Space telescopes

It might be the end of the road for two of NASA’s most iconic telescopes as the space agency looks to reduce the funding for the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, much to the dismay of scientists who rely heavily on the cosmic observations of the missions.The Fujifilm X100VI is the Most Fun I’ve Had With a Camera in YearsShortly after the fate of its 2024 budget was sealed, NASA released its budget proposal for 2025, requesting $1.58 billion for its astrophysics division. Despite the 3% increase…

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid telescope has been gradually losing its vision as layers of water molecules have frozen onto its mirrors. That’s bad news for a mission tasked with observing the dark universe using super-sensitive cameras, but the team behind the telescope has come up with a plan to keep Euclid warm in the cold depths of space.First Full-Color Images From Webb Space TelescopeEuclid launched in July 2023 to study the dark universe—the parts of our cosmos made up of dark energy and dark matter—using…

Stay calm, everybody stay calm. But it’s finally happening: The European Space Agency is committing itself to the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), a gravitational wave observatory that will study some of the universe’s most enigmatic phenomena.Alex Winter on the Most Important Modern Horror Movie On Thursday, LISA was formally adopted, meaning that ESA “recognizes that the mission concept and technology are sufficiently advanced,” according to an agency release, and construction on the observatory can officially…

The Japanese space agency JAXA has released the first test images from its X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM). The images show a galaxy cluster and a supernova remnant, and offer insight into the chemical cocktail that composes the supernova.Will You Click Windows’ New Copilot Button?An X-ray telescope functions similarly to the X-ray Specs of your favorite comic books: they reveal aspects of the cosmos that would otherwise be invisible, enabling astronomers to peer at the undercarriage of the cosmos.XRISM…

The Einstein Probe, an X-ray telescope managed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, will be ready to launch next month. The probe will look for transient events in X-ray light and try to answer some fundamental questions about black holes and gravitational waves.Gizmodo’s Top Five Gadgets of 2023Hubble, Chandra, Spitzer, and Webb. Undoubtedly iconic names, but now, in a long overdue development, we’re finally going to have a space-based telescope named after the famed German-born theoretical physicist, Albert Einstein.The…

A diligent surveyor of the night skies, NEOWISE is sadly approaching its fiery demise as the Sun’s erratic outbursts are causing the infrared telescope to gradually fall out of its orbit before it eventually burns up in Earth’s atmosphere.First Full-Color Images From Webb Space TelescopeNASA’s NEOWISE, or Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, will be rendered unusable in early 2025 due to increased solar activity, the space agency announced. The telescope’s orbit is expected to gradually lower over time.…

Space is an inky black yonder... but for the countless light sources that pepper the billions of light-years that human instruments can see. Thanks to ground-based telescopes and observatories parked millions of miles from Earth, 2023 has been a terrific year for space imagery. Astronomers captured fascinating new…Read more... Space is an inky black yonder... but for the countless light sources that pepper the billions of light-years that human instruments can see. Thanks to ground-based telescopes and observatories…

NASA is addressing an issue with a Hubble Space Telescope gyroscope that prompted the observatory to enter safe mode on November 23. Science operations have been suspended as a result, but the space agency doesn’t seem too worried.“Even AI Rappers are Harassed by Police” | AI UnlockedHubble, launched on April 24, 1990, and renowned for its significant contributions to astronomy, is experiencing a technical issue with one of its gyroscopes, according to a NASA statement. The space telescope, operating in low Earth orbit,…

The Hubble Space Telescope just ogled an exoplanet passing in front of a star in a triple system, revealing the nearby world’s mass.Webb Telescope Images the Pillars of CreationThe world is named LTT 1445Ac, and it was discovered in 2022 by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). The world orbits a red dwarf star (one in a set of three) that is 22 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Eridanus. LTT 1445Ac shares its host star with two larger planets.TESS doesn’t have the optical resolution necessary to…

NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft captured this view of Earth—appearing as a speck of light—on February 14, 1980, at a distance of roughly 3.2 billion miles (6 billion km) from the Sun—beyond the orbit of Neptune. The words of Carl Sagan, as featured in his 1994 book, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of a Human Future in Space, best describes the significance of this ultra-famous image:... Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human…