Night Sky Blog
Cosmic News, Articles and Videos
Meteor Shakes Mars and Creates Crater
NASA’s Insight lander felt the ground shake during the impact while cameras aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted the yawning new crater from space. NASA’s InSight lander recorded a magnitude 4 marsquake last Dec. 24, but scientists learned only later the cause of that quake: a meteoroid strike estimated to be one of the biggest […]
The Night Sky This Week October 24 2022
Join National Geographic’s Andrew Fazekas for his top stargazing picks of the week.
Stunning Reveal of Iconic Pillars of Creation by Webb
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured a lush, highly detailed landscape – the iconic Pillars of Creation – where new stars are forming within dense clouds of gas and dust. The three-dimensional pillars look like majestic rock formations, but are far more permeable. These columns are made up of cool interstellar gas and […]
The Stuph File Interview: DART Mission Smashes into Asteroid, Hubble, Spacex and Mars Helicopter
Check out my October appearance on The Stuph File radio show with host Peter Anthony Holder. In this episode we talk about the successful collision of a vending sized spacecraft with an asteroid and what this means for protection of our planet from wayward asteroids and comets in the future. We also chat about SpaceX, […]
The Night Sky This Week October 17 2022
Join National Geographic columnist and Night Sky Guy Andrew Fazekas for his top stargazing picks for this week
Hubble Shows Off Violent Starbirth
The lives of newborn stars are tempestuous, as this image of the Herbig–Haro objects HH 1 and HH 2 from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope depicts. Both objects are in the constellation Orion and lie around 1250 light-years from Earth. HH 1 is the luminous cloud above the bright star in the upper right of this image, […]
NASA Confirms DART Mission Impact Changed Asteroid’s Motion in Space
Analysis of data obtained over the past two weeks by NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) investigation team shows the spacecraft’s kinetic impact with its target asteroid, Dimorphos, successfully altered the asteroid’s orbit. This marks humanity’s first time purposely changing the motion of a celestial object and the first full-scale demonstration of asteroid deflection technology. […]
Hubble Snags Scorpion’s City of Stars
Terzan 1 is a globular cluster that lies about 22,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius. It is one of 11 globular clusters that were discovered by the Turkish-Armenian astronomer Agop Terzan between 1966 and 1971 when he was working in France, based mostly at Lyon Observatory. Somewhat confusingly, the 11 Terzan globular clusters are numbered […]
Venus Test Balloon Takes Flight
A scaled-down version of the aerobot that could one day take to the Venusian skies successfully completed two Nevada test flights, marking a milestone for the project. The intense pressure, heat, and corrosive gases of Venus’ surface are enough to disable even the most robust spacecraft in a matter of hours. But a few dozen […]
Night Sky This Week October 10, 2022
Join National Geographic columnist and Night Sky Guy Andrew Fazekas for his top stargazing picks for this week
Meteor Shakes Mars and Creates Crater
NASA’s Insight lander felt the ground shake during the impact while cameras aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted the yawning new crater from space. NASA’s InSight lander recorded a magnitude 4 marsquake last Dec. 24, but scientists learned only later the cause of that quake: a meteoroid strike estimated to be one of the biggest […]
The Night Sky This Week October 24 2022
Join National Geographic’s Andrew Fazekas for his top stargazing picks of the week.
Stunning Reveal of Iconic Pillars of Creation by Webb
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured a lush, highly detailed landscape – the iconic Pillars of Creation – where new stars are forming within dense clouds of gas and dust. The three-dimensional pillars look like majestic rock formations, but are far more permeable. These columns are made up of cool interstellar gas and […]
The Stuph File Interview: DART Mission Smashes into Asteroid, Hubble, Spacex and Mars Helicopter
Check out my October appearance on The Stuph File radio show with host Peter Anthony Holder. In this episode we talk about the successful collision of a vending sized spacecraft with an asteroid and what this means for protection of our planet from wayward asteroids and comets in the future. We also chat about SpaceX, […]
The Night Sky This Week October 17 2022
Join National Geographic columnist and Night Sky Guy Andrew Fazekas for his top stargazing picks for this week
Hubble Shows Off Violent Starbirth
The lives of newborn stars are tempestuous, as this image of the Herbig–Haro objects HH 1 and HH 2 from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope depicts. Both objects are in the constellation Orion and lie around 1250 light-years from Earth. HH 1 is the luminous cloud above the bright star in the upper right of this image, […]
NASA Confirms DART Mission Impact Changed Asteroid’s Motion in Space
Analysis of data obtained over the past two weeks by NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) investigation team shows the spacecraft’s kinetic impact with its target asteroid, Dimorphos, successfully altered the asteroid’s orbit. This marks humanity’s first time purposely changing the motion of a celestial object and the first full-scale demonstration of asteroid deflection technology. […]
Hubble Snags Scorpion’s City of Stars
Terzan 1 is a globular cluster that lies about 22,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius. It is one of 11 globular clusters that were discovered by the Turkish-Armenian astronomer Agop Terzan between 1966 and 1971 when he was working in France, based mostly at Lyon Observatory. Somewhat confusingly, the 11 Terzan globular clusters are numbered […]
Venus Test Balloon Takes Flight
A scaled-down version of the aerobot that could one day take to the Venusian skies successfully completed two Nevada test flights, marking a milestone for the project. The intense pressure, heat, and corrosive gases of Venus’ surface are enough to disable even the most robust spacecraft in a matter of hours. But a few dozen […]
Night Sky This Week October 10, 2022
Join National Geographic columnist and Night Sky Guy Andrew Fazekas for his top stargazing picks for this week