debris shed by the icy comet Swift-Tuttle. Here's what you need to know. The Perseid meteor shower 2026 is set to be a truly magnificent affair and a stark contrast to last year, when moonlight drowned out all but the brightest shooting stars. The shower will reach peak activity overnight on Aug. 12-13 under the dark skies of the new moon. Duri
  
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• Astronauts just launched on a Soyuz rocket with an energy-drink ad on it, continuing a Russian tradition

  17-07-2026 14:00 via space.com
  
  Astronauts just flew to Earth orbit space atop a rocket emblazoned with an energy-drink ad.The Soyuz MS-29 launch to the International Space Station on Tuesday (July 14), from the Russian-run Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, used a Soyuz rocket festooned with ads for Лимонад ("Lemonade") LIT ENERGY. The ads are visible in shots of the rocket's rollout on July 11, published here and here via NASA's Flickr account.The Soyuz used for the launch also featu
  
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• Are we underestimating the threat of solar storms? A 'once-in-a-thousand-year' disaster is worth considering, scientists say

  17-07-2026 12:00 via space.com
  
  The most powerful solar storms to strike Earth may pack a bigger punch than scientists realized, according to a new study that suggests the impacts of extreme space weather have been underestimated.Researchers found evidence that the apparent upper limit on Earth's response to the strongest solar storms may be an artifact of how solar wind has been measured rather than a true physical ceiling. If confirmed, the findings suggest that rare "once-in-a-thousand-year" geomagnetic storms could have a
  
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• SpaceX's Starship Flight 13 test launch aborts at last second (video)

  17-07-2026 01:12 via space.com
  
  Starship wasn't quite ready to fly today (July 16).SpaceX tried to launch the Starship megarocket on its 13th test flight today but couldn't quite pull it off. Something went wrong just as the giant vehicle's first-stage engines started to fire up, and an abort was triggered.It's too early to say what exactly happened or when SpaceX will try again with Starship Flight 13.SpaceX's second V3 Starship vehicle tries to launch on July 16, 2026. The attempt was aborted at the last second. (Image credi
  
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