Telescopes

The Webb Space Telescope launched to space in December 2021 with an ambitious goal: providing scientists with a deeper, sharper view of the history of the universe.It took the telescope a month to arrive at its location in space, a region called L2 that sits one million miles from Earth, and another six months to commission the telescope for scientific imaging.Finally, last July, President Biden unveiled the first full-color image taken by Webb: a deep field that gave researchers a look 13 billion years into the past.…

Astronomers have discovered more than 5,000 planets outside of the Solar System to date. The grand question is whether any of these planets are home to life.To find the answer, astronomers will likely need more powerful telescopes than exist today.I am an astronomer who studies astrobiology and planets around distant stars. For the last seven years, I have been co-leading a team that is developing a new kind of space telescope that could collect a hundred times more light than the James Webb Space Telescope, the biggest…

With a spectacular…

NASA is set Wednesday to unveil a new image from the James Webb Space Telescope a year after it first stunned the world with breathtaking views of the distant cosmos.Webb, the most powerful observatory in orbit, was launched in December 2021 from French Guiana, on a million mile (1.6 million kilometre) voyage to a region called the second Lagrange point.Its first full colour picture was revealed by President Joe Biden on July 11, 2022: the clearest view yet of the early universe, going back 13 billion years.The next wave…

After Euclid blasts off, it will travel to a spot called Lagrange point 2, about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, where the telescope will have a clear view of deep space while being able to communicate with astronomers and enjoy continuous sunlight on its solar panels. The telescope is equipped with two instruments that will be used simultaneously: a visible-wavelength camera with 36 sensitive detectors called charge coupled devices, for measuring the shapes of billions of galaxies, and a near-infrared spectrometer and…

The NANOGrav team was essentially able to turn the Milky Way into a giant gravitational wave detector by measuring the signals from these pulsars to determine when a wave nudged them. The collision of enormous black holes—or some other extremely energetic process—generates gravitational waves that ever-so-slightly squeeze and stretch space-time, tweaking the intervals between pulsar blips. NANOGrav researchers measured those minuscule changes among 68 pulsars, then correlated them, finding a pattern that is likely the…

Throngs of satellites are streaking across the Hubble Space Telescope’s field of view, leaving what look like scratch marks on space photos and hindering scientists’ work. Teeming swarms of these satellites, which reflect sunlight and mimic astronomical objects, threaten to gradually transform the night sky and affect how astronomy can be done. “We see these satellite trails in Hubble data, and really in all astronomical data, and they’re a bit of a nuisance,” said David Stark, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science…

The Hubble Space Telescope images the cosmos from low Earth orbit, but an abundance of artificial satellites circlethe planet at higher altitudes. That’s become an irritation in recent years, as the thousands of devices leave bright streaks in Hubble imagery.Astronomers Could Soon Get Warnings When SpaceX Satellites Threaten Their ViewNow, researchers with the Space Telescope Science Institute have developed a tool to identify the telltale trails satellites leave in Hubble images taken by the telescope’s Advanced Camera…

The BlackGEM array, consisting of three new telescopes located at ESO’s La Silla Observatory, has begun operations. This photograph shows the three open domes of the BlackGEM telescopes under a stunning night sky a La Silla. Other telescopes at the observatory are visible in the background. Credit: S. Bloemen (Radboud University)/ESOThe BlackGEM array, a system of three new telescopes located at the European Southern Observatory’s (<span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt"…

A colossal 360-foot asteroid just buzzed Earth yesterday. Thankfully, it didn't pose any threat, but already another one is fast approaching! Asteroid 2023 KA2, part of the Apollo group of asteroids, is on its way and it will come remarkably close to Earth today. NASA discovered this asteroid just a few days ago - on May 22, 2023. According to NASA's asteroid tracking data, the asteroid has an estimated size of 33 feet.This celestial object is classified within the Apollo group, a collection of asteroids named after the…