The Helix Nebula, also known as Caldwell 63, is 650 million light-years from Earth, according to NASA. It's the remains of a dying star, which is gradually shedding its outer gas layers into the surrounding space. Stellar radiation causes the gas to glow like a giant ring, which stretches about 3 light-years across, according to NASA observations.

Now, a new look at the nebula combines X-ray emissions detected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, visible light seen by the Hubble Space Telescope, infrared light detected by the European Southern Observatory's Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy, and ultraviolet light detected by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer space telescope.

This broad-spectrum view revealed the remnants of the dying white dwarf star that created the nebula, and indicates that this dying star may have gobbled up an orbiting planet that flew too close to its dying sun. Tidal forces from the white dwarf appear to have ripped the nearby planet to shreds and then pulled its leftover pieces onto the white dwarf's surface, triggering powerful X-ray flares.

Related: 25 gorgeous nebula photos that capture the beauty of the universe

Our own sun will also die as a white dwarf, which is the final stage for medium-mass stars that run out of fuel. White dwarfs gradually dim and cool until they wink out of existence altogether. In the Helix Nebula, the star ejects hot gas into space, and that gas cools and falls back toward the star. Tendrils of hot gas and older cooling gas collide and create intricate, knot-like patterns that look a bit like comets.

In December 2024, a research team led by Sandino Estrada-Dorado, an astrophysicist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, reported in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society that unexplained X-ray emissions from the nebula are likely the result of material from a "substellar donor companion" falling into the dying star. Substeller objects don't undergo hydrogen fusion, as happens in stars. They include brown dwarfs (or "failed stars"), former stars and planets.

If the white dwarf at the center did eat a planet, it has something else in common with Earth's sun. By the time the sun reaches the white dwarf stage, it will have passed through a red giant phase, swelling in size and engulfing our planet (and those closer to it). Luckily for us, this won't happen until 5 billion years from now, when the sun begins to run low on fuel.

Although we cannot see it with our bare human eyes, the sun is highly dynamic. On the sun's surface, regions of concentrated magnetic fields manifest themselves as dark sunspots. Above sunspots, active regions in the sun's atmosphere produce solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs), both of which can influence Earth via space weather.

However, the frequency of sunspots, solar flares and coronal mass ejections is not constant. Instead, it rises and falls throughout an 11-year solar cycle. At the bottom of this solar cycle, called solar minimum, months can pass without a single sunspot. At the peak of the cycle — called solar maximum — sunspots, flares and CMEs are commonplace.

We have tracked solar cycles for hundreds of years by counting the number of sunspots on the sun. Since December 2019, at the solar minimum marking the end of Solar Cycle 24, we have been in Solar Cycle 25. Cycles typically last around 11 years, but the exact duration between subsequent solar minimums varies from cycle to cycle.

Related: NASA's daredevil solar spacecraft survives 2nd close flyby of our sun

At the start of Solar Cycle 25, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center published its official solar cycle prediction, based on an average of predictions from the scientific community. The prediction anticipated that a solar maximum peak of 101.8 to 125.2 monthly sunspots would occur close to July 2025.

However, Solar Cycle 25 has already exceeded the predicted peak, reaching a 13-month smoothed monthly value of 156.7 in August 2024. The 13-month smoothed value of a given month is determined by the average of the specific month, with six months on each side of it (reaching 13 months total). Therefore, there is a six-month lag until this value is available, with August 2024 being the most recent data point as of March 2025.

This smoothed value will likely continue to rise, but it also depends on the sunspot totals in the coming months. It is the peak of this 13-month smoothed curve — not the highest individual month — that determines the peak of the solar cycle.

The graph above displays the solar cycle evolution from 2010 to present. The black line shows monthly sunspot values, and the purple represents the smoothed average. From this graph, we can see that Solar Cycle 25 (from 2019 to present) has already exceeded the size of Solar Cycle 24.

The largest individual sunspot month of the cycle so far, August 2024, had a sunspot total of 216. Since then, monthly totals have been much lower, ranging from 136 to 166 between September 2024 and March 2025. Is this a sign that solar maximum has already passed? Maybe, but maybe not.

The NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center has an experimental solar cycle prediction graph that's currently publicly available in its online testbed. This experimental prediction is a rolling one; it updates each month as the most recent month of data becomes available. Because it is made using up-to-date data, and not a prediction from before any solar cycle data was available, it is far more accurate than the 2019 prediction — and perhaps the most accurate predictor we have for the remainder of the solar cycle.

The most recent version of this prediction, which was updated in March 2025, is presented below. Per this current prediction, solar maximum has most likely already passed, with a peak between August and November 2024. If this is true, then we could already be in the declining phase of Solar Cycle 25.

This solar maximum date is very different from the original prediction of July 2025. So how can this be? Not all solar cycles are exactly 11 years in length. In general, the larger the solar cycle, the shorter it is. Because the amplitude of our current cycle has already far exceeded the predicted peak, it is therefore likely that the true solar maximum date will also precede the original prediction.

So is that it, then? Has solar maximum already come and gone? Perhaps not. Looking back to the first solar cycle graph shown in this article, we see that Solar Cycle 24 had two peaks — one in 2012, and a second in 2014. This double peak rarely features in predictions, but it has been observed many times across historic solar cycles. Could Solar Cycle 25 exhibit a second peak, delaying solar maximum until later in 2025? It is certainly possible, although some may argue that we've already experienced two peaks, in 2023 and 2024, respectively.

These peaks are not as clearly separated as in previous solar cycles, but they do produce a clear inflection in the smoothed solar cycle curve. Ultimately, we will have to wait another year or so to know when the true peak of the solar cycle occurred.

Even if the specific monthly peak of the cycle has passed, it doesn't mean solar activity is over. Strong solar activity persists for a year or two beyond the maximum date, so we still have some time to enjoy sunspots, coronal mass ejections, and any geomagnetic storms and aurora shows associated with them.

Originally posted on Space.com.

Sun quiz: How well do you know our home star?

The car-sized spacecraft swooped within 3.8 million miles (6.1 million kilometers) of the sun's surface at a whopping 430,000 miles per hour (692,000 kilometers per hour), matching the historic record it set during its encounter on Christmas Eve last year.

During this approach, which occurred on Saturday (March 22), the Parker Solar Probe once again operated autonomously, with its four science instruments programmed to collect science data about solar wind from inside the sun's corona — the outermost layer of its atmosphere. On Tuesday (March 25), the probe beamed home a beacon tone, signaling that it was in good health and that all systems were functioning normally, NASA said in a statement.

"The flyby, the second at this distance and speed, allows the spacecraft to conduct unrivaled scientific measurements of the solar wind and related activity," the statement reads.

Scientists hope the close-up data collected by the probe will help them better predict space weather as well as solve long-standing mysteries about our star, such as why its corona is hundreds of times hotter than its surface as it extends into space.

"This mission's trailblazing research is rewriting the textbooks on solar science by going to a place no human-made object has ever been," NASA acting Administrator Janet Petro said in another statement.

The spacecraft's record-setting achievements highlight the effectiveness of its custom heat shield, which safeguards the probe from the sun's intense heat, enabling its electronics and instruments to function at room temperature — even while it faces directly toward our star to collect solar material.

In recognition of the specially designed thermal protection system and other advancements in aeronautics that contributed to the spacecraft’s design, the Parker Solar Probe team — comprising engineers and scientists from NASA, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, and 40 other partner organizations nationwide — was recently honored with the 2024 Robert J. Collier Trophy annual award by the National Aeronautic Association.

"This amazing team brought to life an incredibly difficult space science mission that had been studied, and determined to be impossible, for more than 60 years," Ralph Semmel, who is the director of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, said in the statement

"They did so by solving numerous long-standing technology challenges and dramatically advancing our nation’s spaceflight capabilities."

The Parker Solar Probe, which launched in 2018, is scheduled for one more flyby this year at approximately the same speed and distance from the sun, on June 19.

Correction 3/28: The spacecraft swooped within 3.8 million miles (6.1 million kilometers) of the sun's surface. This article has been updated to reflect that.

Originally posted on Space.com.

Though not as famous as some of its peers like the Hubble or James Webb space telescopes, Gaia has reshaped our understanding of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. Since 2014, the European Space Agency's (ESA) telescope has meticulously charted the cosmos, creating a vast catalog of nearly 2 billion stars, more than 4 million potential galaxies and around 150,000 asteroids, with moons possibly circling hundreds of them.

These observations have led to more than 13,000 scientific studies, with many more likely to follow in the coming years.

"Gaia's extensive data releases are a unique treasure trove for astrophysical research, and influence almost all disciplines in astronomy," Johannes Sahlmann, a physicist at the European Space Astronomy Centre in Spain and a project scientist for the Gaia mission, said in a statement.

After 11 years of operations — nearly double its expected lifetime — Gaia ran out of fuel, prompting its operators at ESA to power down and retire the spacecraft.

The best map of the Milky Way galaxy

Since it launched in December 2013, Gaia charted the cosmos from a vantage point about a million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth, at a spot called Lagrange point 2 (L2), where the gravitational forces of Earth and the sun, and the orbital motion of a satellite balance each other.

Gaia's primary goal was to map the positions and movements of over a billion stars within the Milky Way, creating the largest, most precise 3D map of our galaxy. To do so, it was equipped with twin telescopes pointed in different directions to measure the distances between stars, while three onboard instruments collected data on the positions, velocities, colors as well as chemical compositions of celestial objects.

The exquisite map of our galaxy it assembled has enabled scientists to better understand the galaxy's spiral structure, estimate the shape and mass of the dark matter halo that surrounds the Milky Way, and solve the decades-old mystery of our galaxy's warped and wobbling disk — which is likely due to an ongoing collision with the smaller Sagittarius galaxy.

Additionally, the catalog has provided astronomers with new insights into the ancient nature of parts of our galaxy, suggesting that stars began forming in the Milky Way's disk less than 1 billion years after the Big Bang — far earlier than the previously accepted timeline of 3 billion years.

The telescope's observations have also led astronomers to discover previously hidden stellar streams. For example, in 2020, its database of stars revealed the presence and shape of the largest structure ever observed in our galaxy: a vast ensemble of interconnected stellar nurseries spanning 9,000 light-years, known as the Radcliffe Wave, which may have had a lasting impact on Earth's climate.

"Gaia has changed our impression of the Milky Way," Stefan Payne-Wardenaar, a scientific visualiser at the Heidelberg University in Germany, said in a previous statement.

The spacecraft has serendipitously captured thousands of starquakes — tiny motions on surfaces of stars that cause them to swell and shrink periodically — providing unique insights into the inner workings of stars, and spotted high-velocity stars both escaping our galaxy and, surprisingly, racing toward it. It also uncovered several cosmic "sleeping giants," or black holes — one of which is lurking extremely close to Earth.

Gaia's star catalog has also been used to clock the expansion rate of the universe, fueling the ongoing debate over why the expansion seems to be occurring faster than astronomers expected.

"It is impressive that these discoveries are based only on the first few years of Gaia data, and many were made in the last year alone," Anthony Brown, an associate professor of astronomy at the University of Leiden in Netherlands, said in the statement.

Saying goodbye to the 'discovery machine of the decade'

On March 27, ESA commanded Gaia to use its thrusters for the final time, pushing the spacecraft into a "retirement orbit" safely away from Earth and the scientifically important L2 orbit, which is also home to the James Webb Space Telescope, Euclid telescope and China's Chang'e 6 orbiter.

Last week the mission team deactivated the spacecraft's instruments, which were designed with multiple redundant systems to ensure it could reboot and resume operations after any failure. To prevent its computers from powering back on in the future, operators deliberately corrupted its onboard software, according to the ESA statement.

"We had to design a decommissioning strategy that involved systematically picking apart and disabling the layers of redundancy that have safeguarded Gaia for so long," Tiago Nogueira, Gaia spacecraft operator, said in the statement. "We don't want it to reactivate in the future and begin transmitting again if its solar panels find sunlight."

Team members wrote the names of all 1,500 contributors to the Gaia mission into the spacecraft's onboard memory, as well as personal farewell messages and poems.

The telescope may have gone dark, but scientists hope its discoveries will continue to shine brightly. So far, only a third of the mission's data has been analyzed, as processing the vast amount of information — Gaia is expected to have gathered more than 1 petabyte (1 million gigabytes) of data by the end of its mission — takes months. The next batch of science data is set to be released in 2026, covering a little over five years of observations, with the fifth and final release scheduled for 2030, which will encompass the full 10 years of data.

"Gaia has been the discovery machine of the decade, a trend that is set to continue," Brown said in the statement.

The Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) arrived in orbit atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on March 11.

The six released images, collected by the space telescope on March 27, were each snapped by three different detectors. The top three images span the telescope's complete field of view, and are captured again in the bottom three which are colored differently to represent varying ranges of infrared wavelengths.

Within each image's full field of view — an area roughly 20 times wider than the full moon — roughly 100,000 light sources from stars, galaxies, and nebulas can be glimpsed.

"Our spacecraft has opened its eyes on the universe," Olivier Doré, a SPHEREx project scientist at Caltech and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement. "It's performing just as it was designed to."

Related: Euclid space telescope: ESA's groundbreaking mission to study dark matter and dark energy

Costing a total of $488 million to build and launch, the new telescope has been in development for roughly a decade, and is set to map the universe by observing both optical and infrared light. It will orbit Earth 14.5 times a day, completing 11,000 orbits during its lifetime to filter infrared light from distant gas and dust clouds using a technique called spectroscopy.

Once it is fully online in April, SPHEREX will scan the entire night sky a total of four times using 102 separate infrared color sensors, enabling it to collect data from more than 450 million galaxies during its planned two-year operation. This amounts to roughly 600 exposures a day, according to NASA.

This dataset will give scientists key insights into some of the biggest questions in cosmology, enabling astronomers to study galaxies at various stages in their evolution; trace the ice floating in empty space to see how life may have begun; and even understand the period of rapid inflation the universe underwent immediately after the Big Bang.

SPHEREx's wide panorama view makes it the perfect complement for the James Webb Space Telescope, flagging regions of interest for the latter to study with greater depth and resolution.

After lofting it to space, NASA scientists and engineers have performed a nail-biting series of checks on the new telescope. This includes ensuring that its sensitive infrared equipment is cooling down to its final temperature of around minus 350 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 210 degrees Celsius) and that the telescope is set to the right focus — something that cannot be adjusted in space.

Based on these stunning preliminary images, it appears that everything has worked out.

"This is the high point of spacecraft checkout; it's the thing we wait for," Beth Fabinsky, SPHEREx deputy project manager at JPL, said in the statement. "There's still work to do, but this is the big payoff. And wow! Just wow!"

On Monday (March 31), the Maltese cryptocurrency mogul Chun Wang and the other members of the "Fram2" mission entered low-Earth orbit aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon "Resilience" capsule, which was propelled into space by a Falcon 9 rocket that launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Florida, at around 9:46 p.m. EDT, according to Live Science's sister site Space.com. (The name Fram2 was chosen to pay homage to the Fram expedition, which explored the Arctic between 1893 and 1896.)

Wang, who is leading and funding the mission, was accompanied by Norwegian cinematographer Jannicke Mikkelsen, German robotics engineer Rabea Rogge and Australian polar explorer Eric Phillips — all of whom received around 8 months of astronaut training before launch, according to Spaceflight Now. The group is expected to return to Earth at some point within three to five days of launch, when they will splash down off the coast of California.

The two main goals of the Fram2 mission are to achieve the first human spaceflight above Earth's poles and to carry out research that may help future space travel, according to a statement released March 24. There are 22 planned experiments, which range from classic space tests that measure physiological changes experienced by the astronauts to first-of-their-kind experiments, such as growing mushrooms and taking X-rays of one another — all of which will be carried out inside a 13-foot-wide (4 meters) living space.

"With the same pioneering spirit as early polar explorers, we aim to bring back new data and knowledge to advance the long-term goals of space exploration," Wang said in the statement. "The science and research projects onboard will inform how we prepare for future missions, ultimately helping make space more accessible to us all."

Related: Futuristic, 'alien-like' nuclear fusion rockets developed in total secret could revolutionize space travel — if they actually work

Despite the mission's rapid-fire agenda of world-first experiments, several experts have raised doubts about how much useful science the civilian crew will be able to produce.

Fram2 is "a notch above [a] gimmick, but not exactly a groundbreaking milestone," Christopher Combs, an aerospace engineer at the University of Texas at San Antonio, told CNN. Because this is a private mission, "you need something to say [it's] different and exciting," which is likely why they are attempting to do so many things that have never been done before, he added.

Meanwhile, John Prussing, an aerospace engineer at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, thinks so little of the mission that he initially thought it was an April Fools' joke, as the initial launch window stretched into April 1, CNN reported.

Others have questioned if the Fram2 crew is well-suited to the task at hand and whether a billionaire paying for their own space mission sends the right message in terms of making space travel more accessible.

After reading all the "marketing hype" around the mission, "I didn't feel I really had a handle on the intentions of those on board or how their skills or background relate to the experiments [they will be conducting]," Fionagh Thomson, a researcher at Durham University in England that specializes in space ethics, told Live Science.

"The claim that it will open up space for all is arguably an exaggeration," Thomson added. As was the case with the early polar explorers that the mission is named after, this type of opportunity is only available to "privileged" people and "the elite," she said.

Quick-fire science

One of the biggest criticisms of Fram2 is that the mission is trying to do too many experiments at once — and will not last long enough to collect any meaningful data on any of them.

"Extrapolating any results from short time-span studies is ill-advised," Thomson said. Some of the data could be incorporated into existing research, she added, "assuming they share their results." However, "we will have to wait and see" if this is the case.

A standout example is the "MushVroom" experiment, which will be the first to grow mushrooms in space. However, this will be done using oyster mushrooms, which can take several weeks to fully grow, meaning that the team is unlikely to be able to study the entire growing process.

Another example is the decision to X-ray the astronauts in space for the first time. While this type of scanning can reveal changes in human physiology over time, the astronauts are unlikely to experience any detectable changes after just four days in orbit, which raises the question of why they are doing it at all.

The time limitation will be a similar problem for other tests that will assess physiological changes to things like blood flow, brain anatomy and bone density. These metrics have also already been extensively studied in astronauts on long-duration space missions, such as Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams who recently returned to Earth after spending 286 days on board the ISS.

The Fram2 mission is attempting to address some health questions that have not been extensively studied in space so far, such as the quality of sleep, the effects of diabetes (even though none of the astronauts are known diabetics) and changes to the female reproductive hormones — which will be monitored by a phone app linked to sensor-rigged diapers worn by the female astronauts. However, these tests will also suffer from the same limited time window as the others.

If the true intention behind these experiments was to improve our understanding of space travel for future generations, then the funding for this mission may have been better spent on other long-term research projects, Thomson argued.

A "space adventure"

The other key goal of Fram2 is to fly humans over Earth's poles for the first time. SpaceX has already shared images taken by the mission crew that show this has been achieved. However, this endeavour has also been questioned by experts.

"There's nothing unique to a polar orbit, and the science advantages are kind of overblown," Prussing told CNN. The only reason this has not been done before is that it is very fuel-intensive to put a spacecraft into a polar orbit compared to circling the equator, he added.

While no astronauts have ever passed over the Arctic or Antarctica before now, these areas have been extensively mapped by satellites with instruments much more advanced than those available to the Fram2 crew, meaning that the team is unlikely to see anything we haven't seen before.

For Thomson, the decision to execute this particular orbit, coupled with the decision to name the mission after polar explorers, hints that the mission is geared to be more of a "space adventure" than a research project.

Thomson says she has no problem with billionaires funding space exploration, but is less impressed with "vanity projects," and adds that it is important that we can identify them when they happen. "We need transparency and honesty," she said. "If it's about being 'heroic in space' then [just] say so."

Human spaceflight quiz: How well do you know our journey into space?

These scopes are incredibly beginner-friendly, since they will automatically slew to the target of your choice as soon as you select it in the accompanying app. From there, they will focus and take multiple shots of the target, stacking these on top of one another to create the effect of one super-long exposure without you having to do a thing.

While some people may prefer looking through a traditional optical telescope, smart telescopes have a significant advantage when it comes to stargazing in the city, since they're capable of seeing through a large amount of light pollution. They also make it supremely easy to share your stargazing experience with your friends and family.

Our expert reviewers have narrowed down the best models in a fast-growing field, evaluating their pros and cons and testing them out in real-life situations. Read on to find out their thoughts.

The quick list

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If you're not quite ready to plunge into the world of smart telescopes yet, then we also have guides to the best telescopes overall and the best astrophotography cameras for those wanting to build a more traditional setup. And if you need some extra help on where to start, check out our beginner's guide to astrophotography to find out about all the equipment you need to set yourself up for success.

Best smart telescopes we recommend in 2025

Best smart telescope overall

The Vaonis Vespera II is a significant upgrade on the original Vaonis Vespera (which we review further down this page), while not adding a huge amount to the price. It offers excellent value for money, and we think it's one of the best smart telescopes you can buy.

Design: The telescope is formed of a sleek, glossy white shell with a rotating arm that extends out when the telescope is in use. The look is very futuristic and minimalistic, with only a single power button on the main body, along with a port for USB-C charging. It comes with a fixed-height tripod which is very secure, but we'd recommend investing in the adjustable tripod (sold separately) to improve your vantage point, particularly for observing objects that appear low to the horizon.

Performance: We were seriously impressed with the views offered by this scope in our Vaonis Vespera II review. It edges out even some more expensive smart telescopes like the Unistellar eQuinox 2, thanks in large part to its mighty 8.3MP image sensor. With the automatic image stacking, we were able to get incredible pictures of deep-sky objects like Andromeda Galaxy (M31) and the Orion Nebula (M42). The images were sharp, detailed and vibrant in color, with contrast and detail continuing to improve over longer exposures. The design of the Vaonis Vespera II makes it supremely easy to change out different filters (though these are sold separately). With the light pollution filter attached, its performance in heavy light pollution was admirable, even when using it in close proximity to street lamps, making this an excellent choice for anyone stargazing from within a city.

Functionality: Control of the Vaonis Vespera II all takes place through the Singularity app. Despite a few niggles, like the lag in letting you know about a failed observation, the app generally works well. Simply tap on a target, and the telescope will automatically slew to that location and focus its image. It will even display some interesting facts and information about your target while you wait for it to do its thing. Another cool feature is the "Mosaic" mode, which allows you to meld together images from different exposures to give you a much broader field of view.

Overall, we would strongly recommend the Vaonis Vespera II to anyone looking for a powerful and capable smart telescope. It offers stunning image quality and fantastic value for money.

• Read our full Vaonis Vespera II review

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Best premium smart telescope

The Unistellar eVscope 2 is a thing of beauty, right down to the Nikon micro OLED eyepiece, and its field of view offers fantastic images of larger deep-sky objects.

Design: This telescope is beautifully designed throughout. It is formed of a sleek tube in gunmetal gray set on a robust matte-black mount. In our Unistellar eVscope 2 review, we were impressed by all the fine details, including its lens cap, which houses a hidden Bahtinov mask inside. A big highlight is the Nikon micro OLED eyepiece, which will appeal to astronomers who are accustomed to traditional telescopes and comes with a comfortable rubber surround. You also get a manual focusing ring on the rear end of the tube for fine-tuning your shots.

Performance: The movement of the mount is slick and speedy and the "Enhanced Vision" of the scope reveals far more stars than you could possibly hope to see with the naked eye, particularly in light-polluted cities. The telescope produces fantastic images of large deep-sky objects like Andromeda Galaxy (M31), but can equally produce great pictures of the lunar surface, too. We found that the manual focusing ring tended to lag a little before showing up on the live view of the telescope, but this didn't affect the overall experience too much.

Functionality: We really enjoyed using the Nikon eyepiece on this telescope. It offers much more of a real-life viewing experience than just watching the images on your phone screen, and you'll find you can see much better in the dark with it than you can with traditional optical eyepieces (although the downside is that you can't adjust the view with Barlow lenses or other accessories). The scope is fully automated via the Unistellar app, which will offer you recommendations for viewing based on the time, date and your GPS location. For anyone who wants a bit more control, there's also the option to enable "Advanced" mode, which allows you to use Go To Ra/Dec or Go To Alt/Az.

This is a premium smart telescope at a premium price, but if you have the money to spend, then we don't think you'll be disappointed.

• Read our full Unistellar eVscope 2 review

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Best for portability

With its small and compact form factor, the Unistellar Odyssey Pro is the lightest smart telescope on our list, making it a great companion for those who need something more portable.

Design: With the Odyssey Pro, Unistellar has created a smart telescope that is significantly lighter in weight than the other offerings in its line. It has a motorized single fork arm and a shorter tube than the eVscope 2 or the eQuinox 2, but it matches the eVscope 2 with its Nikon electronic eyepiece, which will appeal to those who enjoy a more traditional viewing experience. It comes in a smooth black finish, or you can pay extra to get it in a statement red color.

Performance: The Odyssey Pro is quick and easy to set up and we were pleased with the images it produced of deep-sky objects. Pictures of nebulas came out detailed and colorful, even in the presence of light pollution. Unistellar's "Deep Dark Technology" handles light pollution and image noise extremely well, producing clear shots with pinpoint stars. With a solar filter attached, you can also take excellent shots of the sun, showing up a range of sun spots.

Functionality: The system is fully automated via the Unistellar app, meaning that you can operate this telescope without any prior knowledge of the night sky at all. More experienced astronomers might miss having the option for manual controls because there is no way of adjusting the focus or collimation yourself on the Odyssey Pro if something doesn't go to plan. But those who are used to traditional telescope setups may enjoy the Nikon electronic eyepiece that Unistellar has included on the Odyssey Pro, with a small screen showing you a live image of what the telescope is seeing. If you're not bothered by the electronic eyepiece, then you can also opt for the basic Odyssey model which is exactly the same telescope without the eyepiece and saves you around $1,700.

We've yet to do a full review of the Odyssey Pro here at LiveScience.com, but you can head to the full review over at Space.com, our sister site, for more information.

• Just starting out with astrophotography? Check out our beginner's guide to astrophotography

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Best classic style

With the Celestron Origin, Celestron has produced one of the easiest telescopes to get set up and running straight out of the box. Simply erect the tripod, attach the optical tube and fire up the app, and you'll be taking your own images in just a few taps. All the settings on the Celestron Origin are fully automated, so you don't need any prior knowledge to capture some incredible astrophotography shots.

Design: One of the things we enjoyed in our full Celestron Origin telescope review was the traditional appearance of this scope. It features Celestron's classic tube design, alongside a sturdy tripod with marker lines to ensure all the legs can be set to the same height. There are no controls on the tube itself, since everything is operated via the Origin app. It is a hefty unit at 41.6 lb (18.6 kg), but there are convenient carry handles for moving it around.

Performance: We were very impressed by the images the Celestron Origin took of deep-sky objects. Targets like nebulas and galaxies appeared sharp and colorful, with no discernible noise, and it produced clear and pinpoint stars throughout. This is definitely a scope that anyone interested in deep-sky objects would love to get their hands on, especially if they're having to contend with light pollution in a city.

Functionality: The app has a clear and intuitive interface, offering several different views. "Planetarium View" displays what's visible in the sky that night and circles particular objects of interest to select. When you tap on an object, the Origin will do all the locating and focusing for itself, stacking and processing images as it goes. "Camera View" offers you the chance to see what the Origin is seeing in real time, and "Snapshot" allows you to access some manual settings like ISO, exposure and focus depth, though we found this worked better for the moon than for Saturn.

If you can stomach the cost, we think deep-sky enthusiasts would love the images produced by this scope, as well as its simple and easy-to-use design.

• Read our full Celestron Origin review

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Best all-rounder

If you're hoping to capture images of some of our closer neighbors like the sun and planets, as well as deep-sky objects like galaxies and nebulas, then the Unistellar eQuinox 2 might be the smart telescope for you.

Design: In our Unistellar eQuinox 2 review, we enjoyed the smooth, classy design of this scope. It has a two-tone black tube and a matte black fork arm mount with a single power button that shines red when the telescope is connected to the app. Once the telescope is attached to the tripod, the whole setup feels rock solid, and we had no concerns about it getting knocked and falling over. At 19.8 lb (9 kg), it's not the lightest telescope on our list, but nor is it the heaviest for carrying around either. You also get a focusing wheel on the end of the tube with this telescope, which will appeal to those who want a little more manual control during their skywatching.

Performance: When you enable the "Enhanced View" mode in the app, the Unistellar eQuinox 2 cleverly stacks multiple pictures on top of each other to create the illusion of a long-exposure shot. The result is clear, noise-free images of deep-sky objects like the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) that you'll be excited to share with your friends. It can handle pictures of the sun and planets, too, though we found the images it took of the moon a little underwhelming and lacking in sharpness. The in-built Smart Light Pollution Reduction feature does a great job of digitally removing the effects of light pollution, allowing this telescope to be used in the city or from your backyard.

Functionality: The Unistellar eQuinox 2 is operated via the Unistellar app, and we were impressed that the connection works even through walls or windows, allowing you to hide out inside and keep warm while the eQuinox 2 does its thing. You can use the "Catalog" mode to select from a huge range of objects and the telescope will automatically slew to them, effectively lodging the target right in the center of the frame. It will even present you with some interesting information about your chosen object while it takes its pictures.

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Best budget smart telescope

The Vaonis Vespera is a fun and enjoyable smart telescope that comes in at a lower price point than many of its competitors. With live image stacking, you can watch images of galaxies and other objects emerge from the darkness before your very eyes and share those images with your family and friends.

Design: The appearance of the Vaonis Vespera will definitely provide a talking point. It has a sleek and futuristic white design with an arm that folds out when the telescope is in use. At only 11 lb (5 kg) in weight, this compact design makes it eminently portable when journeying to dark-sky locations. The package comes with a small table-top tripod measuring 7 inches (18 cm), but fortunately there is a 3/8ths thread for fitting it to a larger tripod (though you will have to buy this separately, along with a light pollution or solar filter if you wish to use them).

Performance: The large field of view on the Vaonis Vespera tends to favor deep-sky objects over planets. In our Vaonis Vespera review, we successfully captured pleasing images of Bode's Galaxy (M81) and Cigar Galaxy (M82), although these did appear quite small in the field of view. There's a real thrill to watching the images form in real time on your screen, with brighter images appearing after a few dozen seconds and fainter objects needing much longer. Images can be saved in JPG, TIFF or RAW form for editing later.

Functionality: Everything on the Vaonis Vespera is automated through the Singularity app, from locating objects to focusing images. With "Mosaic Mode", you can expand the field of view by up to four times by joining different exposures together — great for accommodating larger objects like the North America Nebula. The "Plan Your Night" function allows you to select a list of desired targets and exposure times and then leave the Vespera to automatically work its way through your list. You can also link up to eight devices to the Vespera simultaneously, allowing you to share images with others in real time and making it a great device for group skywatching adventures.

This telescope is becoming increasingly tricky to find new, but you can grab some amazing deals on a used version, with some selling for as little as half the list price.

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Best smart telescopes: comparison

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Best smart telescopes FAQ

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Latest updates

How we test the best smart telescopes

All the smart telescopes in this guide were tested by experienced reviewers with an in-depth knowledge of optics, astronomy and astrophotography. We take each telescope out and put it through its paces in real-life situations, from light-polluted backyards to dark-sky locations, to see how it performs under different lighting conditions.

A key element of any smart telescope is its app, so we make sure to go through all the different functions to highlight any snags and give our readers an honest opinion on its interface. Where a smart telescope has manual functions, we also make sure to test those out and check whether they work as well as the telescope's automated functions.

One of the most important aspects of any telescope is its image quality, so we test all our smart telescopes out on a range of different targets, including deep-sky objects like galaxies and nebulas, as well as closer objects like the sun, moon and planets. We check for sharpness, color rendition and any optical defects when picking out which smart telescopes to recommend in our guide.

Our reviewers always aim to be unbiased and to cover both the pros and cons of each scope, so that you can be sure you're making an informed decision about whichever device you ultimately choose to buy.

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The video, which was released March 26 by the European Space Agency (ESA), is sped-up footage originally taken over an eight-hour period on Oct. 12, 2022, by ESA's Solar Orbiter. The spacecraft captured the scene by blocking out the main disk of the sun, which enabled the probe's camera to focus on the extremely faint light given off by the flow of superfast charged particles, or solar wind, that streams out of our home star nearly constantly.

This is the first time solar wind has been recorded "flying out from the sun in a twisting, whirling motion," ESA representatives wrote in a statement. "The solar wind particles spiral outwards as if caught in a cyclone that extends millions of kilometres from the sun."

The striking video also shows around a dozen perfectly flat, half-dark, half-light lines that creep across the screen like the UFOs and aliens in arcade games such as "Space Invaders."

These features are actually stars that are moving across the background as the orbiter circles the sun, which show up thanks to an editing technique used to make the video, ESA representatives wrote.

Related: 10 supercharged solar storms that blew us away in 2024

Solar ‘pseudostreamer’

In a new study of the video, released March 26 in The Astrophysical Journal, researchers described the giant solar corkscrew as a "large pseudostreamer" that erupted near the sun's north pole in the wake of a solar flare that launched a cloud of plasma, or coronal mass ejection (CME), into space. The pseudostreamer reached up to 1.5 times as long as the sun is wide and lasted for around three hours.

The "helix" structure of the wind jet is likely the result of Alfvénic fluctuations triggered by waves of ions that oscillate in response to magnetic field disturbances that occurred during the flare, the researchers wrote. They noted that the unique shape may also be tied to the streamer's position near one of the sun's polar regions, where magnetic fields are usually much stronger than near the sun's equator.

The sun is currently experiencing the peak in its roughly 11-year cycle of activity, known as solar maximum, which officially began in early 2024. During this phase, powerful solar flares explode more frequently from the sun and solar wind intensifies. However, this video was captured before solar activity started ramping up, which surprised the scientists.

Until recently, the origin and complex behaviors of solar wind have remained largely elusive. But a new generation of spacecraft is helping to unravel these mysteries.

When the video was recorded, ESA's Solar Orbiter was the only probe capable of capturing solar wind in such great detail. However, ESA's Proba-3 mission, which launched in December 2024, is also capable of viewing solar wind thanks to its ability to create artificial solar eclipses in space. NASA's Parker Solar Probe, meanwhile, was launched in 2018 and has helped to capture important solar wind data during its recent super-close flybys of our home star.

Solar wind is expected to become more extreme over the next few years as we enter the solar "battle zone" — a period after solar maximum when magnetic instabilities on the sun cause large coronal holes to open up on the sun's surface and shoot out extreme solar gusts. These solar events will be much like a dark patch that showered Earth with charged particles last week, triggering significant aurora activity.

Sun quiz: How well do you know our home star?

As an astrophysicist, I've spent two decades modeling how black holes spin, how that creates jets, and how they affect the environment of space around them.

What are black holes?

Black holes are massive, astrophysical objects that use gravity to pull surrounding objects into them. Active black holes have a pancake-shaped structure around them called an accretion disk, which contains hot, electrically charged gas.

Related: 'Very rare' black hole energy jet discovered tearing through a spiral galaxy shaped like our own

The plasma that makes up the accretion disk comes from farther out in the galaxy. When two galaxies collide and merge, gas is funneled into the central region of that merger. Some of that gas ends up getting close to the newly merged black hole and forms the accretion disk.

There is one supermassive black hole at the heart of every massive galaxy.

Black holes and their disks can rotate, and when they do, they drag space and time with them — a concept that's mind-boggling and very hard to grasp conceptually. But black holes are important to study because they produce enormous amounts of energy that can influence galaxies.

How energetic a black hole is depends on different factors, such as the mass of the black hole, whether it rotates rapidly, and whether lots of material falls onto it. Mergers fuel the most energetic black holes, but not all black holes are fed by gas from a merger. In spiral galaxies, for example, less gas tends to fall into the center, and the central black hole tends to have less energy.

One of the ways they generate energy is through what scientists call "jets" of highly energetic particles. A black hole can pull in magnetic fields and energetic particles surrounding it, and then as the black hole rotates, the magnetic fields twist into a jet that sprays out highly energetic particles.

Magnetic fields twist around the black hole as it rotates to store energy — kind of like when you pull and twist a rubber band. When you release the rubber band, it snaps forward. Similarly, the magnetic fields release their energy by producing these jets.

These jets can speed up or suppress the formation of stars in a galaxy, depending on how the energy is released into the black hole's host galaxy.

Rotating black holes

Some black holes, however, rotate in a different direction than the accretion disk around them. This phenomenon is called counterrotation, and some studies my colleagues and I have conducted suggest that it's a key feature governing the behavior of one of the most powerful kinds of objects in the universe: the radio quasar.

Radio quasars are the subclass of black holes that produce the most powerful energy and jets.

You can imagine the black hole as a rotating sphere, and the accretion disk as a disk with a hole in the center. The black hole sits in that center hole and rotates one way, while the accretion disk rotates the other way.

This counterrotation forces the black hole to spin down and eventually up again in the other direction, called corotation. Imagine a basketball that spins one way, but you keep tapping it to rotate in the other. The tapping will spin the basketball down. If you continue to tap in the opposite direction, it will eventually spin up and rotate in the other direction. The accretion disk does the same thing.

Since the jets tap into the black hole's rotational energy, they are powerful only when the black hole is spinning rapidly. The change from counterrotation to corotation takes at least 100 million years. Many initially counterrotating black holes take billions of years to become rapidly spinning corotating black holes.

So, these black holes would produce powerful jets both early and later in their lifetimes, with an interlude in the middle where the jets are either weak or nonexistent.

When the black hole spins in counterrotation with respect to its accretion disk, that motion produces strong jets that push molecules in the surrounding gas close together, which leads to the formation of stars.

But later, in corotation, the jet tilts. This tilt makes it so that the jet impinges directly on the gas, heating it up and inhibiting star formation. In addition to that, the jet also sprays X-rays across the galaxy. Cosmic X-rays are bad for life because they can harm organic tissue.

For life to thrive, it most likely needs a planet with a habitable ecosystem, and clouds of hot gas saturated with X-rays don't contain such planets. So, astronomers can instead look for galaxies without a tilted jet coming from its black hole. This idea is key to understanding where intelligence could potentially have emerged and matured in the universe.

Black holes as a guide

By early 2022, I had built a black hole model to use as a guide. It could point out environments with the right kind of black holes to produce the greatest number of planets without spraying them with X-rays. Life in such environments could emerge to its full potential.

Where are such conditions present? The answer is low-density environments where galaxies had merged about 11 billion years ago.

These environments had black holes whose powerful jets enhanced the rate of star formation, but they never experienced a bout of tilted jets in corotation. In short, my model suggested that theoretically, the most advanced extraterrestrial civilization would have likely emerged on the cosmic scene far away and billions of years ago.

This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Black hole quiz: How supermassive is your knowledge of the universe?

Making use of emergency telescope time awarded to an international team of astronomers in February, JWST's first observation of the building-size asteroid reveals that 2024 YR4 may be slightly larger and rockier than previous ground-based telescope studies suggested.

According to a NASA statement released on April 2, the JWST observations suggest the asteroid measures between 174-220 feet (53-67 meters) in diameter, which is roughly the size of a 10-story building. This is a slightly higher range than the previous size estimate of 131-295 feet (40-90 meters).

Luckily, though, JWST also confirmed what NASA has known for weeks: 2024 YR4 is no longer a hazard, and there is zero chance that the asteroid will strike Earth in 2032. However, a direct collision with the moon is still possible. NASA calculates that the odds of the asteroid hitting the moon in 2032 have risen from a roughly 2% chance to a 3.8% chance of collision.

"While an Earth impact by 2024 YR4 on December 22, 2032 has now been ruled out, it continues to have a non-zero probability of impacting the Moon at this time," the researchers wrote in their preliminary report, which has not yet been peer-reviewed. A second round of JWST observations is planned for May 2025, before the asteroid disappears into the outer solar system for the next several years.

Related: NASA's most wanted: The 5 most dangerous asteroids to Earth

Tracking a "city-killer"

Astronomers first discovered asteroid 2024 YR4 in December 2024. Initial observations with ground-based telescopes indicated that the space rock had a diameter of about 180 feet (55 meters) — roughly as wide as the Leaning Tower of Pisa is tall.

Its orbital trajectory frequently crosses Earth's route around the sun, making a direct collision with our planet possible. If such a strike were to occur, it could wipe out an entire city with the equivalent force of 500 Hiroshima bombs.

While analyzing the asteroid's trajectory, researchers briefly estimated that 2024 YR4 had up to a 3.1% chance of crashing into Earth in 2032 — the highest probability ever recorded for an object of this asteroid's size. NASA eventually refined this prediction down to 0%. But, while uncertainty reigned, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced that several hours of JWST's emergency discretionary time would be used to study the potentially hazardous space rock's size and trajectory.

Key to these observations are JWST's infrared sensors, which can directly detect heat emitted by the asteroid and provide insight into both its size and composition. Ground-based telescopes that observe visible light can only see the sunlight reflected off of the asteroid's surface, leaving big questions about its true nature.

"In general, the brighter the asteroid, the larger it is, but this relationship strongly depends on how reflective the asteroid's surface is," ESA officials wrote in a Feb. 10 blog post. "2024 YR4 could be 40 m [130 feet] across and very reflective, or 90 m [295 feet] across and not very reflective … the hazard represented by a 40 m asteroid is very different from that of a 90 m asteroid."

JWST made its first observations of the asteroid on March 26, watching the asteroid rotate once every 20 minutes over a five-hour period. The researchers then converted the asteroid's brightness to mid-infrared wavelengths, taking into account the known distances and angles between the asteroid, the sun and JWST.

With these data, the team estimated that asteroid 2024 YR4 is slightly larger than was previously estimated, measuring about 200 feet (60 m) in diameter (this is roughly in the middle of NASA's estimated size range of 174-220 feet wide). The thermal analysis also suggests that the asteroid is cooler than is typical for objects of this size, hinting that it may be rockier than previously thought as well.

Front-row seats to a lunar impact?

But even if 2024 YR4 is a bit bigger and harder than we thought, it still poses no imminent threat to Earth, the JWST data confirm. But there does remain a roughly 3.8% chance that the asteroid will slam into the moon in 2032, according to NASA.

While a lunar impact may sound scary, the moon endures thousands of tiny meteor strikes every year and has the cratered scars to prove it has survived much larger impacts. But seeing a known asteroid, with a known size and trajectory, gouge open a new crater in real time would be a world-first opportunity for lunar researchers.

"We've got our fingers crossed for a moon impact," Alan Fitzsimmons, a physics and math professor at Queen's University Belfast in the U.K. who was not involved in the JWST observations, told New Scientist. "It would have no effect on Earth, but would allow us to study the formation of a lunar crater by a known asteroid for the very first time."

The second round of JWST observations, scheduled for May, will further help to refine the asteroid's orbital trajectory and its chances of hitting the moon.

Editor's note: This article was updated on April 3 with new facts and figures from NASA.

A partial solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between Earth and the sun but only partially covers the sun's disk. Unlike in a total solar eclipse, the moon didn't completely block out the sun this time, so observers needed equipment such as eclipse glasses or pinhole cameras to view the sun safely.

Because the eclipse happened at sunrise in North America, seeing the spectacle at its best depended on having a clear view of the eastern horizon and cloudless weather. In European time zones, the eclipse unfolded at midday, making it an easier viewing experience. Sungazers in Greenland and Europe captured these stunning images of the moon taking a "bite" out of the sun.

Nuuk, Greenland

The moon slowly traverses the sun behind a statue of Lutheran missionary Hans Egede in Nuuk, Greenland. Nuuk saw nearly 90% of the sun blacked out during the March 29 eclipse.

Rouans, France

Observers in Rouans, France, were treated to glimpses of the partial eclipse behind clouds around midday.

Brighton, England

The moon carves a bite out of the sun in Brighton, England.

Liverpool, England

Ghostly clouds obscure the sun in this eerie image of the partial eclipse behind the Liver Bird statue in Liverpool, England.

Nuuk, Greenland

A slim crescent of the sun peeks out from behind the moon above a home in Nuuk, Greenland.

Turnov, Czech Republic

Some areas, like the Czech town of Turnov, had their view of the eclipse completely obscured by clouds. Luckily, observers at the Turnov Observatory could watch livestreams of the eclipse on their phones.

Berlin, Germany

Viewers in Berlin, Germany caught the beginnings of the eclipse behind an overcast sky.

The next partial solar eclipse will be visible from parts of Australia and Antarctica on Sept. 21, 2025. Those who wish to experience totality should mark their calendars for Aug. 12, 2026, when a total solar eclipse will be visible in Greenland, Iceland, Spain and Russia, while other parts of Europe, as well as Africa and North America, will experience a partial eclipse that day.

A video captured by the GOES-16 satellite, which is jointly operated by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), shows the X-class solar flare bursting forth from a sunspot on the sun's surface at around 11:20 a.m. EST on March 28.

This X1.1-class solar flare, which was released from a sunspot named AR4046, marks the first X-class flare the sun has released since early February.

"A strong solar flare (R3) occurred and peaked at X1.1 near 11:20am EDT (1520 UTC) on 28 March, 2025. The flare occurred from the vicinity of newly rotated into view Region 4046 near the east limb," NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center said in a statement after the flare.

Related: Our sun may be overdue for a 'superflare' stronger than billions of atomic bombs, new research warns

NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center shared the spectacular video on X, formerly known as Twitter, showing the solar flare erupting from the sun alongside a cloud of solar material known as a coronal mass ejection (CME). CMEs are massive bursts of plasma and magnetic field from the sun that are ejected into space, usually during solar flares. These fast-moving blobs of plasma can cause serious disturbances to satellites and power grids if Earth happens to be in their path.

Dangerous flare-ups

Solar flares are intense bursts of electromagnetic radiation that erupt from the sun’s surface, usually from magnetically active regions like sunspots. When the sun's magnetic fields tangle, break, and reconnect, massive amounts of energy are released in the form of light, heat, and charged particles. Solar flares are classified on a scale of A, B, C, M, and X. Each class is 10 times more powerful than the last, with X-class flares being the most powerful and least frequent.

Related: X-class solar flares hit a new record in 2024 and could spike further this year — but the sun isn't entirely to blame, experts say

When the radiation from a solar flare is aimed toward Earth, it can cause radio blackouts across the side of the planet facing the sun. This occurs because the solar flare's intense X-rays and extreme ultraviolet radiation ionize Earth's upper atmosphere, specifically the ionosphere, which is situated between 30 miles (48 km) and 600 miles (965 km) above Earth's surface.

The ionosphere consists of several layers that reflect and refract radio waves, allowing high-frequency radio signals to travel long distances around the world. When solar flares ionize the D-layer, which is the lowest part of the ionosphere, this causes radio waves to be absorbed instead of being reflected, and leads to signal degradation or complete loss of high-frequency radio communications in the affected area.

This March 28 solar flare caused a radio blackout across North and South America and the Atlantic on Friday morning.

"Immediate, wider area of strong degradation or signal loss in high frequency (HF) communication bands over much of the sunlit side of Earth; users of HF radio signals may experience loss of contact or major disruptions for a number of minutes to a couple of hours in the affected areas," NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center said in the statement.

When this solar flare was released, a CME followed shortly after.

CMEs usually arrive at the Earth several days after a solar flare, and can trigger geomagnetic storms if they collide with the Earth's magnetic field, resulting in the appearance of the aurora. CMEs can also knock satellites out of the sky, tamper with GPS-based equipment on Earth, and trigger widespread power outages in really severe cases.

Luckily, the newly-launched CME is not expected to hit our planet, so no geomagnetic storms are expected in the coming days.

"The CME is likely … not Earth-directed; however analyses continues to be sure of no flanking influences," NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center said in the caption of the X post.

The sunspot that caused the flare and the CME (AR4046) is moving around the sun to face our planet, meaning that if it releases any more flares or CMEs, they will likely hit the Earth head-on.

"The flare source region will rotate to face Earth in the coming week. Further strong solar activity is likely!" solar astrophysicist Ryan French wrote in a post on X.

Additionally, a new sunspot named AR4048 is also turning toward Earth, and is expected to churn out some powerful flares and CMEs in the coming days. According to a Space Weather Prediction Center Forecast Discussion, there is an overall 15% chance of another X-class flare occurring between March 31 and April 2, "primarily due to AR 4048".

Those potential signs of life are a group of chemicals called methyl halides, which on Earth are produced by some bacteria and ocean algae.

"Unlike an Earth-like planet, where atmospheric noise and telescope limitations make it difficult to detect biosignatures, hycean planets offer a much clearer signal," said Eddie Schwieterman, who is an astrobiologist at the University of California, Riverside, in a statement.

For now, the existence of hycean planets remains hypothetical. Their name is a portmanteau of "hydrogen" and "ocean," first coined in 2021 by planetary scientist Nikku Madhusudhan of the University of Cambridge.

Related: 'Hycean' exoplanets may not be able to support life after all

Hycean planets are expected to orbit red dwarf stars, and the best candidate for a hycean world is the planet K2-18b. This exoplanet, which is categorized as a "sub-Neptune" world, orbits in the habitable zone of a red dwarf star 124 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Leo, the Lion.

The Hubble Space Telescope discovered water vapor in K2-18b's atmosphere in 2019, and JWST has detected the presence of carbon dioxide and methane in the planet's atmosphere, along with a lack of carbon monoxide and ammonia — exactly as predicted by the hycean planet hypothesis. There's also tentative evidence that a compound called dimethyl sulfide, which on Earth is only produced by ocean plankton, also exists in K2-18b's atmosphere, but this evidence continues to prove contentious.

Now a team of researchers at the University of California, Riverside and ETH Zurich in Switzerland have gone a step further. They propose that another family of compounds called methyl halides, generated by microbial ocean life on Earth, could produce a biosignature — that is, a chemical signature of biological life — in the atmosphere of a hycean world that's more easily detectable than the signature of oxygen is on an Earth-like planet.

"Oxygen is currently difficult or impossible to detect on an Earth-like planet," said Michaela Leung of the University of California, Riverside, the first author of a new paper describing the research. "However, methyl halides on hycean worlds offer a unique opportunity for detection with existing technology."

Methyl halides are molecules that incorporate carbon atoms and three hydrogen atoms attached to a halogen atom such as bromine, chlorine or fluorine. (Halogens are group of reactive, non-metallic elements.) On Earth, methyl halides are produced by life, but they are far from abundant in our planet's atmosphere.

On hycean worlds, however, things could be different. Leung's team suspect that the conditions on such worlds, should they exist, would allow methyl halides to accumulate in large quantities in the atmosphere. Furthermore, methyl halides would have strong absorption features in infrared light, at the same wavelengths that the JWST is designed to observe.

"One of the great benefits of looking for methyl halides is, you could potentially find them in as few as 13 hours with James Webb. That is similar or lower, by a lot, to how much telescope time you'd need to find gases like oxygen or methane," said Leung. "Less time with the telescope means it's less expensive."

Related: The search for alien life

There are two caveats to what Leung's team propose. One is that we don't yet know whether hycean worlds actually exist. They were proposed as a possibility to explain certain properties of some warm sub-Neptune-type planets that have average densities that imply a thick hydrogen atmosphere and a deep ocean of liquid water. However, directly observing an ocean beneath such a world's hydrogen envelope is not currently feasible.

The second issue is that we don't know if such oceans could be habitable. A hycean world would be hot, and although the extreme conditions beneath the hydrogen envelope would prevent the ocean from evaporating, it is uncertain whether it would be too hot for life as we know it. However, a positive detection of methyl halides in the atmosphere of a candidate hycean world would be a strong indication that life could exist there in a deep ocean.

If life does exist on such a world, it would have to breathe hydrogen, not oxygen.

"These microbes, if we found them, would be anaerobic," said Schwieterman. "They'd be adapted to a very different type of environment, and we can't really conceive of what that looks like, except to say that these gases are a plausible output from their metabolism."

Anaerobic life — i.e., lifeforms making do without oxygen — exist on Earth, so it wouldn't be truly alien to life on our planet, even if the environment that it would live in is. Earth-like worlds orbiting red dwarfs could be in short supply, since red dwarfs are fierce little beasts, prone to unleashing bursts of harsh radiation that can strip away the atmosphere of an Earth-like planet. However, hycean worlds protected by their thick hydrogen atmospheres might be less vulnerable to attack from their star.

It could therefore be that hycean worlds are where life resides in red dwarf systems, and since red dwarfs make up about three-quarters of all stars in our Milky Way galaxy, there could be many more habitable hycean worlds in the cosmos than Earth-like worlds.

The research by Leung's team was published on March 11 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Originally posted on Space.com.

If you were going to design an object to preserve mystery while being utterly troubling, you couldn't do much better than a black hole.

First, the outer boundary of these cosmic titans is a one-way light-trapping surface called an event horizon, the point at which a black hole's gravity is so powerful that not even light can escape. This means no information can escape from within a black hole, so we can never directly observe or measure what lies at its heart.

Using the mathematics of Einstein's 1915 theory of gravity, called general relativity, scientists can model the interior of a black hole. The problem is that, when they do this, general relativity tells us that all mathematical values go to infinity at the "singularity" at the heart of a black hole.

This new research suggests that "ordinary black holes" without a central singularity — the physics equivalent of having your cake and eating it — may be more than just the fever dream of hopeful physicists.

"The singularity is the most mysterious and problematic part of a black hole. It's where our concepts of space and time literally no longer make sense," study team member Robie Hennigar, a researcher at Durham University in England, told Space.com. "If black holes do not have singularities, then they are much more ordinary."

Related: What are black holes? Everything you need to know about the darkest objects in the universe

Singularity-minded: Physicists want one thing

Einstein's theory of general relativity states that objects with mass curve the very fabric of space-time (the three dimensions of space united with the one dimension of time), and gravity arises from this curvature. The greater the mass, the more extreme the curvature of space-time, and the stronger the influence of gravity. All of this is calculated with the equations that underpin general relativity: Einstein's field equations.

"The way that the space-time curves is determined by the Einstein field equations, which are the cornerstone of general relativity," team member Pablo Antonio Cano Molina-Niñirola, of the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) in Spain, told Space.com.

"These equations are extremely successful, as they predict a plethora of observable phenomena in the cosmos, from the motion of planets to the evolution of the universe and the existence of black holes," he added. "But they also predict the existence of singularities, and this is problematic."

Black holes — regions of space-time with extreme curvature — first arose as a concept from solutions to Einstein's field equations suggested by German physicist and astronomer Karl Schwartzchild as he served on the front line during the First World War in 1915. These solutions go to infinity at the center of that region. Physicists don't like infinities, as they indicate the breakdown or incompleteness of their models, or suggest something entirely unphysical. That means something really troubling and undesirable for physicists.

"In general relativity, the interior of a black hole is like a contracting universe, where the singularity represents the moment when space itself collapses," Molina-Niñirola said.

Molina-Niñirola added that many physicists believe that, when gravity becomes exceptionally strong and space-time is highly warped, general relativity must be replaced by a more fundamental theory. It has been presumed that this would be a theory of quantum gravity leading to a "theory of everything" that would unite the so-far incompatible theories of general relativity and quantum physics.

"The hope is that, in this complete theory, black hole singularities will be removed," Molina-Niñirola said. "Now, our recipe for regular black holes goes precisely in this direction, but instead of using a complete theory of quantum gravity, we use something called an 'effective theory.' This is a classical theory of gravity that is supposed to capture the effects of an assumed theory of quantum gravity."

This amounts to the team modifying the Einstein field equations so that gravity behaves differently when space-time is highly curved. Ultimately, this leads to the removal of black holes' central singularities.

Related: Albert Einstein: Biography, facts and impact on science

Quantum gravity and other problems

This newly modified theory suggests there is no singularity at the heart of a black hole. So what does exist in this extreme, exotic realm?

"In our model, the space-time collapse stops, and the singularity is replaced by a highly warped static region that lies at the core of the black hole," Molina-Niñirola said. "This region is static because it does not contract. That means an observer could hypothetically stay there, assuming they were able to survive the huge, but finite, gravitational forces in this region."

Apart from curved space-time, what else dwells at the heart of black holes, if this theory is correct? According to Hennigar, strictly speaking, nothing.

"These black holes are pure vacuum everywhere; there need not be matter present, but one can easily include it if desired," the University of Durham researcher continued. "It might sound weird to have a black hole in the absence of matter, but the same thing can happen even in general relativity."

Even if the team's black hole concept were verified, it likely wouldn't halt the search for a valid model of quantum gravity and a theory of everything.

"In some sense, this is a problem that cannot be avoided. Stars are collapsing all the time in our universe; it is an unavoidable physical process. But this commonplace occurrence is something that pushes us past everything we know," Hennigar continued. "In the final stages of collapse, just before one would reach the singularity, both gravity and quantum effects will be important.

"So we already know that the conclusions one would draw from general relativity alone are insufficient to describe such an extreme place/moment."

Does losing the singularity mean losing the mystery? Not quite...

If correct, this research may have somewhat demystified black holes, but it opens up many questions that will still have to be answered.

"Our work provides answers to some mysteries, but it opens others," Molina-Niñirola said. "For instance, according to our model — and other proposals in scientific literature — the matter that falls inside a regular black hole would ultimately exit the black hole through a white hole located in a different universe or in a disconnected region of the same universe.

"This looks very exotic, but it is the only possibility if singularities do not exist: all that goes into a black hole must eventually come out of it."

The researcher added that this process entails problems of its own, which must also be investigated to assess the robustness of the team's idea.

The big question is whether scientists could ever find evidence for this theory from actual observations of black holes; after all, we know we can't simply peer into their interiors.

"It’s difficult to say, since the effects that lead to singularity resolution might only become observable in regimes of extremely strong gravity, probably far stronger than what we can hope to observe," Molina-Niñirola said. "However, there are some experiments that can offer us some possibilities."

Molina-Niñirola explained that the observation of ripples in space-time called gravitational waves allows astronomers to observe much stronger gravitational fields than ever before. This gives scientists a unique chance at trying to spot effects beyond general relativity, including those that may lead to singularity resolution.

Additionally, if the team's theory is correct, there should be a tell-tale imprint in the very early universe, during the era of cosmic inflation right after the Big Bang.

"In this regard, the detection of a primordial, gravitational wave background — which has not been detected yet — could provide hints on possible modifications of gravity," Molina-Niñirola said. "Finally, a consequence of the absence of singularities is that the end-product of black hole evaporation via Hawking radiation would be a microscopic black hole.

"These microscopic black holes provide a possible dark matter candidate. Thus, if dark matter turned out to be composed of tiny black holes, this would be an indirect proof in favor of the absence of singularities."

The team's research was published in the journal Physics Letters B in February 2025.

Originally posted on Space.com.

Black hole quiz: How supermassive is your knowledge of the universe?

Where it is: 200,000 light-years away, in the constellations Tucana and Hydrus

When it was shared: March 21, 2025

Why it's so special: The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is one of our galaxy's closest neighbors and is visible to the naked eye, yet most humans will never see it. The dwarf galaxy, which contains just several hundred million stars, compared with the Milky Way's 100 billion stars, can be seen only from the Southern Hemisphere as a cloudy patch in the night sky.

Related: 'Bull's-eye!' Hubble telescope spots record-shattering 9-ring galaxy — and the cosmic 'dart' that smashed through its center

The SMC is close to the bigger Large Magellanic Cloud and is best seen from November to January — unless you're the Hubble Space Telescope, which recently zoomed in on the SMC to reveal its intricate structure.

Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 used its four filters and the observatory's 8-foot (2.4 meters) mirror to capture various wavelengths of light to create this colorful view of clouds of gas and dust illuminated by the light of young stars in the SMC.

The image shows the center of NGC 346, an open star cluster where new stars are born. Previous studies found about 2,500 infant stars in NGC 346 that have formed from gravitationally collapsing gas clouds. However, they have yet to become full-fledged stars.

As a star factory, the SMC fascinates astronomers because it lacks the heavier elements found in large galaxies like the Milky Way. These heavy elements are the byproducts of multiple generations of stars — something the SMC has lacked due to its small size. Dwarf galaxies like the SMC are thought of as primitive building blocks of larger galaxies. In that way, the SMC is a unique and very close example of what was happening in the early universe.

For more sublime space images, check out our Space Photo of the Week archives.

This rock, which the Perseverance team named "St. Pauls Bay," is float rock, meaning it wasn't found where it formed. As a result, it's missing context clues that could explain its strange texture, according to NASA's statement.

It isn't just the geologic context that's missing, either. Something caused the rock to move from its original location, and that movement could reveal insights about Martian geology. Maybe this rock formed when a meteorite struck Mars, vaporizing rock before it condensed into the little granules seen in the photo. If this was the case, the rock could have originated far from its current resting place, and it could reveal how meteor strikes transport materials on Mars, NASA noted.

Related: 'Spiders on Mars' fully awakened on Earth for 1st time — and scientists are shrieking with joy

It's also possible that the rock rolled down Witch Hazel Hill, according to NASA. It may have originated from one of the darker layers on the hill that scientists have detected from orbit. Closer study of Witch Hazel Hill could tell scientists what those darker layers are made of. If they're similar in composition to St. Pauls Bay, it could indicate a layer of volcanic activity, an old meteor strike, the presence of groundwater in the past, or something else entirely, NASA representatives wrote in the statement.

Rocks like St. Pauls Bay give scientists important clues about how the Red Planet has changed over time. Their formation and transportation reveal complex interactions between water, rock and geologic forces on Mars, which can help answer whether the planet could have harbored life in the past.

If Witch Hazel Hill once had groundwater, some of the rock samples Perseverance has been collecting might contain fossilized microbial life. NASA's Mars Sample Return mission, currently planned for sometime in the 2030s, will scoop up these rock samples and return them to Earth for further study.

Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein spoke at the 16th annual McAleese "Defense Programs" Conference in Arlington, Virginia on Tuesday (March 18), warning the Space Force needs to rethink how it defends the country's satellites. Space Force should shift its focus from managing spacecraft in support of defense infrastructure on the ground, to growing its ability to keep pace with the on-orbit weaponry being developed by the country's adversaries, Guetlein argued.

"We are in the process of pivoting from what used to be a service focused on providing the most exquisite space services on the planet to the warfighter and to the nation" Gen. Guetlein said, "to make it a warfighting force capable of protecting and defending our capabilities in and through space."

For decades, spacefaring nations largely avoided interfering with each other's satellites and other spacecraft, but now that era seems to be coming to an end. The shift comes as China and Russia have ramped up displays of orbital warfare capabilities over the past few years. Some of these incidents have more publicly-facing than others, such as Russia's anti-satellite (ASAT) test in 2022, which created a cloud of supersonic debris in low-Earth orbit. That same year, a Chinese satellite "grappled" one of the nation's defunct satellites and towed it into a "graveyard orbit."

"We're seeing grappling arms in space capable of towing another satellite or holding it hostage," he warned. "We're also now starting to see our near peers focusing on practicing dogfighting in space with satellites," he added, stressing that propping up the Space Force would deter such aggression.

Guetlein says the old norms in space are beginning to erode. "There was a gentleman's agreement until recent [sic] that we didn't mess with each other's space systems," Guetlein said. "We didn't jam them, we didn't spoof them, we didn't lase them, we just kept them safe," he explained. "Unfortunately, our current adversaries are willing to go against international norms of behavior […] and they're willing to do it in very unsafe and unprofessional manners."

Guetlein also noted the "jamming, spoofing, and dazzling" trend becoming norms of behavior, highlighting the tactics as a rapid addition to the new operational environment in space. Now, the stakes are rising higher. Foreign satellites have begun shadowing US spacecraft, moving in lockstep in what Guetlein described as a "cat and mouse game."

The Space Force general added that as new orbital warfare technologies and capabilities emerge, it's important that the US maintain superiority. But the once-massive technological advantage in space held by the U.S. is narrowing. "That capability gap used to be massive," Guetlein noted. "That capability gap is significantly narrowed, and we've got to change the way we're looking at space, or that capability gap may reverse and not be in our favor anymore."

China, in particular, is advancing its intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) technologies. "The Chinese ISR capabilities are becoming very capable. They have gone from what we used to call a 'Kill Chain' to a 'Kill Mesh'," he said, describing an integrated network that intertwines ISR satellites with weapon systems.

To combat the adversarial overtake, the Space Force has begun reinforcing its infrastructure and adding redundancies where it can, but Gen. Guetlein says more needs to be done. In some areas, he pointed out, the commercial space sector has surpassed some of what the Space Force is able to accomplish from orbit. He says commercial and international partnerships are absolutely crucial.

"We no longer have the corner on technology. Commercial has it, as well as our allies. All of us operating together are better than the sum of the parts," Guetlein said. "Partnerships get us proliferation, that gets us excess capacity, that gets us redundancy, that makes the attack surface much broader for our adversaries."

Space Force is also developing integrated defense systems, including an initiative called Golden Dome, proposed during President Trump's first address to Congress during his new term in office. "The magic of Golden Dome, in my mind, is going to be the integration of capabilities that were never meant to be networked or integrated before," Gen. Guetlein said. "Many pieces of the puzzle for Golden Dome already exist. They're just not connected today."

Originally posted on Space.com.

Meteor showers can be exciting and awe-inspiring celestial events, and capturing them on camera well requires a blend of technical skill, patience, and a certain degree of creativity. By carefully selecting the right meteor shower, preparing your equipment and your camera settings and employing creative techniques, you can produce stunning images quite quickly after a little practice. Moon phases not lining up and the weather getting in the way can sometimes test your patience, but immortalizing these fleeting moments will be worth it!

• The next visible meteor shower above the Northern Hemisphere is the Lyrids, peaking on April 21-22.

Equipment

The good thing about getting started photographing meteor showers is that you don’t need the most expensive gear to capture a great shot, but certain equipment will certainly improve your chances of capturing stunning shots.

DSLR or mirrorless cameras

These provide full manual control, essential for long exposures. Some high-end advanced compact camera models such as the Nikon Zfc also offer manual settings and good low-light performance. The very best astrophotography cameras even have dedicated astro features and settings.

Which lenses?

Using a wide-angle lens (14mm to 24mm) captures more of the sky, increasing the chances of photographing multiple meteors. You’ll be wanting to look at a fast aperture (f/2.8 or lower) to ensure more light hits the sensor, which is a must for low-light environments.

Tripod and other equipment

A sturdy tripod is non-negotiable for long exposures. Any movement will result in blurred images. We’d also recommend using a remote shutter release or intervalometer, which reduces vibrations when pressing the shutter and enables continuous shooting over long periods.

Take extra memory cards and fully charged batteries with you, as long-exposure photography consumes both quickly and in cold environments, battery performance can be degraded. One of the best power banks can help keep your gear going for longer. It’s also worth packing a headlamp with a red light, which is essential for navigating in the dark without ruining your night vision. It’s optional, but a dew heater or lens warmer can also prevent condensation on your lens during cold nights.

Camera settings

Capturing meteors involves long exposures and low-light settings. It starts with putting your camera in manual mode, which gives you complete control over exposure, aperture and focus.

Start with 20-30 seconds of exposure and use the 500 rule to calculate maximum exposure time without star trails: divide 500 by the focal length of your lens and round down to the nearest full number. Use the widest aperture (f/2.8 or lower) available to gather as much light as possible, and start with an ISO setting as low as you think you can get away with, depending on your camera body – ISO 1600 is a good starting point, and you can always ramp up from there and adjust it depending on how grainy your images come out. Choosing an ISO is a bit more of an art than a science.

Turn off image stabilization (IS/VR) if your lens has it, especially when using a tripod. Also make sure you shoot in RAW mode, as this maximizes your ability to adjust exposure and color balance during editing, which is vital for achieving the right tonality and color grade in astrophotography.

Photography Techniques

Once you’ve got a good grip on the technical aspects, you’ll feel like it’s time to get creative. Here are some thoughts on how you might achieve a different look to your meteor shower photography.

Include foreground elements

Adding foreground elements can provide context and make your images more visually compelling. Silhouettes of trees or mountains can create a dramatic contrast against the night sky, and man-made structures like bridges, lighthouses or abandoned buildings can add a unique perspective and a sense of drama.

Time-lapse and star trails

You can create dynamic sequences by combining multiple shots. If you shoot hundreds of images you can compile them into a time-lapse in the edit, showing meteors streaking across the sky. Stack multiple exposures together over the course of the night to create circular star trails while highlighting meteors separately. You can also use a headlamp to illuminate foreground objects during long exposures. We loved using the Live Composite feature to create star trails during our OM System OM-1 Mark II review.

Composite images

Meteor showers can be unpredictable, and a single frame may not capture multiple meteors. Combine several images taken over the night to showcase more meteors in one composition.

Reflections

If you’re near very still water, you can often capture meteors reflecting off water bodies like lakes. This might take a bit of experimentation, and you’ll need a fast lens and a camera body that can cope well with high ISO settings.

Capturing fireballs

Occasionally, meteor showers produce exceptionally bright meteors called fireballs. These can light up the sky and cast shadows, offering dramatic photography opportunities. You’ll need to be quick, though, and adjust your exposure rapidly if a fireball appears.

Panoramic shots

Capture a broader view of the night sky by stitching multiple wide-angle shots together. This technique can showcase the vastness of the sky during a meteor shower.

Post processing

When it comes to getting the most out of your astrophotography, it’s worth learning about the ins and outs of editing and post-processing, as mastering these skills will help you produce photographs you can be proud of.

Use software like Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop to reduce noise, especially for high ISO images. You can also adjust contrast and clarity to make meteors stand out and fine-tune the white balance and saturation for more vibrant skies. Use stacking software like StarStaX or Affinity Photo 2 to create seamless star trail images.

Which meteor shower should you photograph?

Luckily, meteor showers are among the most predictable celestial events each year, and we are able to track their appearances. In the northern hemisphere, we’re blessed with several prominent displays throughout the year. They occur when Earth’s orbit passes through the debris trail left by comets or, in some cases, asteroids. This debris, often no larger than grains of sand, burns up upon entering Earth’s atmosphere, creating bright streaks of light.

Research plays a pivotal role in photographing any meteor shower, so it’s best to do this well in advance of an expected shower — but perhaps not so far in advance that you aren’t able to access a reliable source of weather information, as this data is also crucial in determining what you’ll see and where you’ll travel to.

Look at information about the peak nights of the shower, which offer the best chance to capture numerous meteors. For each shower, these generally happen at the same time each year. You will also need to find dark sky locations and use light pollution maps like lightpollutionmap.info to locate the darkest skies near you.

It’s also important to check the moon phase. Aim for a new moon or minimal moonlight to maximize visibility.

Here are some of the things to consider when starting out taking images of meteor showers:

Intensity: The number of meteors you can see per hour, known as the zenithal hourly rate (ZHR).

Radiant point: The area in the sky from which the meteors appear to originate.

Moon phase: A bright moon can wash out faint meteors, so timing around a new moon is ideal.

Weather and light pollution: Clear skies and minimal light pollution are crucial.

Best meteor showers in the Northern Hemisphere

There is lots of information online about the most reliable meteor showers, and you can also find some excellent imagery for inspiration for your own photographs, but we’ve put the basic information below. Cold, crisp winter skies can be a really good time to capture images of meteor showers, providing the weather and conditions can offer a clear view of the night sky.

Quadrantids (January)
Known for its sharp peak that lasts a few hours, this is one of the strongest meteor showers of the year.

Peak: Around January 3-4
ZHR: 60-100 meteors per hour
Radiant: Near the constellation Boötes

Lyrids (April)
One of the oldest recorded showers, often with bright, fast meteors.

Peak: Around April 21-22
ZHR: 15-20 meteors per hour
Radiant: Near the constellation Lyra

Perseids (August)
Famous for their high frequency and bright meteors during warm summer nights.

Peak: Around August 11-13
ZHR: 50-100 meteors per hour
Radiant: Near the constellation Perseus

Orionids (October)
Known for their fast meteors and occasional fireballs.

Peak: Around October 20-22
ZHR: 15-25 meteors per hour
Radiant: Near the constellation Orion

Geminids (December)
One of the most reliable and prolific showers.

Peak: Around December 13-14
ZHR: 120-150 meteors per hour
Radiant: Near the constellation Gemini

Researchers discovered bright ultraviolet (UV) light coming from an ancient, distant galaxy. The findings, published March 26 in the journal Nature, suggest that the universe's first stars modified their surroundings even earlier than expected.

Shortly after the Big Bang, the universe was a soup of protons, neutrons and electrons. As the universe cooled, the protons and neutrons combined to form positively charged hydrogen ions, which then attracted negatively charged electrons to create a fog of neutral hydrogen atoms. This fog absorbed light with short wavelengths, such as UV light, blocking it from reaching farther into the universe.

But as the first stars and galaxies formed, they emitted enough UV light to knock the electrons back off the hydrogen atoms, allowing UV light out once again. Though this "Era of Reionization" is thought to have ended about a billion years after the Big Bang, scientists still aren't sure exactly when the first stars formed — or when the Era of Reionization began.

Related: James Webb telescope reveals 'cosmic tornado' in best detail ever — and finds part of it is not what it seems

The new findings could help narrow down that starting point. Using JWST, researchers observed an ancient galaxy known as JADES-GS-z13-1. The galaxy is so far from Earth that we're observing it as it appeared just 330 million years after the Big Bang.

In the JWST data, the scientists spotted bright light at a specific wavelength known as the Lyman-alpha emission, which is produced by hydrogen. Though the light started out as ultraviolet, the universe's expansion over more than 13 billion years has stretched it out into the infrared region, making it visible to JWST's sensors.

For the Lyman-alpha emission to reach Earth today, JADES-GS-z13-1 must have ionized enough of the hydrogen gas around it to allow the UV light to escape — something scientists hadn't expected so early in the universe's development.

"GS-z13-1 is seen when the universe was only 330 million years old, yet it shows a surprisingly clear, telltale signature of Lyman-alpha emission that can only be seen once the surrounding fog has fully lifted," study co-author Roberto Maiolino, an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge, said in a statement. "This result was totally unexpected by theories of early galaxy formation and has caught astronomers by surprise."

Researchers still don't know what produced the Lyman-alpha radiation in JADES-GS-z13-1. The light might come from extremely hot and massive early stars, or it might be produced by an early supermassive black hole.

"We really shouldn't have found a galaxy like this, given our understanding of the way the universe has evolved," study co-author Kevin Hainline, an astronomer at the University of Arizona, said in the statement. "We could think of the early universe as shrouded with a thick fog that would make it exceedingly difficult to find even powerful lighthouses peeking through, yet here we see the beam of light from this galaxy piercing the veil."

"This fascinating emission line has huge ramifications for how and when the universe reionized," Hainline concluded.

This astronomical phenomenon will fall on Saturday, March 29, 2025, and will be visible in 13 U.S. states, parts of northeastern Canada, and across much of western Europe and Africa. To help you find out if your location is in the path of the eclipse, NASA has now released a map revealing exactly how much of the sun will be eclipsed and where, and what time the eclipse begins in each region.

The East Coast of the U.S. and Canada will see the partial eclipse take over the largest portion of the sun, with 83% of the sun being blocked out in St John's in Canada, 64% in Portland, Maine, 43% in Boston, and 22% in New York City, according to NASA. With the sun rising partially eclipsed in these locations, the moon will make our star appear to have a pair of ‘devil horns’ in the dawn light.

On the NASA map, the yellow lines show the extent of how much sun will appear to be blocked out from each location, and the green lines track the time in UTC at which the eclipse will hit its peak.

In St. John’s, Canada, for example, the partial eclipse will begin at 6:57 a.m. local time, peak at 7:52 a.m., and end at 8:51 a.m. In Boston, it will start at 6:31 a.m. local time, peak at 6:38 a.m. and end at 7:07 a.m., while in New York City, it will start at 6:44 a.m., peak at 6:46 a.m., and end at 7:04 a.m. In these spots, the moon will already be partially blocking the sun as the two celestial bodies rise above the horizon in the morning.

In London, meanwhile, where the eclipse will cover a maximum of 31% of the sun, the eclipse will start at 10:07 a.m. local time, peak at 11:03 a.m., and end at 12:00 p.m.

Related: How to watch tomorrow's solar eclipse from anywhere on Earth

The orange loops on NASA's map represent areas where the eclipse starts or ends at sunrise and sunset: the left side of the western loop (over the Americas) will see the eclipse end at sunrise, while the right side of this loop will see the eclipse start at sunrise. Meanwhile, the blue line bisecting these loops show where the eclipse will hit its maximum at sunrise or sunset.

Solar eclipses occur when the moon passes between the Earth and the sun, blocking out the light from our star and casting a shadow on the Earth's surface. Unlike a total solar eclipse, where the sun is completely blocked in some areas, a partial eclipse results in the sun appearing as a crescent in the sky. This occurs because the alignment between the sun, moon, and Earth is not perfect.

How to watch the eclipse

According to timeanddate.com, over 800 million people will be able to catch at least some of the partial eclipse, although only 21 million will see the moon cover more than 50% of the sun. For everyone else, free live streams of the entire eclipse are being hosted on both sides of the Atlantic — Live Science has rounded up the best ones here.

Those hoping to catch a glimpse of the eclipse should never look at the sun directly without protection; even during a partial eclipse, the sun’s rays can cause serious eye damage. Observers should wear a pair of certified solar eclipse glasses at all times, or otherwise use a telescope or binoculars equipped with proper solar filters over the front lens.

"Do NOT look at the Sun through a camera lens, telescope, binoculars, or any other optical device while wearing eclipse glasses or using a handheld solar viewer — the concentrated solar rays will burn through the filter and cause serious eye injury," NASA advises.

If you miss this partial eclipse, another partial eclipse will be visible from Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica, and the Pacific Ocean on September 21 this year.

On August 12, 2026, a total solar eclipse will be visible in Greenland, Iceland, Spain, Russia, and Portugal, while a partial eclipse will be visible in Europe, Africa, and North America.

Sun quiz: How well do you know our home star?

This "rare cosmic phenomenon", called an Einstein ring, appears as a single eye-like orb in the darkness of space, but is actually a distorted view of two distant galaxies in the constellation Hydrus.

In the bright center of this cosmic spectacle is one galaxy, while the stretched orange and blue color surrounding it is the light from another galaxy located behind it. The light from the more distant galaxy looks like a ring because it has been distorted by gravitational lensing.

Gravitational lensing occurs when the gravity of a massive object — like a galaxy or a black hole — bends the light from a more distant object. This effect is a direct consequence of Einstein's theory of relativity, which states that mass warps the fabric of space-time, causing light to follow curved paths, like a ball rolling down a curved slope.

"This effect is much too subtle to be observed on a local level, but it sometimes becomes clearly observable when dealing with curvatures of light on enormous, astronomical scales," ESA representatives wrote in a statement.

This latest image was released by ESA and the Canadian Space Agency today (March 27) as their March picture of the month. It was captured by JWST's Near-InfraRed Camera instrument and also includes data from the Wide Field Camera 3 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope.

Related: 42 jaw-dropping James Webb Space Telescope images

Einstein rings like these are created when the distant light source, the massive lensing object, and the observer are perfectly aligned, resulting in the light appearing as a complete ring wrapped around the lensing object. As a result, they are rare.

In this case, the elliptical galaxy in the foreground — which is part of a galaxy cluster named SMACSJ0028.2-7537 — is so massive that it is bending the light of the spiral galaxy situated far behind it.

"Even though its image has been warped as its light travelled around the galaxy in its path, individual star clusters and gas structures are clearly visible," according to the statement

The fascinating phenomenon of gravitational lensing also allows astronomers to better understand the universe.

Light emitted from distant galaxies, which existed long ago in the past, is often too faint to be observed directly from Earth. Strong gravitational lensing magnifies these galaxies, making them appear larger and brighter, and allowing astronomers to study some of the first galaxies formed after the Big Bang.

"Objects like these are the ideal laboratory in which to research galaxies too faint and distant to otherwise see," the ESA statement noted.

Additionally, because black holes and dark matter don’t emit light, scientists can use gravitational lensing to detect and study these phenomena by measuring how they bend and magnify background stars.

James Webb Space Telescope quiz: How well do you know the world's most powerful telescope?

Early on Saturday, the sun will rise partially eclipsed over 13 U.S. states and a broad swath of northeastern Canada. With the new moon covering up to 93% of the sun's visible surface, millions of people will have the opportunity to watch our star appear to grow a pair of "devil's horns" in the eerie dawn light.

But even if you're not in the immediate path of the eclipse — or if you don't have protective eyewear — you can still watch this rare phenomenon unfold in several free online live streams, which you can find right here on this page, courtesy of Timeanddate.com and the Royal Observatory Greenwich.

Watch live: March 29 solar eclipse from North America

Beginning at 5:30 a.m. EDT, tomorrow, Timeanddate’s stream will show the partial eclipse transpire from a variety of angles and locations around the world. The precise time, duration and extent of the eclipse will be different depending on where in the world it's being observed from.

Related: What time does the March 29 solar eclipse start?

The live feed will feature images and videos of the eclipse as soon as the sun rises in North America, with prime views coming from St. John's — the capital city of Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada. If skies are clear, the "devil's horns" will appear prominently on the sun when the eclipse peaks at around 7:53 a.m. EDT, reaching 82% coverage of the solar disk, according to Timeanddate's eclipse map. The partial eclipse over Newfoundland will end an hour later.

Watch live: The view from Europe

Timeanddate's stream will also feature several views from across the Atlantic. These will include images from Siena, Italy, which will see a maximum eclipse of about 5% at noon local time; views from the towns of Kristiansand and Skibotn, Norway, where the sun will reach 30% and 37% obscuration, respectively; and a feed from the Royal Observatory Greenwich in London, U.K., where the eclipse will peak at around 11:03 a.m. local time with about 40% coverage.

The Royal Observatory Greenwich will also be hosting its own free live stream of the eclipse, beginning at 10 a.m. local time. For that midmorning view of the eclipse, you can watch the stream below.

If you're watching the live stream, you need nothing but your eyes (and probably a fresh cup of coffee). But if you do manage to see the partial eclipse in person, you MUST wear protective eyewear — such as certified solar eclipse glasses or a backyard telescope with solar filters — at all times, according to NASA. Unlike last year's total solar eclipse over North America, there will be no moment of totality (when the sun is completely covered by the moon) during Saturday's partial eclipse, so there is no safe time to remove your eclipse glasses.

After March 29, the next solar eclipse visible from North America will be a partial eclipse on Aug. 12, 2026. This eclipse will appear as a total solar eclipse in Spain, Iceland, Greenland, Russia and a small area of Portugal.

Sun quiz: How well do you know our home star?

The telescope spotted infrared auroras that create exotic molecules known as trihydrogen cations, according to a study published March 26 in Nature. Scientists identified auroras on Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus more than 30 years ago, but Neptune's auroras staunchly evaded detection until now.

Auroras form when energetic, charged particles from the sun get caught up in a planet's magnetic field. The field funnels the particles toward the planet's magnetic poles, where they collide with — and ionize — atmospheric molecules along the way, causing them to glow.

Unlike auroras on Earth, which occur at extreme northern and southern latitudes near our planet's North and South Pole, Neptune's auroras appear near the planet's mid-latitudes. That's because Neptune's magnetic field is tilted 47 degrees off its rotational axis, so the planet's magnetic poles lie between the geographic poles and the equator — around where South America would be located on Earth.

And unlike the Northern Lights, Neptune's auroras aren't visible to the naked eye.

"Turns out, actually imaging the auroral activity on Neptune was only possible with Webb's near-infrared sensitivity," Henrik Melin, a planetary scientist at Northumbria University in the U.K., said in a statement. "It was so stunning to not just see the auroras, but the detail and clarity of the signature really shocked me."

Finishing Voyager's work

In June 2023, researchers used JWST's Near-Infrared Spectrograph to look for the trihydrogen cation (H₃⁺), a hallmark of auroral activity in the hydrogen-rich atmospheres of the solar system's gas giants. NASA's Voyager 2 probe flew by Neptune in 1989, but it didn't have the right equipment to detect the cation. Since then, scientists at ground-based facilities, such as Hawaii's Keck telescope and NASA Infrared Telescope Facility, have looked for this molecule in Neptune's atmosphere without success, despite predictions that it should be present.

Related: 'Hidden' rings of Uranus revealed in dazzling new James Webb telescope images

This time, JWST detected H₃⁺, but researchers also noted unexpected changes in Neptune's atmosphere. "I was astonished — Neptune's upper atmosphere has cooled by several hundreds of degrees [since the Voyager flyby]," Melin said in the statement. "In fact, the temperature in 2023 was just over half of that in 1989."

These cold temperatures could be why scientists haven't detected H₃⁺ on Neptune until now. The auroras appear much fainter at cold temperatures, and light reflecting off Neptune's clouds may have drowned them out, the researchers said.

"As we look ahead and dream of future missions to Uranus and Neptune, we now know how important it will be to have instruments tuned to the wavelengths of infrared light to continue to study the auroras," study coauthor Leigh Fletcher, a planetary scientist at Leicester University in the U.K., said in the statement. "This observatory has finally opened the window onto this last, previously hidden ionosphere of the giant planets."

We wish clear skies for those in Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, parts of the Atlantic and the Arctic regions in order to see this fantastic event. Enjoy the show!

• 🕶️ Solar eclipse glasses: See the eclipse safely for under $10
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• ☀️ Solar filters: A great addition to your existing gear

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A lucky group of 13 states will have views of the sunrise solar eclipse, but exactly when to watch the celestial event — the first solar eclipse of the year — depends on your location.

What time is the March 29 solar eclipse?

According to Time and Date, the eclipse officially begins at 4:50 a.m. EDT and ends just under four hours later, at 8:43 a.m. EDT. However, that doesn't tell you exactly when to see it, when the eclipse will reach its peak, or how long it will last for any particular location.

Related: How to watch tomorrow's solar eclipse from anywhere on Earth

The easiest way to get the precise timings for your location is to type your city or address into this eclipse map, which will give you a full schedule of the eclipse start time, the time of sunrise, the moment of maximum eclipse and the eclipse end time for your location. It will also tell you where in the sky to look, as well as simulate what you'll see.

For example, in Boston, sunrise is at 6:31 a.m. EDT and will take place at 85 degrees azimuth (measured clockwise from north), so just north of due east. The eclipse will be at its maximum (43%) shortly after at 6:38 a.m. EDT while just 1 degree above the horizon. The eclipse will end at 7:07 a.m. EDT, with the moon departing the sun while it's 6 degrees above due east.

In New York City, sunrise is at 6:44 a.m. EDT and will also occur at 85 degrees. The eclipse will be at its maximum (21%) at 6:46 a.m. EDT while on the horizon and end at 7:04 a.m. EDT while it's 3 degrees above the horizon.

With the eclipse taking place very low on the horizon in North America, it's best to be in a coastal location to see the sunrise above the ocean or to observe from an elevated position. Also, because this is a partial solar eclipse, viewers must wear protective eyewear at all times, be it a pair of certified solar eclipse glasses or a backyard telescope with solar filters attached.

Across Europe, the eclipse becomes a midmorning event. The sun will be eclipsed to a much lesser extent, but it will be much easier to see than in North America because it will be higher above the horizon. For example, in London, the eclipse begins at 10:07 a.m., peaks at 11:03 a.m. at 31%, and ends at midday. There, the entire event will occur high in the southeastern sky, making precision far less important.

Sun quiz: How well do you know our home star?

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) initally issued a G2 geomagnetic storm warning for Tuesday, March 25, which has now been extended into Wednesday (March 26).

Like hurricanes, geomagnetic storms follow a 5-point severity scale. G2 storms are considered "moderate" in strength and could cause minor technological disruptions such as radio blackouts, GPS malfunctions, and an increased chance of spotting auroras at lower latitudes than usual.

"Watches of this level are not uncommon," according to NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center; G2-strength geomagnetic storms hit Earth about 360 days in each 11-year solar cycle. These storms can affect spacecraft orbits and cause weak power grid fluctuations at high latitudes, but they mostly cause "manageable effects to some technological infrastructure," according to NOAA.

The Space Weather Prediction Center issued the extended storm warning because a "coronal hole" on the sun is facing Earth. Coronal holes are cooler, darker regions of the sun's outermost atmosphere (the corona) that are less dense than normal, allowing high-speed solar winds — streams of charged particles — to escape from the sun and gush outward into space. Currently, one of these escaped high-speed streams is pointed directly at Earth.

Related: Powerful 'equinox auroras' may arrive soon: Why changing seasons can bring the best northern lights

Earth's magnetic field deflects most of the solar wind, but some charged particles make it through into the upper layers of the atmosphere. When the solar wind hits Earth's atmosphere, charged particles shoot toward Earth's poles, agitating atmospheric molecules along the way and forcing them to emit energy in the form of colorful auroras.

In October 2024, the sun reached its solar maximum period, the most active part of its 11-year cycle. During this period, the sun's magnetic poles flip, and space weather events like geomagnetic storms and solar flares occur more frequently. Scientists predict that the solar maximum will continue for at least a few more months if not longer, providing additional opportunities to spot the Northern Lights.

On Wednesday night, "the aurora may become visible over some northern and upper Midwest states from New York to Idaho," according to a statement from NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center.

The best chances of spotting an aurora are on dark, clear nights between 10pm and 2am, far from artificial lights. You can see auroras with the naked eye, but their colors might look even more vivid through a smartphone screen.

Editor's note: This article was updated March 26 after NOAA extended its geomagnetic storm warning.

At around 8 p.m. local time (4 p.m. ET), people across the U.K. reported seeing the luminous swirl grow as it slowly streaked across the sky like something from a sci-fi movie, according to the BBC. The light show was most clearly visible above parts of England, including Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Leicestershire, Suffolk and Essex, as well as in Wales and further afield in Sweden, Croatia, Poland, and Hungary.

Photographer Simon Minnican captured the ethereal scene in a stunning video that showed a bright spot appear and then grow in size before swelling into an ever-expanding vortex. The entire spectacle lasted around 12 minutes, with the spiral of light dissipating roughly 4 minutes after it unfurled.

There was initially some wild speculation about what had caused the unusual light show, with at least one observer blaming UFOs. However, experts quickly pointed out that it was a "SpaceX spiral" — an increasingly common phenomenon triggered by light reflecting off rocket fuel dumped into space by spinning SpaceX rockets before they reenter Earth's atmosphere.

In this case, the spacecraft responsible for the luminous swirl was a Falcon 9 rocket that had launched from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 1:48 p.m. ET, more than 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) from where the bright spiral was later spotted. This rocket was carrying a secret payload for the National Reconnaissance Office, according to Live Science's sister site Space.com.

Related: SpaceX rockets keep tearing blood-red 'atmospheric holes' in the sky, and scientists are concerned

SpaceX spirals occur when the second stage of a Falcon 9 rocket de-orbits and prepares to reenter Earth's atmosphere, where it either burns up or falls into the ocean. During this maneuver, the spacecraft dumps its remaining fuel into space, which then freezes into a cloud of tiny crystals that reflect sunlight to Earth. The second stage is normally spinning when the fuel is released, which is what causes the spiral shape of the resulting cloud — and explains why the vortex continually expands before dissipating.

These spirals were once rare but are becoming more common as the number of Falcon 9 rocket launches increases.

One of the most recent examples was a never-before-seen "horned" spiral reported in May 2024 above parts of Europe. In April 2023, a stunning blue SpaceX spiral photobombed an aurora display above Alaska. The phenomenon has also been spotted twice by a camera attached to the Subaru Telescope on Hawaii's Mauna Kea; first in April 2022 and again in January 2023.

Not every Falcon 9 reentry results in a visible SpaceX spiral. But amateur astronomers can sometimes predict when they are likely to occur based on the rocket's trajectory, payload, spin rate and the time of the launch.

However, in this case, the launch information was not shared in advance because of the secrecy of the mission.

Molecule chains containing up to twelve carbon atoms linked together were detected in a 3.7 billion-year-old rock sample collected from a dried-up Martian lakebed named Yellowknife Bay, according to a study published Monday (March 24) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

These long carbon chains are thought to have originated from molecules called fatty acids, which, on Earth, are produced by biological activity. While fatty acids can form without biological input, which may be the case on Mars, their existence on the Red Planet means that signs of life may be lurking within its soil.

"The fact that fragile linear molecules are still present at Mars' surface 3.7 billion years after their formation allows us to make a new statement: If life ever appeared on Mars billions of years ago, at the time life appeared on the Earth, chemical traces of this ancient life could still be present today for us to detect," study co-author Caroline Freissinet, an analytical chemist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in the Laboratory for Atmospheres and Space Observations, told Live Science.

The molecules — hydrocarbon strings of 10, 11 and 12 carbon atoms called decane, undecane, and dodecane — were detected by Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument.

No stone unturned

The Curiosity Rover arrived on Mars in 2012 at the Gale Crater, a massive 96-mile-wide (154 km-wide) impact crater formed by the planet's collision with an ancient meteorite. In the years since, the rover has traveled about 20 miles (32 km) across the crater, investigating places including Yellowknife Bay and Mount Sharp (Aeolis Mons), a 3.4-mile-high (5.5 km-high) mountain in the center of the crater.

Related: NASA Mars rover finds 'first compelling detection' of potential fossilized life on the Red Planet

Nicknamed "Cumberland", the sample analyzed for the new study was drilled by Curiosity in 2013 from Yellowknife Bay, and previous analyses found it to be rich in clay minerals, sulfur, and nitrates.

But despite many thorough tests, the hydrocarbon strings in the sample remained undetected for more than a decade. The hydrocarbons were actually discovered by accident as part of an attempt to find the building blocks of proteins — known as amino acids — in the sample.

The researchers behind the new study thought to test out a new method for finding these molecules by pre-heating the sample to 1,100°C (2,012°F) to release oxygen before analysis. Their results showed no amino acids, but, by pure luck, they discovered the fatty molecules hiding there instead.

"The excitement was super high when I saw the peaks on the spectrum for the first time," Freissinet said. "It was both surprising and not surprising. Surprising because those results were found on the Cumberland sample that we had already analyzed many times in the past. Not surprising because we have defined a new strategy to analyze this sample."

"New method, new results," she added.

The researchers suggest that the molecules may have broken off from the long tails of fatty acids named undecanoic acid, dodecanoic acid, and tridecanoic acid, respectively. Fatty acids are long chains of carbon and hydrogen with a carboxyl (-COOH) acid group at the end.

Life-forming chemistry

To test this theory, the researchers mixed undecanoic acid into a Mars-like clay in the lab before performing a test similar to that carried out by the SAM instrument As expected, the undecanoic acid broke down to decane, indicating that the carbon chains could indeed have originated from fatty acids.

On Earth, molecules like these are overwhelmingly produced by biological processes, but they can also occur naturally without life. However, non-biological processes usually only result in fatty acids with fewer than 12 carbon atoms, the researchers say. While the longest carbon chain detected by SAM had 12 carbons, the instrument is not optimized to detect longer molecules, meaning that it is possible longer chains were also present.

"There is evidence that liquid water existed in Gale Crater for millions of years and probably much longer, which means there was enough time for life-forming chemistry to happen in these crater-lake environments on Mars," study co-author Daniel Glavin, a researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a NASA statement.

Regardless of what made them, the detection of the carbon chains and their likely origins as fatty acids confirms that Curiosity can detect molecules of this kind, and that the molecules can remain preserved for billions of years in the Martian environment. The researchers hope to one day bring samples of Martian soil back home to Earth to properly analyze the contents, and hopefully solve the mystery of the Red Planet's elusive life once and for all.

"We are ready to take the next big step and bring Mars samples home to our labs to settle the debate about life on Mars," said Glavin.

The image reveals an outflow of hot gas from a newborn star — known as a Herbig-Haro object — situated about 625 light-years from Earth in the constellation Chamaeleon.

This stunning plume of gas, named Herbig-Haro 49/50 (HH 49/50), is a composite of images captured by two of JWST's instruments, NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument). The colors in the image represent wavelengths of infrared light, which are invisible to the human eye.

Related: 42 jaw-dropping James Webb Space Telescope images

Herbig-Haro objects are bright, nebula-like objects, formed when jets of ionized gas ejected by newborn stars collide with surrounding interstellar material at hundreds of miles per second. The shockwave of the gas hitting this material heats the gas to immense temperatures, causing it to glow in both visible and infrared wavelengths of light, and creating the characteristic bright and bubbly appearance of Herbig-Haro objects.

They are usually found in star-forming regions — dense, gassy areas where baby stars are actively being born — and can evolve quickly on astronomical timescales, often changing in a matter of years or decades. These strange cosmic structures were first observed in the late 19th century, but were formally identified as a distinct class of objects by astronomers George Herbig and Guillermo Haro in the 1940s, hence their name. Astronomers have discovered over 1,000 Herbig-Haro objects across various star-forming regions in our galaxy so far, including the gorgeous, rainbow-tinted HH 30, imaged by JWST in February .

Herbig-Haro 49/50 was first discovered by NASA's now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope in 2006, and nicknamed the "cosmic tornado" for its funnel-like appearance. It's located in the Chamaeleon I Cloud complex, which is one of the nearest star-forming regions to Earth. It is thought to be a similar environment to the place where our own sun was born, more than 4 billion years ago.

In the JWST image, HH 49/50 appears as a cluster of arc-shaped shock waves, showing the movement of gas through space away from the protostar.

"Past observations of this region show that the HH 49/50 outflow is moving away from us at speeds of 60-190 miles per second (100-300 kilometers per second) and is just one feature of a larger outflow," NASA explains in a statement.

Astronomers think that the protostar responsible for the gas outflow causing HH 49/50 is a newborn star named Cederblad 110 IRS4, located about 1.5 light-years away from HH 49/50. This protostar is a Class I protostar, which means it is a relatively young star in stellar terms, at about 100,000 years old, and often still embedded in a dense envelope of gas and dust.

"Herbig-Haro 49/50 gives researchers insights into the early phases of the formation of low-mass stars similar to our own sun," NASA said. "The intricate features of the outflow, represented in reddish-orange color, provide detailed clues about how young stars form and how their jet activity affects the environment around them."

This new JWST image of HH 49/50 also reveals that a fuzzy object at the top of the pillar of gas originally seen in images taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope is actually a distant spiral galaxy in the background, rather than a feature of HH 49/50 itself. Eventually, over the course of millenia, the distant galaxy will be obscured by the roiling gas of HH 49/50.

James Webb Space Telescope quiz: How well do you know the world's most powerful telescope?

T Coronae Borealis (T CrB) is a recurrent nova that repeatedly explodes, creating frequent and somewhat predictable pulses of light that linger in our skies for up to a week.

These flashes come from a binary star system made up of a hefty red giant circling a super-dense white dwarf that's around the same size as Earth. The smaller star is slowly stripping hydrogen gas from its partner and will eventually devour it over millions of years. However, as material falls onto the white dwarf, some of it accumulates on its surface until the pressure gets so great that it ignites in a powerful, super-bright blast. (This type of cyclical blast is called a nova — not to be confused with a supernova, in which a large star explodes completely, leaving only a shriveled core behind.)

TCrB, also known as the "Blaze Star," last appeared in our skies in 1946 but has been recorded at multiple points throughout history, potentially dating back as far as 1217. By looking at the past outbursts, scientists have determined that the nova explodes roughly every 80 years, meaning it is due to appear anytime now. However, we have already had multiple false alarms predicting exactly when it will appear.

Hopes of the nova's imminent appearance were first raised in late 2023, when the T CrB system dimmed, just like it did before the 1946 appearance. But the hype around the once-in-a-lifetime spectacle really took off in 2024, first in March and then again in August, as different researchers claimed it was close to happening. Ever since, stargazers have been waiting for the Blaze Star to appear — but it has remained elusive.

Related: Weird repeating explosion beyond the Milky Way is one of the hottest blasts scientists have ever seen

However, another study, published October last year in the journal Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society, a lone researcher proposed a different set of likely dates for the celestial spectacle after analyzing the finer details of its previous iterations.

The first potential window for the Blaze Star's appearance is marked as beginning on Thursday (March 27), the study's author Jean Schneider, an astronomer at the Paris Observatory in France, wrote in the paper. However, if we do not see the nova within around a week of this date, we will have to wait for more than seven months for the stellar explosion to appear, he claimed.

In reality, the T CrB system has already exploded again, and we are just waiting for the light of the next blast to reach us as it travels 3,000 light-years across the space between it and us.

When will the nova appear?

The Blaze Star is hard to pin down because the amount of time between each of its recorded appearances can either increase or decrease by around 1.4 years on average, and there is no pattern suggesting which way it will swing. As a result, researchers have had to rely on monitoring the T CrB system for changes in brightness to predict its next appearance.

However, in the newest study, Schneider reanalyzed the time differences between eruptions and found that each gap is almost perfectly divisible by the orbital period between the red giant and white dwarf stars, which circle one another every 228 days. Following this rule, the next nova should appear around March 27. But if it does not show, the next dates for its potential arrival are 228 days later, on Nov. 10, followed by June 25, 2026 and Feb. 8, 2027.

Bizarrely, there is no clear reason why any known recurrent nova would follow this pattern. "These 'predictions' are only empirical extrapolations," Schneider wrote. "There is at this point, no physical explanation behind them."

However, Schneider postulates that if there were a hidden third star in the T CrB system, then there would be a specific point in each orbit where a third star is also closest to the white dwarf. At this point, there could be an extra helping of material being dumped on the super-dense star, which may be what triggers the explosion. However, this is unproven.

How to see the Blaze Star

Predicting exactly when the nova will reappear is tricky. But what researchers do know for certain is where the Blaze Star will appear once the light from T CrB finally reaches us, because its position in our sky is fixed.

The temporary star will shine in the Corona Borealis constellation, which translates to "the Northern Crown" in Latin. This constellation is not very large. However, it is sandwiched between the larger Hercules and Boötes constellations, which are much easier to find and contain specific stars that can be used as guides to find the nova when it appears, according to Live Science's sister site Space.com.

The exact locations of these constellations in the night sky depend on where you are on Earth and the time of year when the nova emerges. But they can be easily found using websites such as TheSkyLive.com.

The star will have an apparent magnitude of +2, which is roughly equal to the brightness of the North Star. As a result, it will be one of the brightest objects in the night sky and visible to the naked eye. However, if you have a backyard telescope or stargazing binoculars, you will be able to see it for several more days after it disappears from everyone else's view.

The behemoth, nicknamed J2345-0449, is a giant radio galaxy, or "super spiral" galaxy roughly three times the size of the Milky Way. Like our own spiral galaxy, it harbors a supermassive black hole at its center. But unlike the Milky Way's center, J2345-0449's supermassive black hole emits powerful radio jets — streams of fast-moving charged particles that emit radio waves — stretching more than 5 million light-years long.

Though scientists don't yet know what fuels the radio jets, a new study, published March 20 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, hints at how giant spiral galaxies could form.

Such strong radio jets are "very rare for spiral galaxies," Patrick Ogle, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, who was not involved in the study, told Live Science. "In general, they can have weak radio jets, but these powerful radio jets typically come from massive elliptical galaxies. The thought behind that is that to power these really big jets requires a very massive black hole, and one that's probably also spinning. So most spiral galaxies don't have massive enough black holes in the centers to create big jets like this."

Related: Supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way is approaching the cosmic speed limit, dragging space-time along with it

Data from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope, and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array suggest that the radio jets currently prevent stars from forming near the galaxy's center. That's likely because the jets heat up nearby gases so much that they can't collapse into new stars — or push them out of the galaxy entirely.

Jets in our neighborhood?

Though both J2345-0449 and the Milky Way are spiral galaxies, it's unlikely that we'll observe these powerful jets in our galactic hometown.

"This galaxy is so different from the Milky Way," Ogle said. "It's a lot bigger, and the black hole is a lot more massive."

Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, is likely too small to produce radio jets as powerful as the ones observed in J2345-0449, Ogle told Live Science. Still, studying these rare galaxies could help scientists understand how the growth of supermassive black holes and of their host galaxies are related. Based on the shape of the group of stars at the center of the galaxy, it's possible that this black hole and its massive host galaxy have grown together in relative isolation, rather than gaining their mass from galaxy mergers.

In the future, detailed studies of the galaxy's supermassive black hole could also explain what powers its massive radio jets. "The extreme rarity of such galaxies implies that whatever physical process had created such huge radio jets in J2345-0449 must be very difficult to realize and maintain for long periods of time in most other spiral/disc galaxies," the researchers wrote in the study.

"Understanding these rare galaxies could provide vital clues about the unseen forces governing the universe," study co-author Shankar Ray, an astrophysicist at Christ University, Bangalore, said in a statement. "Ultimately, this study brings us one step closer to unravelling the mysteries of the cosmos, reminding us that the universe still holds surprises beyond our imagination."

Black hole quiz: How supermassive is your knowledge of the universe?

You should never look directly at a solar eclipse or a partial solar eclipse, even when wearing sunglasses. Specialized eclipse glasses are thousands of times darker than standard sunglasses, giving your eyes the protection they need to look directly at the sun.

You might spot some brands labeling their solar eclipse glasses as 'NASA-approved' but we can confirm NASA does not approve any solar eclipse glasses, so be wary of these products.

Our picks of the best solar eclipse glasses will ensure you're safe to view the upcoming partial eclipse. That's because we've checked that they are all made to ISO 12312-2:2015(E) certification which requires specific testing to meet the International Standards Organization's parameters for safety.

If you want to get a closer look at the upcoming eclipse event, check out our guides to the best telescopes and the best binoculars (although bear in mind you'll need eye protection to use these, too). We also have a handy guide to the equipment you need to see the solar eclipse, which we'd recommend you take a look at to ensure you're fully prepared.

The best solar eclipse glasses to buy in 2025

Contributing experts

Frequently asked questions

Looking at the sun is dangerous business, particularly during a partial solar eclipse where the sun's rays are more concentrated. If you want to get a good look, you'll need to view the partial solar eclipse with specialized protective technology. You can opt for solar eclipse glasses, but if you also want to get a closer look, solar binoculars are your best bet.

The best solar binoculars differ from the standard range of best binoculars because they come equipped with solar-safe filters. The entire frame within the binoculars is darkened, blocking out harmful infrared and ultraviolet rays and protecting your eyes from retinal damage.

You should never use regular binoculars to look at a solar eclipse, so if you own a set of the best binoculars for stargazing or your kids have any of the best binoculars for kids, make sure they are kept safely stowed away for the duration of this month's partial solar eclipse.

Quick list

Best solar binoculars to buy in 2025

Best overall solar binoculars

Even if you don't know much about skywatching products, there's a good chance you've heard of Celestron. This is a leading brand in the telescope and binoculars space, so when it comes to buying a set of the best solar binoculars, you know Celestron is a brand you can trust. We think the EclipSmart 10x42 solar binoculars are the best on the market: They're inexpensive, well made and fantastic at their job. What more could you want?

In our Celestron EclipSmart 10x42 review, we commented on how comfortable these solar binoculars are to use. They aren't the smallest, but weighing 24 oz (680 g) they're perfectly manageable, and their all-over rubber casing means they grip well in the hand. There are also two thumb grips on the underside of the binoculars, which we found particularly comfortable.

In terms of performance, we've been impressed with how well the Celestron EclipSmart 10x42 solar binoculars work. Unlike regular binoculars, you can't use these to view everything — they're designed specifically for looking at the sun, so most light transmissions are blocked out. But look at the sun and not only will your eyes be protected, but you'll be able to see details beyond a bright disc in the sky.

Given the very reasonable price of these solar binoculars, we think they are excellent. They aren't perfect: We experienced some chromatic aberration while using them, and we found that the eyepiece lenses would easily mist up due to our brow sweating under the heat of the sun. These are ultimately small issues, though, and they don't put us off heartily recommending these solar binoculars.

• Read our full Celestron EclipSmart 10x42 solar binoculars review for more information.

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Best compact solar binoculars

We love how eye-catching the Lunt 8x32 Sunoculars are. Along with the yellow body as pictured, they're also available in red and blue — and there's a black version available if you want something a little more understated. Despite their fun-loving colors, however, the Lunt Sunoculars work perfectly.

These binoculars are no good for day-to-day use but thanks to their filters, you can use them to safely view a solar eclipse (or the sun in general). You won't be able to see anything else through them other than the sun, which can make finding the perfect focal spot a little different, but once you get it set up, the Sunoculars work perfectly.

The 8x magnification power in the Lunt Sunoculars is perfectly adequate for getting a close-up view of the sun, but not so powerful that it'll be hard to get a steady view. Most importantly, these solar binoculars meet all necessary safety requirements, so you can have peace of mind when using them to view a solar eclipse.

The only real downside of the Lunt 8x32 Sunoculars is their price tag. They're significantly more expensive than every other set of solar binoculars in this guide, and we're not entirely sure they're worth almost twice the price of the Celestron EclipSmart 10x42s that we've chosen as our best overall. Ultimately, it depends on how much you value a fun, colorful body and a slightly smaller build that will easily fit in a pocket.

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Best budget solar binoculars

With the partial solar eclipse coming up at the end of the month, these Celestron EclipSmart 10x25 binoculars are the ideal solar binoculars to pick up. They're inexpensive, they're compact, and they're ideal for a partial eclipse. What they're not ideal for, however, is a total eclipse: The small objective lens diameter just doesn't let enough light through.

But with the next total solar eclipse not due until August 2026, that's not something you need to worry about just yet. If you don't want to spend a fortune and want to be able to get a close-up view of the upcoming partial eclipse, these are a great buy. They offer adequate eye protection while still letting you see the sun in plenty of detail.

Despite their small size, they are easy enough to focus on thanks to a quality focus wheel in the center of the binoculars. If you have larger hands, you might find their small size difficult to hold comfortably — but for adults with smaller hands or children, they are an excellent size.

Perhaps the biggest complaint about these solar binoculars is that they lack the brightness you'd get in more expensive sets. That's mostly due to the small objective lenses: you'd want to go for a larger diameter to let in more light. But since the lens filters here block out most light in order to protect your eyes, it's not the biggest issue.

Being budget solar binoculars, you don't get lens caps included in the box, but you get a carry pouch which will keep them safe when not in use. They're not perfect, then, but given their seriously low price, it's hard to complain too much.

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Best high power solar binoculars

If you want to get closer to the partial solar eclipse than ever, we'd recommend picking up a pair of binoculars with a high magnification. For the money, we think the Celestron EclipSmart 20x50 solar binoculars are the best option on the market. They're relatively inexpensive, have a good build quality — they do come from Celestron, after all — and offer solid views of the sun.

Like all solar binoculars, these are designed to only view the sun. They block out almost all light in order to keep your eyes safe from the sun's flares. That means unless you're looking at the sun, all you'll see is darkness. It can be tricky to focus the binos for that reason, but once you get locked on, you'll be in for a treat with clear, high-magnification views.

These binos are easy to use. Other than finding your sweet focus spot, there's little else that needs doing. It's worth mentioning, however, that these solar binoculars have a very small eye relief, so if you need to keep your glasses on while using them, it might be a bit of a struggle.

Of course, that 20x magnification comes with a problem of its own: It's almost impossible to get a steady view with your hand. We'd highly recommend you use these binoculars with a tripod to allow you to get steady, unshaky views. The binos have a built-in tripod mount, making it nice and easy to mount them, although if you haven't already got a tripod we'd possibly suggest choosing binoculars with a lower magnification.

If 20x seems a little over-the-top, Celestron also offers a 12x50 version of these solar binoculars — but we'd still recommend using a tripod with 12x magnification. Opt for 8x or 10x if you want to be able to use your binoculars handheld.

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Best solar binoculars for kids

If you want to be able to view the upcoming partial solar eclipse with your children, it's a good idea to get them their own solar binoculars. Most pairs will adjust to fit a smaller face, but binos designed for adults tend to be heavy and cumbersome for kids to hold to their faces for extended periods of time. The Lunt 6x30 Mini Sunoculars, on the other hand, are designed with small faces (and hands) in mind, making them an ideal option for young kids.

Weighing just 5.3 oz (160 g) and measuring 4.1 x 4.3 inches (105 x 110 mm) in diameter, these solar binoculars are positively tiny. Children will have no problem managing them by themselves, and their small body means they fit comfortably in smaller hands.

The Lunt 6x30 Mini Sunoculars can be tricky to focu ons, though. With no focus wheel, you'll instead have to adjust each eye, which can be fiddly and hard to get right. They also feel a little flimsy, but that's the price you pay for something so lightweight.

Of course, these Mini Sunoculars have all the required safety regulations in place, and do a great job of protecting little eyes from the sun's flares. With 6x magnification, they offer a decent view of the sun, and they're not so powerful that you need to worry about keeping them steady.

Like their larger counterparts, the Lunt 6x30 Mini Sunoculars are available in multiple colors: yellow, red and blue (these ones aren't available in black). We think it's a great choice of colors that will appeal to kids.

Best solar binoculars: Comparison

Contributing experts

Frequently asked questions

How we test the best solar binoculars

Where possible, our expert reviewers have tested solar binoculars in real-world conditions. Being designed exclusively to look at the sun, our reviewers have used solar binoculars to view the details of the sun, along with solar events like annular, partial and total solar eclipses.

We've checked that every set of solar binoculars we recommend meets the required safety requirements, and we ensure that the build quality of each pair of binoculars is worthy of our recommendation. We also assess solar binoculars based on how comfortable they are to use, how easy they are to focus and how good their image quality is.

Price is also a consideration when it comes to choosing the best solar binoculars. We consider if they offer good value for money based on what else is available on the market.

Astronomers recently zoomed in on the cosmic twisters using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile. Although these rotating structures had been seen previously, the new observations with ALMA are 100 times sharper than the earlier views, the team reported in a new paper published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The researchers began by pointing ALMA at a region of the galaxy known as the central molecular zone (CMZ), which surrounds our galaxy's core supermassive black hole and is filled with seething clouds of dust and gas. The team wanted to uncover the mechanism driving the relentless motion of these clouds.

Related: High-school student accidentally discovers black hole 'light echo' twice as wide as the Milky Way

They used ALMA to trace certain molecular compounds — such as silicon monoxide, which is particularly good at revealing shock waves — within the maelstrom. This allowed the team to detect previously unseen details in the cosmic dust storms — including a new type of long, slender filament that seems to form when shock waves ripple past.

"Unlike any objects we know, these filaments really surprised us," because they appear to move quickly and in a direction counter to the structures surrounding them, Kai Yang, an astronomer at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and lead author of the study, said in a statement.

The researchers describe these filaments as space tornadoes. "They are violent streams of gas, they dissipate quickly, and they distribute materials into the environment efficiently," the authors said in the statement. The team's observations suggest that, in addition to emitting silicon oxide, these whirlwinds might disperse complex organic molecules — such as methanol, methyl cyanide and cyanoacetylene — throughout the CMZ and beyond.

"ALMA's high angular resolution and extraordinary sensitivity were essential to detect these molecular line emission associated with the slim filaments, and to confirm that there is no associations between these structures with dust emissions," Yichen Zhang, an astrophysicist at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and a co-author of the paper, said in a statement.

Further observations with ALMA will help the researchers determine how widespread these slim filaments are within the CMZ and how they contribute to molecular cycling in the region.

We rated Celestron's EclipSmart 10x42 Solar Binoculars as one of the best pairs of binoculars for safe solar observing at their usual price of $87.95. Right now, they are even better value as you can pick them up with a $35 saving in this binoculars deal — so a terrific buy for viewing the partial solar eclipse on March 29.

Buy the Celestron EclipSmart 10x42 Solar Binoculars for just $52.35 at Amazon.

The Celestron EclipSmart 10x42 Solar is a great pair of binoculars for anyone new to sungazing and wanting to get great views of the partial eclipse without shelling out too much. As the name suggests, these are great binoculars for safe observation of the sun and feature Celestron Solar Safe filter technology – which conforms to the ISO international safety standard for filters for direct viewing of the Sun, as we mentioned in our full Celestron EclipSmart 10x42 review.

At full price, the Celestron EclipSmart 10x42 Solar is excellent value, but with 33% off the usual price in this deal, it's hard to beat. The build quality on these binoculars is good too, constructed from a lightweight aluminum frame with a weather-resistant rubber finish that enhances grip and provides protection. There's also a Celestron Limited Lifetime US Warranty.

Key features: Easy to use, solar-safe tech that meets ISO 12312-2:2015, Lightweight design.

Price history: These binoculars have been as low as $42, but that was in 2018 and this is the lowest price we've seen this year. With only a few days until the partial solar eclipse, we think this is a great time to buy them.

Reviews consensus: These sun-safe binoculars are easy to get started with, making them a great choice for beginners — especially at this price. Amazon reviewers have been overwhelmingly positive on the Celestron EclipSmart, and they get an aggregate score of 4.1 out of 5 from almost 300 ratings, with 63% of reviewers giving the binoculars top marks.

Live Science: ★★★★½ Space: ★★★★

Buy them if: You want binoculars, something more substantial than a pair of solar glasses, but don't want to spend too much.

Don't buy them if: You're an experienced sungazer and want something with larger objective lenses and greater magnification. The EclipSmart 12x50 Solar Binoculars would be a great choice for that.

It's difficult to overstate how transformative it will be. The ELT's primary mirror array will have an effective diameter of 39 meters. It will gather more light than previous telescopes by an order of magnitude, and it will give us images 16 times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope. It's scheduled to come online in 2028, and the results could start flooding in literally overnight, as a recent study shows.

One of the most powerful features of the ELT will be to capture faint atmospheric spectra from the atmospheres of exoplanets. This is usually done as a planet passes in front of its star from our vantage point. A small bit of starlight passes through a planet's atmosphere to reach us, and by analyzing the absorption spectra we can determine the molecules contained in the planet's atmosphere, such as water, carbon dioxide, and oxygen. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has gathered data on several exoplanet atmospheres, for example.

But sometimes the transit data we can gather is inconclusive. For example, when JWST looked for atmospheres on the planets of the TRAPPIST-1 system, it seemed that the planets b and c were airless, but the data isn't strong enough to rule out the presence of atmospheres. There might be thin atmospheres with spectral lines too faint for JWST to observe. The ELT's greater sensitivity should be able to settle the question.

Related: James Webb telescope spots 'rogue' planet with a cake-like atmosphere barrelling through space without a star

What's even more exciting is that the ELT should be able to gather spectra not just on exoplanets that transit their star, but also from non-transiting exoplanets via reflected starlight.

To determine just how powerful the ELT will be, this new study simulated results for several scenarios. They focused on planets orbiting nearby red dwarf stars, since those are the most common types of exoplanets, and looked at four test cases: a non-industrial Earth rich in water and photosynthesizing plants, an early Archean Earth where life is just starting to thrive, an Earth-like world where oceans have evaporated, similar to Mars or Venus, and a pre-biotic Earth capable of life but where there is none. For comparison, the team also considered Neptune-sized worlds, which should have significantly thicker atmospheres.

The idea was to see if the ELT could distinguish between the different Earth-like worlds, and more importantly, whether the data could trick us into a false positive or negative. That is, whether a lifeless world would appear to have life or a living world would appear barren.

Based on their simulations, the authors found that we should be able to make clear and accurate distinctions for nearby star systems. For the closest star, Proxima Centauri, we could detect life on an Earth-like world with only ten hours of observation. For a Neptune-sized world, the ELT could capture planetary spectra in about an hour.

So it seems that if life exists in a nearby star system, the ELT should be able to detect it. The answer to perhaps the greatest question in human history could be found in just a few years.

The original version of this article was published on Universe Today.

On Wednesday (March 26), at around 7:30 a.m. ET, asteroid 2014 TN17 will come within 3.2 million miles (5.1 million kilometers) of Earth — or around 13 times further away than the moon, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). This is the closest approach predicted for the asteroid across almost 300 years of JPL simulations, which included calculations of all of its flybys between 1906 to 2200.

Researchers estimate that it is around 540 feet (165 meters) wide. That is slightly wider than the height of Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza and makes it large enough to wipe out a city if it impacted our planet. NASA classifies 2014 TN17 as "potentially hazardous" because of its size and occasional proximity to Earth. However, that does not mean it is dangerous.

Related: NASA's most wanted: The 5 most dangerous asteroids to Earth

During the upcoming flyby, the asteroid will be too far away to be observed with a backyard telescope or stargazing binoculars. However, it is large enough for researchers to study it and the space rock is currently scheduled to be observed by NASA's Goldstone Solar System Radar (GSSR) system in California, which specializes in observing nearby solar system objects as they pass us by.

In recent years, the GSSR telescope has helped reveal the unusual "snowman" shape of one asteroid, detect changes in the orbital trajectories of another and discover a mini-moon orbiting a third. The upcoming observations could yield similarly interesting insights about 2014 TN17.

Close encounters

There are currently around 2,500 known potentially hazardous asteroids, according to the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center. None of them are predicted to hit Earth anytime soon. However, there are a few that will get quite close.

One such space rock is the potential city-killer asteroid 2024 YR4, which made headlines earlier this year when the chances of it hitting our planet in 2032 rose as high as 3.1%. The odds of impact have since dropped to zero. However, there is still a slim chance that it may crash into the moon.

Another asteroid that will have a near-miss of Earth is the hefty "god of chaos" asteroid Apophis, which will come closer to our planet than some satellites in 2029. There is currently zero chance of it hitting us. Some researchers warn that this could change if its trajectory is altered by another asteroid en route — and we may not realize if this has happened for several years. However, this is very unlikely.

In 2022, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission demonstrated our ability to deflect potentially devastating impacts by flying spacecraft into oncoming asteroids to alter their trajectory. However, this method would require advanced warning and lots of data on the target asteroid, which makes finding and tracking these potentially dangerous space rocks a priority.

Thirteen U.S. states will see the March 29 solar eclipse in some form, with a deeper eclipse visible the farther northeast you go. Coastal New England will get the best views. In Maine, up to 86% of the sun will be eclipsed as it rises. New Hampshire and Massachusetts will see up to 57% and 55% coverage, respectively. Boston will see a 43% eclipse.

If you're not in these states, don't worry: You can get an even better view by watching the entire eclipse onling for free. (Follow the link to find out more).

The eclipse will be more modest in other areas of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. New York City will experience 21% obscuration, and the coverage will be less in Philadelphia (11%); Rochester, New York (8%); and Washington, D.C. (1.2%). Although many observers across the region will be able to glimpse a slight eclipse as the sun rises higher into the eastern sky, the best views will be from a coastal location as far north as possible.

Related: March 29 solar eclipse: Where and when to see the rare sunrise solar eclipse from North America

Note: Because this is a partial eclipse, viewers MUST use protective eyewear at all times, be it a pair of certified solar eclipse glasses, or a backyard telescope equipped with a solar filter.

You'll also need clear sight lines to the sunrise, which will take place slightly to the east-northeast. You can use Time and Date's map and The Photographer's Ephemeris to find suitable locations.

A 'double sunrise'

Seeing an eclipsed sunrise is a rare opportunity in itself, but from some locations, it will be possible to glimpse a "double sunrise" as the silhouette of the moon makes the rising sun look like two separate "horns" emerging from the horizon.

That unusual sight will be restricted to northeastern Maine, southwestern New Brunswick and eastern Quebec. Prime coastal viewing spots include Quoddy Head State Park and South Lubec in Maine; Forestville, Quebec; and St. Andrews, New Brunswick, all of which will host an 83% to 87% eclipsed "double sunrise."

Atlantic Canada will see a smaller eclipsed sunrise, with the eclipse deepening shortly thereafter. Moncton, New Brunswick, will see 84%, with similar obscuration in Halifax, Nova Scotia (82%), and St. John's, Newfoundland (82%). Quebec City will see a 72% eclipsed sunrise, and Montreal and Ottawa, Ontario, will get 46% and 29%, respectively.

No eclipse will be visible in Toronto. The point of maximum eclipse will be close to Akulivik, Nunavik, in northern Quebec, where a 91% eclipsed sunrise will be seen.

Iceland, Europe, and Africa

Beyond North America, it's a midmorning event. Reykjavik, Iceland, will experience 67%, but the scene will be much less dramatic in London (31%), Paris (24%), Madrid (20%), Berlin (15%), Vienna (6%) and Rome ( 2%). On the coast of Morocco, from Tangier to Agadir, around 15% to 18% of the sun will be obscured.

The next solar eclipse — another partial one — will occur on Sept. 21, 2025, and will be visible from Antarctica, New Zealand and the southwestern South Pacific. The next partial solar eclipse in North America will be on Aug. 12, 2026 (and will be a total solar eclipse in Spain, Iceland, Greenland, Russia and a small area of Portugal).

Sun quiz: How well do you know our home star?

To build a modern civilization, aliens would likely need to use a source of energy that's just as abundant as fossil fuels, said Lewis Dartnell, an astrobiologist and author of "The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch" (Penguin Press, 2014). It would be hard for them to simply bypass the production of fossil fuels, he noted.

Dartnell drew a parallel with humans: In the 18th century, the world entered the industrial revolution by tapping into what appeared to be a limitless source of energy. Coal burned longer and produced more power than wood and charcoal.

"Prior to that, energy was the fundamental limitation on how much you could do," he said. "It would limit how much you could mine and move things around, what you could build, and what you could make."

The question of whether humans could have bypassed fossil fuels to reach alternative energy sources is "somewhat of a chicken-and-egg dilemma," Dartnell told Live Science. For instance, producing solar panels requires silicon, and extracting and refining this element demands a significant amount of energy.

Related: How do we turn oil into plastic?

The easiest way for intelligent aliens to create fuel would be to start by burning stuff, like humans did, until they can move to other sources of energy. They could perhaps harness the light of a star or of the kinetic energy of the wind. But wind energy on its own would not create the high temperatures needed for the smelting, forging and casting of metals, which would be needed for industrialization, Dartnell said.

Meanwhile, hydropower would only work if the planet had significant amounts of accessible liquid, which most planets we've found don't possess, added Seth Shostak, an astronomer and director of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute.

Could other planets have fossil fuels?

Scientists still haven't found a planet with abundant oxygen in its atmosphere, though trace amounts have been found on Mars, Venus and Jupiter's moon Europa. Oxygen is the key ingredient in burning fossil fuels because it enables combustion, which is what releases the energy stored in coal, oil and gas.

Fossil fuels are created from life — they're the transformed remains of plants and animals that lived hundreds of millions of years ago. Dartnell suggested that plate tectonics are a crucial part of the puzzle of how these life forms came to exist. "There's good reason to suspect that in order to have intelligent life on an Earth-like planet, you need to have plate tectonics to regulate the climate for long periods of time," he said.

A 2022 study by researchers at the University of Sydney reported how Earth's tectonic plates move carbon between the deep Earth and the surface, forming what they call a "carbon conveyor belt." This process is key to maintaining Earth's "Goldilocks" climate, making the planet habitable, according to the study. What's more, plate tectonics also results in continental drift and the creation of conditions that produce large amounts of coal, a fossil fuel, he added.

Put another way, plate tectonics can help pave the way for life and create conditions to help it become fossil fuels; it can also create ideal conditions for life that may become intelligent enough to harness those fuels.

"In a sense, you get a two-for-one," Dartnell said. "If you have a planet with active plate tectonics, that regulates the climate, which allows for the evolution of intelligent complex life."

Scientists have yet to find another planet with active plate tectonics. Nor have they found fossil fuels in space. What they have discovered, however, is evidence of fossil fuels' chemical building blocks: hydrogen and carbon. Approximately 75% of the universe's mass is composed of hydrogen, said Shostak. Additionally, scientists have found a field of liquid hydrocarbons on Saturn's moon Titan. Intelligent aliens could, hypothetically, attempt to burn these elements to produce energy.

A human point of view

Of course, aliens aren't necessarily bound by the same constraints as humans, and our imagination often limits us to thinking in terms of a human timeline. "It's hard for us to predict what the aliens might do," Shostak told Live Science. It's like asking Julius Caesar what he thought the Romans would be doing with oil in 2025, when they were only using small amounts of oil for lamps. "Julius would probably have some ideas, all based on Roman knowledge," he said. "He would completely miss the [mark]. You have to keep that in mind."

An intelligent alien civilization could be nothing like what we expect, Shostak added. While aliens would likely need an abundant energy source to advance their civilization, who's to say what form that energy would take? The answer could lie beyond human understanding.

Extraterrestrials quiz: Are you an alien expert, or has your brain been abducted?

In the 1970s, Hawking introduced a groundbreaking concept: Black holes — traditionally viewed as cosmic entities that engulf everything in their vicinity — might emit radiation similar to the way a heated object does. This phenomenon, now known as Hawking radiation, remains theoretical due to the minimal emission power calculated for stellar and supermassive black holes.

However, a recent study published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics proposes that this elusive radiation could have significantly influenced the universe's early structure. The researchers suggest that primordial black holes, hypothesized to have existed shortly after the Big Bang, might have emitted intense Hawking radiation, leaving detectable imprints on the cosmos we observe today.

"An intriguing possibility is that the early universe underwent a phase in which its energy density was dominated by primordial black holes, which then evaporated through Hawking radiation," the scientists wrote in their study. "This is a generic consequence of ultra-light primordial black holes [...], as even a small initial abundance of such objects would quickly come to dominate the universe as it expanded."

Deciphering Hawking radiation

Hawking's seminal work partially merged the mathematical frameworks of general relativity and quantum mechanics — two foundational theories of physics that have yet to be fully unified — to explore black hole physics. He found that black holes, once thought to be inescapable traps, could actually emit particles, including photons (light).

Related: 'The universe has thrown us a curveball': Largest-ever map of space reveals we might have gotten dark energy totally wrong

Importantly, the emission rate decreases as the black hole's mass increases, meaning that black holes that formed from collapsing stars, as well as the supermassive ones that anchor galaxies, would radiate so weakly that their Hawking radiation would be impossible to detect with current instruments.

However, it is widely believed that in the early universe, much smaller black holes — each with a mass of less than 100 tons — could have formed. These so-called primordial black holes would have emitted particles at a rate significant enough to influence cosmic structures such as galaxies and clusters.

"Various cosmological scenarios predict the formation of black holes in the early universe," the authors wrote. "For example, primordial black holes may have formed from the gravitational collapse of overdense regions."

Notably, the Hawking radiation from these primordial black holes would encompass all particle types, including those hypothetical particles that interact weakly with known particles described by the Standard Model. This implies that such radiation could offer a unique avenue for studying these elusive particles, which may be impossible to produce in particle accelerators.

Investigating primordial black holes' impact

Employing Einstein's general relativity equations, the research team analyzed various particles with different masses and spins to determine their impact on the universe's matter distribution. For example, if a large number of light, fast-moving particles were present, they could impede the formation of small galaxies, as such particles would have difficulty gathering in sufficient quantities to form dense structures. The team also investigated other possible effects these particles might have.

"If any of these particles are stable and persist to the present day, we call them Hawking relics," the researchers explained in their paper. "Massless Hawking relics would contribute to the cosmic radiation budget [...] and could be detected in measurements of the cosmic microwave background."

The scientists meticulously examined how Hawking relics might influence the current cosmic structure. Although they didn't find direct evidence of these relics, their analysis allowed them to constrain the properties of both the particles and the primordial black holes that could have emitted them.

"If there were a meaningful number of evaporating black holes during the period when the first nuclei were formed, the predicted number of atomic nuclei in the universe would be incorrect," the physicists wrote. "We thus require that the primordial black holes evaporate before this period, which gives us an upper bound on their mass of five hundred tons."

The team also explored the hypothesis that Hawking relics could constitute dark matter, which accounts for approximately 85% of all matter in the universe. Their findings suggest Hawking relics are not a good match for dark matter.

"We constrain the abundance of warm Hawking relics to be less than ∼ 2% of dark matter, even if primordial black holes produced multiple different kinds of relic particles," the scientists note.

Future prospects

Although current observations haven't confirmed the existence of Hawking relics, the researchers remain optimistic. They believe that forthcoming instruments with enhanced precision could detect these relics, thereby validating the existence of Hawking radiation and primordial black holes and enabling experimental studies of their properties.

"The discovery of a Hawking relic would open a window to the thermal state of the [early] universe [...]," the team wrote. “This would not only be important for early-universe cosmology, but it would also open a new frontier of particle physics beyond the Standard Model and give the first observational evidence for Hawking radiation, black-hole evaporation, and primordial black holes."

In summary, while Hawking radiation remains a theoretical construct, its potential role in shaping the universe's early structure offers a compelling avenue for research. The study of primordial black holes and their possible remnants could provide profound insight into both cosmology and particle physics, thus bridging gaps in our understanding of the universe's infancy.

Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, LMCN 1968-12a is the first recurrent nova outside our galaxy to have been studied in near-infrared light.

Beyond its extreme temperatures, this nova is also notable for being an extremely violent eruption with unique chemical properties that differ significantly from those observed in our galaxy, the researchers explained in a paper published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Seeing dead stars

When a white dwarf, the leftover core of a collapsed star, is in a tight orbit around another star, it can pull material from that star, leading to some pretty dramatic astronomical events. One of these is called a nova, which means "new" in Latin.

This event results in a bright flash in the sky, as if a new star had appeared, and lasts a few weeks or months before fading. When the dust clears, the original stars remain (unlike in a supernova, which happens when a star is completely destroyed).

In the binary system, as the white dwarf steals gas from its younger companion, the accumulated material forms an accretion disk around the white dwarf. Matter swirls in the disk, and when it reaches the white dwarf's surface and piles up, the pressure and temperature rise so high that it ignites a rapid burning of hydrogen into heavier elements. This is known as a thermonuclear runaway reaction.

Related: Scientists find evidence of 'supernova graveyard' at the bottom of the sea — and possibly on the surface of the moon

This reaction produces a high-energy blast that expels a huge chunk of material from the white dwarf's surface — resulting in a nova. The nova is called "recurrent" when the white dwarf continues to pull more material from its companion, causing similar short-lived bursts of energy at regular intervals ranging from a few months to several years apart.

Not many recurrent novas have been observed in our galaxy, and even fewer have been found outside the Milky Way. Studying novas helps astronomers understand the dynamics of binary systems and the influence of surrounding conditions on these eruptions.

LMCN 1968-12a was the first recurrent nova to be found outside our galaxy. Discovered in 1968, the system consists of a white dwarf and a red subgiant star. It erupts every four years, and its eruptions have been observed regularly since 1990.

The most recent eruption occurred in August 2024. Following the initial observations, the Magellan Baade telescope and the Gemini South telescope — both in Chile — carried out follow-up observations of LMCN 1968-12a in near-infrared light nine days and 22 days after the outburst, respectively. The observations showed the light emitted by various elements that became highly energized during the eruption.

Reading the missing lines

The spectra from the Magellan telescope revealed a clear spike in ionized silicon that was 95 times brighter than the light emitted by the sun added up across all of its wavelengths. A similar dominance of silicon was seen in the spectra from Gemini, although the brightness was lower.

The brightness of silicon was unexpected, said study co-author Tom Geballe, an astronomer emeritus at NOIRLab, and the missing spikes were even more surprising.

"We would've expected to also see signatures of highly energized sulfur, phosphorus, calcium and aluminum," Geballe said in a statement.

Study co-author Sumner Starrfield, Regents professor of astrophysics at Arizona State University, added, "This surprising absence, combined with the presence and great strength of the silicon signature, implied an unusually high gas temperature, which our modeling confirmed."

According to the team's estimates, this is one of the hottest novas ever recorded, with the temperature of the expelled gas reaching 5.4 million degrees Fahrenheit (3 million degrees Celsius). The highly violent eruption, indicated by such extreme temperatures, suggests a connection to the conditions surrounding the nova.

The Large Magellanic Cloud has a lower metallicity than our galaxy, meaning it contains fewer elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. This results in a greater buildup of matter on the white dwarf's surface before ignition, leading to more violent nova explosions.

By contrast, in high-metallicity systems, heavy elements alter the process. Moreover, the ejected gas collides with the companion star's atmosphere, creating a shock that raises temperatures.

Starrfield predicted that low-metallicity material would cause more-intense nova events, and the observations have come through. The study authors emphasized that using large telescopes like Gemini South to study different galaxies will enhance our understanding of these processes in various chemical environments.

Where it is: Mons Latreille, a mountain in the moon's Mare Crisium ("Sea of Crises") basin

When it was shared: March 18, 2025

Why it's so special: This week, a spacecraft on the moon took a unique sequence of images of a lunar sunset. Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lunar lander snapped these gorgeous high-definition photos from its position at the foot of Mons Latreille, a mountain in the "Sea of Crises" basin, close to the "Sea of Tranquility," where the Apollo 11 mission landed in 1969.

Taken from different cameras and stitched together, the footage shows the horizon glowing as the sun sets, with Earth and Venus on display. (Venus is the glowing dot to the upper right of the sun, and Earth is the large, bright object at the upper left.)

Related: 'Blood moon' total lunar eclipse: Stunning photos of our celestial neighbor turning red over the Americas

Sunsets are much rarer on the moon than they are on Earth. Because the moon is tidally locked with Earth, one day on the moon — sunrise to sunset — lasts 14.5 Earth days. That's half the time it takes for the moon to orbit Earth.

That explains why Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost mission, which launched Jan. 15, could sustain itself using solar panels for just over two weeks. After landing on March 2, it operated on solar power until transitioning to battery power on March 16. It finally "went dark" at 7:15 pm EDT that day, five hours after sending back its landmark images. In total, it operated during 346 hours of daylight on the moon, according to Firefly Aerospace.

As it went dark, Blue Ghost's mission came full circle, having begun with an image of a lunar sunrise on March 3. On March 14, the spacecraft took an iconic image of a "blood moon" total lunar eclipse as seen from Earth. From Blue Ghost's perspective on the moon, it saw a total solar eclipse — complete with a "diamond ring" effect — from a red lunar surface.

Blue Ghost Mission 1, nicknamed "Ghost Riders in the Sky," was a groundbreaking mission in lots of ways.

"Firefly's Blue Ghost Mission 1 marks the longest surface duration commercial mission on the moon to date, collecting extraordinary science data that will benefit humanity for decades to come," Nicky Fox, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., said in a statement.

For more sublime space images, check out our Space Photo of the Week archives.

"There are these outer regions of gas being ionized by a supermassive black hole, which results in this echo," Shapiro said at a March 20 presentation here at the 2025 American Physical Society (APS) Global Physics Summit.

Shapiro, 17, is a student at The Dalton School in New York City. But in between classes and scoping out potential colleges, he's also an independent astronomer who presents at global conferences like this week's APS meeting.

Originally, Shapiro began sifting through the DECaPS2 survey — an inventory of the southern galactic plane from the Dark Energy Camera at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile — to find the debris of exploding stars in supernova remnants and planetary nebulas.

But after zeroing in on one such object, he found its structure didn't match the wispy filaments characteristic of a supernova remnant, nor did it show evidence of a supernova at its center. "It was a real surprise to stumble upon this," Shapiro told Live Science.

Related: High school students who came up with 'impossible' proof of Pythagorean theorem discover 9 more solutions to the problem

The object, which he believes to be a light echo, stands in a field of potential supermassive black holes. Using measurements from the Southern African Large Telescope, he found high contents of oxygen and ionized sulfur sprinkled into the region — both indicators of shocked material. All of these signs suggest that the object is the afterglow of a now-dormant black hole, which once spewed radiation that ionized the surrounding gas, causing it to emit light even after the black hole quieted down.

An epic echo

Shapiro currently pegs the light echo at about 150,000 to 250,000 light-years in diameter — about 1.5 to two times the width of the entire Milky Way galaxy. And if his estimates hold up, he thinks it could be a viable candidate for the largest light echo ever discovered.

"This object covers a large area in the sky, which makes it a bit easier to get in-depth images of," Shapiro said.

According to Sasha Plavin, a black hole researcher at Harvard University who was not involved in the research, echoes like the one Shapiro discovered can help us learn more about how black holes behave in the hearts of galaxies.

"I really like how carefully [Shapiro] looked into these images," Plavin told Live Science. "These galactic events are always of interest, and I think these echoes are a great way of studying them."

Plavin is also interested in seeing how this new light echo measures up to others — whether it occurred faster or slower than existing examples. "Putting this discovery in a wider context could be useful in the future," he said.

As Shapiro continues studying the light echo, he hopes to learn more about its composition with measurements of its different regions. But in the meantime, he's excited to continue contributing to black hole science — even if he came across it by accident.

"My involvement in this area of research came as a bit of a surprise to me," he said. "But I hope this object, in particular, helps expand the knowledge of galaxy activities that we don't have too great of an understanding of."

This galaxy, designated Andromeda XXXV, and its compatriots orbiting our neighbor galaxy, Andromeda, could change how we think about cosmic evolution.

That's because dwarf galaxies this small should have been destroyed in the hotter and denser conditions of the early universe. Yet somehow, this tiny galaxy survived without being fried.

Related: 'The early universe is nothing like we expected': James Webb telescope reveals 'new understanding' of how galaxies formed at cosmic dawn

"These are fully functional galaxies, but they're about a millionth of the size of the Milky Way," team member and University of Michigan professor Eric Bell said in a statement. "It's like having a perfectly functional human being that's the size of a grain of rice."

Meet Andromeda XXXV

Dwarf galaxies themselves are nothing new to scientists. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is orbited by dozens of these satellite galaxies caught in the grip of its more immense galaxies.

There is, however, a great deal about dwarf galaxies that scientists don't know. This is because, being smaller, they are much dimmer than major galaxies, making them harder to spot and tougher to study at large distances.

While astronomers have been able to determine many dwarf galaxies in orbit around the Milky Way, identifying dwarf galaxies around our bright galactic neighbors has been incredibly difficult. This means that the dwarf galaxies of the Milky Way have been our only source of information about small satellite galaxies.

This task is somewhat less challenging around the closest major galaxy to the Milky Way, Andromeda. Other dwarf galaxies have been spotted around Andromeda before, but these have been large and bright, thus simply confirming the information that astronomers had gathered about dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way.

To discover these paradigm-shifting smaller and dimmer dwarf galaxies, team leader Marcos Arias, an astronomer at the University of Michigan, and his colleagues scoured various massive astronomical datasets. The team was also able to obtain time with the Hubble Space Telescope to aid their search.

This revealed that not only is Andromeda XXXV a satellite galaxy, but it is also small enough to change theories of how galaxies evolve.

"It was really surprising," Bell said. "It's the faintest thing you find around, so it's just kind of a neat system. But it's also unexpected in a lot of different ways."

A cosmic murder mystery

One of the key aspects of galactic evolution is how long their star-forming periods last. This seemed to be the main difference between the Milky Way's dwarf galaxies and the smaller satellite galaxies of Andromeda.

"Most of the Milky Way satellites have very ancient star populations. They stopped forming stars about 10 billion years ago," Arias explained. "What we're seeing is that similar satellites in Andromeda can form stars up to a few billion years ago — around 6 billion years."

Star formation requires a steady supply of gas and dust to collapse and birth stellar bodies. When that gas is gone, star formation halts, and the galaxy "dies."

Thus, Bell described the situation around these small galaxies as a "murder mystery." Did star formation end when dwarf galaxies' gas supplies petered out on their own, or when these gases were gravitationally stripped away by a large galactic host?

In the case of the Milky Way, it appears that the gas for star formation petered out on its own; however, for the smaller galaxies around Andromeda, it appears they were "killed" by their parent galaxy.

"It's a little dark, but it's either did they fall or did they get pushed? These galaxies appear to have been pushed," Bell said. "With that, we've learned something qualitatively new about galaxy formation from them."

What is even more curious is the extended period of star formation experienced by Andromeda XXXV. To understand why, it is necessary to travel back in time to the the birth of the first galaxies.

Why isn't Andromeda XXXV a 'deep fried' galaxy?

The earliest epoch of the universe was marked by incredibly hot and dense conditions. This inflationary period, begun by the Big Bang, continued, and the universe dispersed and cooled. This allowed the first atoms of hydrogen to take shape, birthing the first stars, which gathered in the first galaxies.

These stars and galaxies blasted out energy as did the first feeding black holes reheating the cosmos. This signaled the death of very small galaxies, and scientists theorize this heat "cooked off" the gas needed for star formation in such collections of stars.

Yet, somehow, Andromeda XXXV survived!

"We thought they were basically all going to be fried because the entire universe turned into a vat of boiling oil," Bell said. "We thought that it would completely lose its gas, but apparently that doesn't happen, because this thing is about 20,000 solar masses and yet it was forming stars just fine for a few extra billion years."

Just how Andromeda XXXV resisted being fried is still a mystery.

"I don't have an answer," Bell said. "It is also still true that the universe did heat up; we're just learning the consequences are more complicated than we thought."

NASA and other space agencies are planning missions that could discover further dwarf galaxies around other large galaxies and help solve this mystery. But there's a good chance that the solution will open up new questions just as the discovery of Andromeda XXXV has.

"We still have a lot to discover," Arias said. "There are so many things that we still need to learn — even about what's near to us — in terms of galaxy formation, evolution, and structure before we can reverse engineer the history of the universe and understand how we came to be where we are today."

The team's research was published March 11 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Originally posted on Space.com.

The new images capture light that travelled for more than 13 billion years to reach the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in Chile. They show the cosmos when it was just 380,000 years old — much like seeing baby pictures of our now middle-aged universe.

At that time, our universe emitted the cosmic microwave background as it emerged from its intensely hot, opaque state following the Big Bang, enabling space to become transparent. This faint afterglow marks the first accessible snapshot of our universe's infancy.

Rather than just the transition from dark to light, however, the new images reveal in high resolution the formation and motions of gas clouds of primordial hydrogen and helium, which, over millions to billions of years, coalesced into the stars and galaxies we see today.

"We can see right back through cosmic history — from our own Milky Way, out past distant galaxies hosting vast black holes and huge galaxy clusters, all the way to that time of infancy," Jo Dunkley, a professor of physics and astrophysical sciences at Princeton University in New Jersey, who led the ACT analysis, said in a statement.

"By looking back to that time when things were much simpler, we can piece together the story of how our universe evolved to the rich and complex place we find ourselves in today," she added in another statement.

These findings were submitted to the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics and presented at the American Physical Society meeting in California on Wednesday (March 19).

About 1,900 "zetta-suns"

An analysis of these new images revealed that the observable universe extends almost 50 billion light-years in all directions from Earth. While the cosmos is estimated to be 13.8 billion years old, it has also expanded in that time, giving light and matter more room to spread out.

The results also suggest that the universe contains as much mass as 1,900 "zetta-suns," which is equivalent to almost 2 trillion trillion suns. Of this, only 100 zetta-suns come from normal matter — the kind we can see and measure, which is dominated by hydrogen, followed closely by helium.

Of the remaining 1,800 zetta-suns of material, 500 zetta-suns are dark matter, the invisible substance pervading the cosmos that is yet to be directly detected, while a whopping 1,300 zetta-suns come from the density of dark energy, a similarly mysterious phenomenon causing the universe to expand at an accelerating rate.

Related: 'The universe has thrown us a curveball': Largest-ever map of space reveals we might have gotten dark energy totally wrong

The high-definition observations provided scientists with a way to check how well the simple, prevailing model of the universe's evolution — known as the Lambda cold dark matter (Lambda CDM) — described the early universe. The data reveals no signs of new particles or unusual physics in the early universe, the scientists said.

"Our standard model of cosmology has just undergone its most stringent set of tests. The results are in and it looks very healthy," study co-author David Spergel, a theoretical astrophysicist and emeritus professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton University, said in the statement. "We have tested it for new physics in many different ways and don't see evidence for any novelties."

The latest observations also provided additional measurements that reinforce previous findings, including a precise estimate of the universe's age and its rate of expansion, which is 67 to 68 kilometers per second per megaparsec (1 megaparsec is equivalent to about 3.2 million light-years). This data is among the final results from the now-decommissioned ACT, which completed its observations in 2022.

"It is great to see ACT retiring with this display of results," Erminia Calabrese, who is the director of research at Cardiff University's School of Physics and Astronomy and a lead author of one of the new studies, said in another statement. "The circle continues to close around our standard model of cosmology, with these latest results weighing in strongly on what universes are no longer possible," she added.

Meanwhile, the ACT's successor, the Simons Observatory, began operations earlier this week and captured the first of what astronomers hope will be many even more detailed images of the early universe.

There are so many mysteries about who or what might live among the stars, and whether they are advanced planet-hopping civilizations or microbes quietly doing what microbes do on a nearby moon. But some questions are easier to answer.

This extraterrestrial quiz is your chance to show whether you know the facts from the fiction about otherworldly entities, or if it's all alien to you. Remember to log in to put your name on the leaderboard; hints are available if you click the yellow button, and let us know your score in the comments.

Related: 32 strange places scientists are looking for aliens

More science quizzes

—Moon landing quiz: How quickly can you name all 12 Apollo astronauts that walked on the moon?

—Conspiracy theory quiz: Test your knowledge of unfounded beliefs, from flat Earth to lizard people

—Black hole quiz: How supermassive is your knowledge of the universe?

This giant disk galaxy existed within the first two billion years after the Big Bang, meaning it formed when the universe was just 15% of its current age. It challenges what we know about how galaxies form.

What is a disk galaxy?

Picture a galaxy like our own Milky Way: a flat, rotating structure made up of stars, gas and dust, often surrounded by an extensive halo of unseen dark matter.

Disk galaxies typically have clear spiral arms extending outward from a dense central region. Our Milky Way itself is a disk galaxy, characterized by beautiful spiral arms that wrap around its center.

Studying disk galaxies, like the Milky Way and the newly discovered Big Wheel, helps us uncover how galaxies form, grow and evolve across billions of years.

These studies are especially significant, as understanding galaxies similar to our own can provide deeper insights into the cosmic history of our galactic home.

Related: 'The early universe is nothing like we expected': James Webb telescope reveals 'new understanding' of how galaxies formed at cosmic dawn

A giant surprise

We previously thought galaxy disks form gradually over a long period: either through gas smoothly flowing into galaxies from surrounding space, or by merging with smaller galaxies.

Usually, rapid mergers between galaxies would disrupt the delicate spiral structures, turning them into more chaotic shapes. However, the Big Wheel managed to quickly grow to a surprisingly large size without losing its distinctive spiral form. This challenges long-held ideas about the growth of giant galaxies.

Our detailed JWST observations show that the Big Wheel is comparable in size and rotational speed to the largest "super-spiral" galaxies in today's universe. It is three times as big in size as comparable galaxies at that epoch and is one of the most massive galaxies observed in the early cosmos.

In fact, its rotation speed places it among galaxies at the high end of what's called the Tully-Fisher relation, a well-known link between a galaxy's stellar mass and how fast it spins.

Remarkably, even though it's unusually large, the Big Wheel is actively growing at a rate similar to other galaxies at the same cosmic age.

Unusually crowded part of space

What makes this even more fascinating is the environment in which the Big Wheel formed.

It's located in an unusually crowded region of space, where galaxies are packed closely together, ten times denser than typical areas of the universe. This dense environment likely provided ideal conditions for the galaxy to grow quickly. It probably experienced mergers that were gentle enough to let the galaxy maintain its spiral disk shape.

Additionally, the gas flowing into the galaxy must have aligned well with its rotation, allowing the disk to grow quickly without being disrupted. So, a perfect combination.

A fortunate finding

Discovering a galaxy like the Big Wheel was incredibly unlikely. We had less than a 2% chance to find this in our survey, according to current galaxy formation models.

So, our finding was fortunate, probably because we observed it within an exceptionally dense region, quite different from typical cosmic environments.

Besides its mysterious formation, the ultimate fate of the Big Wheel is another intriguing question. Given the dense environment, future mergers might significantly alter its structure, potentially transforming it into a galaxy comparable in mass to the largest ones observed in nearby clusters, such as Virgo.

The Big Wheel's discovery has revealed yet another mystery of the early universe, showing that our current models of galaxy evolution still need refinement.

With more observations and discoveries of massive, early galaxies like the Big Wheel, astronomers will be able to unlock more secrets about how the universe built the structures we see today.

This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The survey data, released March 19, includes initial scans of three regions that Euclid will observe regularly, as well as detailed classifications of more than 380,000 galaxies — a mere 0.4% of the galaxies scientists expect to catalog over the mission's planned six-year lifespan.

"With the release of the first data from Euclid's survey, we are unlocking a treasure trove of information for scientists to dive into and tackle some of the most intriguing questions in modern science," Carole Mundell, ESA's director of science, said in a statement.

Euclid, which launched in July 2023 and began collecting data in February 2024, aims to map the large-scale structure of the universe. Understanding this structure through the shapes, sizes and distribution of galaxies could help scientists determine the nature of dark matter and dark energy — two mysterious phenomena that together make up an estimated 95% of the universe but do not interact with light and so cannot be studied directly.

"The full potential of Euclid to learn more about dark matter and dark energy from the large-scale structure of the cosmic web will be reached only when it has completed its entire survey," Clotilde Laigle, a Euclid Consortium scientist at Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, said in the statement. "Yet the volume of this first data release already offers us a unique first glance at the large-scale organization of galaxies, which we can use to learn more about galaxy formation over time."

Related: 'The universe has thrown us a curveball': Largest-ever map of space reveals we might have gotten dark energy totally wrong

The March 19 release includes a single scan of each of the deep-field regions, three areas of the sky that Euclid will revisit multiple times to observe far into the universe. In these initial images, the telescope captured 26 million galaxies, the most distant of which are 10.5 billion light-years away. (A light-year is the distance light can travel in one year — roughly 5.9 trillion miles or 9.5 trillion kilometers.)

"We will observe each deep field between 30 and 52 times over Euclid's six year mission, each time improving the resolution of how we see those areas, and the number of objects we manage to observe," Valeria Pettorino, Euclid project scientist at ESA, said in the statement. "Just think of the discoveries that await us."

Over the course of its planned mission, Euclid will likely capture images of 1.5 billion galaxies, sending about 100 gigabytes of data back to Earth each day. To process this tsunami of information, Euclid scientists are turning to artificial intelligence (AI). Last year, nearly 10,000 volunteers with citizen science project Galaxy Zoo helped train the "ZooBot" AI algorithm to recognize various features of galaxies, such as spiral arms, in early Euclid images.

"We're looking at galaxies from inside to out, from how their internal structures govern their evolution to how the external environment shapes their transformation over time," Laigle said in the statement. "Euclid is a goldmine of data and its impact will be far-reaching, from galaxy evolution to the bigger-picture cosmology goals of the mission."

The technology behind this ambitious project will begin testing this year and could make it into space by 2027, Richard Dinan, the founder and CEO of Pulsar Fusion, which is making the rockets, told Live Science. However, the company has set no timeline for when the futuristic spacecraft could become a reality. One expert told Live Science it could be at least a decade away, if not more.

Pulsar Fusion, which also makes traditional plasma thrusters and is developing nuclear fission engines, first announced the Sunbird project on March 6 after developing the concept in "complete secrecy" over the last decade, according to a statement emailed to Live Science. The project was then fully revealed to the public on March 11 at the Space-Comm Expo in London's ExCel center.

In theory, the proposed rockets will be stored in massive orbital satellite docks before being deployed and attached to other spacecraft and rapidly propelling them to their destinations like giant "space tugs," which would massively reduce the cost of long-haul space missions.

A concept video shows how the futuristic rockets could be used to transport a larger spacecraft to Mars and back using docking stations at both ends of the journey (see below).

Related: How do space rockets work without air?

The Sunbirds' core technology is the Duel Direct Fusion Drive (DDFD) engines, which the company claims will harness the elusive power of nuclear fusion and, hypothetically, provide exhaust speeds much higher than those currently possible.

If it works, this could cut the potential journey time to Mars in half and allow probes to reach Pluto in 4 years, according to Pulsar Fusion. (The current record for a trip to Pluto is 9.5 years, which was set by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft in 2015.)

"If we are going to be the species that actually get to other planets, then exhaust speeds are pretty much the most important thing," Dinan said during a talk at Space-Comm Expo. "In terms of what can be [theoretically] produced in exhaust speeds, fusion is king."

Fusion in space

On Earth, using nuclear fusion as a source of near-limitless energy is still likely decades away, which at first glance makes the idea of fusion rockets seem like pure science fiction. However, the opposite is true because "the bar is lower for fusion in space," Dinan told Live Science in an interview at Space-Comm Expo.

That's because the proposed reaction needed in space is different from what physicists are attempting on Earth. In traditional nuclear fusion reactors, known as tokamaks, the goal is to fuse deuterium and tritium — both heavy isotopes, or versions, of hydrogen — in order to emit a constant stream of neutrons, which generates heat (and in turn energy), as well as breeding more fuel for the continued reaction.

However, the planned fuel for the DDFD is deuterium and helium-3, an extremely rare isotope of helium with one less neutron than the dominant form. In this case, the reaction would pump out protons, and their charge can be used for direct propulsion. Additionally, the proposed reaction would only need to last for short periods at a time, similar to the timescales already achieved on Earth.

The shape and scale of the reactor are also important. Tokamaks are large doughnut-shaped chambers that must mimic the vacuum of space and withstand sustained temperatures equivalent to the surface of the sun. To do so, they use extremely powerful electromagnets to confine plasma into a constant loop. But the DDFD is a linear reactor that does not need to fully constrain the plasma within. In space, there is also a natural vacuum and temperatures reaching absolute zero, which will prevent the reactor from overheating.

However, the designs of the DDFD are still a closely guarded secret and have not yet been properly tested, so their exact workings and feasibility are unclear.

Dinan said he understood why people might be initially skeptical of the feasibility of fusion in space but added that when people look at it logically it starts to make a lot of sense. "This is in every way achievable," he added. "If we can do fusion on Earth, we can definitely do fusion in space."

But not everyone agrees that it will be so easy.

"I'm skeptical," Paulo Lozano, an astronautics professor at MIT who specializes in rocket propulsions, told Live Science in an email. "Fusion is tricky and has been tricky for many reasons and for a long time, especially in compact devices." However, without seeing the full Sunbird designs, he added that he has "no technical basis to judge."

Sunbirds are go

If Pulsar can master the DDFD, the plan is to use the resulting Sunbirds as "space tugs" that can propel any spacecraft from low-Earth orbit (LEO) further into space — largely because fusion is not a viable or safe way of launching rockets directly from Earth's surface.

So rather than having to build giant rockets with massive thrusters in order to completely escape Earth's gravity, as SpaceX's temperamental Starship rocket does, sunbirds will allow any spacecraft that makes it into LEO to escape our planet's pull. This would make missions to the moon, Mars and beyond much more feasible — and cheaper, Dinan said.

Pulsar also envisions the Sunbirds acting as a battery that can power the systems of any spacecraft it is attached to during the journey. Although this is not the primary goal.

Related: 10 times space missions went very wrong in 2024

Another big draw of the Sunbirds is that they would only require small amounts of fuel and could be easily refilled and recharged while they are "perched" on their orbital docking stations, potentially making them much more reusable than most other propulsion systems, Dinan said.

The Sunbirds will likely be around 100 feet (30 meters) long and were described as having a "distinctive alien-like design" in the initial press release. This is due to thick "tank-like" armor plating that will hopefully allow them to survive being bombarded with cosmic radiation and micrometeorites in space, which is why they look "super weird," Dinan said.

Each Sunbird could cost upwards of $90 million (70 million British pounds) to produce, largely because of how expensive helium-3 is to obtain, Dinan estimated. However, the amount of money that these rockets could save a potential client means they would be well worth the cost, he added. "If I can get them there quicker, they will pay for it."

In the future, helium-3 could be mined from regolith on the moon, which would be much cheaper than trying to produce it on Earth, Lozano said. But this is not currently part of Pulsar's plans.

Next steps

Pulsar will conduct the first static tests of the DDFD engine this year inside a pair of giant vacuum chambers recently constructed at the company's campus in Bletchley, England. These chambers are the largest of their kind in the U.K. and possibly the largest in Europe, Dinan said.

These initial tests won't use helium-3 because it is too expensive to obtain for use in a prototype, meaning that true fusion will not be achieved. Instead, an "inert gas" will be used in its place to test how the engine could theoretically work, Dinan said.

Next, Pulsar Fusion plans to undergo an orbital demonstration for some of the "key technological components" in 2027, he added. However, Dinan didn't clarify what this will entail.

If the upcoming tests are successful, Pulsar will begin to raise funds to build a full-scale Sunbird prototype and begin trying to achieve true fusion using helium-3. However, Dinan says that there is no timeline for creating the first Sunbird prototype and it is "too speculative" to predict when this may happen.

Lozano "optimistically" predicts that a fully operational Sunbird prototype is at least a decade away but added that physicists often joke that "fusion is 20 years in the future and always will be."

Named JADES-GS-z14-0, the galaxy where the record-breaking detection was made formed at least 290 million years after the Big Bang and was first spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in 2024.

Heavy elements like oxygen are forged in the nuclear fires of stars. As the newfound oxygen existed when the universe was just 2% of its present age, this primordial element is a major head-scratcher for astronomers because it suggests that stars in the early universe were born and died to seed their surroundings with heavy elements much faster than previously expected. The findings, made by two different research teams, were published March 20 in two papers in the journals Astronomy & Astrophysics and The Astrophysical Journal.

"It is like finding an adolescent where you would only expect babies," Sander Schouws, a researcher at Leiden University in the Netherlands and lead author of the second study, said in a statement. "The results show the galaxy has formed very rapidly and is also maturing rapidly, adding to a growing body of evidence that the formation of galaxies happens much faster than was expected."

The earliest oxygen

Astronomers aren't certain when the first globules of stars began to clump into the galaxies we see today, but cosmologists previously estimated that the process began slowly within the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang.

The detection of JADES-GS-z14-0 and other galaxies like it, however, turned this assumption on its head. The light detected by JWST's Near Infrared Spectrograph originated in an enormous halo of young stars surrounding the galaxy's core that were burning for at least 90 million years before its observation.

Related: James Webb telescope confirms there is something seriously wrong with our understanding of the universe

Young stars are typically composed of hydrogen and helium, and they fuse them into heavier elements, like oxygen, as they grow old and scatter them throughout their host galaxies upon the stars' violent deaths. At the roughly 300 million-year mark where we can see JADES-GS-z14-0, astronomers expected the universe to still be too young to be rife with heavy elements.

But after pointing the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile's Atacama Desert at the distant galaxy, the researchers were stunned by what they found: JADES-GS-z14-0 had roughly 10 times more oxygen than they expected.

"I was astonished by the unexpected results because they opened a new view on the first phases of galaxy evolution," Stefano Carniani, an astronomer at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa in Italy and lead author of the first paper, said in the statement. "The evidence that a galaxy is already mature in the infant universe raises questions about when and how galaxies formed."

How galaxies like JADES-GS-z14-0 birthed so many heavy-element-producing stars so quickly remains a mystery for further research. Currently, astronomers speculate that this surprisingly rapid element seeding could be due to the early appearance of gigantic black holes; feedback from other star deaths; or dark energy, the mysterious force that's driving the accelerated expansion of the universe.