Deep Space

The latest on the missions plunging far beyond of Earth's orbit, including Voyager I, the Parker Solar Probe, and JUICE.

Latest in Deep Space

illustration of TRAPPIST-1D a small exoplanet orbiting a cooling Red Dwarf Star.

Earth’s closest alien life probably isn’t very advanced, says new study

This Hubble Space Telescope image features the picturesque nebula LHA 120-N44, or N44

Space Telescope

NASA’s Hubble pops in on a ‘superbubble’

By Laura Baisas

Image of NGC 7253, which features two spiral galaxies colliding into one another

High school students spot two spiral galaxies colliding in Hawaiian constellation

An illustration of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope in space. It is a long cylindrical telescope with mirrors on the outside

Space Telescope

How NASA’s new Nancy Grace Roman space telescope compares with Hubble and Webb

By Meghan Bartels

a white telescope launches aboard a rocket

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman space telescope launches

By Andrew Paul, Laura Baisas

Dyson sphere. Alien mega structure around a star.

Sorry, aliens didn’t build Dyson spheres around these dwarf stars

Image of 220P/McNaught comet in night sky

Space Telescope

Look up! Now’s your chance to spot an unusually luminous comet

A region of space filled with bright stars and clouds of gas. In the centre, the densest clouds form the shape of a chest with its lid open. The chest appears to glow from within. At its base it breaks apart into long pillars of thick gas. Many of the gas clouds in the background are dark orange globules, while others form large, pale hazes. A few brightly shining stars lie in the foreground, the biggest and brightest in front of the chest’s lid.

Space Telescope

‘Treasure Chest’ cosmic cloud glitters with dozens of young stars

Artist's illustration of Swift Observatory orbiting Earth in space

Space Telescope

NASA abandons mission to save Swift Observatory from a fiery death

Image of SpaceX lunar crater created by upper stage rocket with a red arrow pointing to it

Space Telescope

NASA shares first images of SpaceX moon crash site

This visible light wide-field view shows the rich star clouds in the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer) in the direction of the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. The entire image is filled with vast numbers of stars — but far more remain hidden behind clouds of dust and are only revealed in infrared images. This view was created from photographs in red and blue light and form part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The field of view is approximately 3.5 degrees x 3.6 degrees.

A star spinning at 15,000 miles per second tests Einstein theory of relativity

Artist's impression of the cosmocube orbiter above the moon

Space Telescope

A suitcase-sized satellite may unlock the secrets of the early universe

Astronomers have discovered a “black hole star,” an extremely bright red spot in the early universe that appears to be a new type of astrophysical object. It resembles an enormous star, but its energy production is closer to what a black hole might generate.

Astronomers discover the existence of a ‘black hole star’

This image features data from Webb’s NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid Infrared Instrument) to capture the most detailed mid-infrared view yet of the field that hosts the highly evolved star IRS 3, which is located just 0.55 light-years from Sagittarius A*, the Milky Way galaxy's central supermassive black hole. An international team of astronomers have discovered that dust and water can form and survive surprisingly close to this supermassive black hole. The observations reveal that the evolved star IRS 3 continues to enrich its surroundings with newly formed material despite the intense radiation environment around Sagittarius A*. The data in this image were taken with Webb programmes #1939 (J. Lu), #3571 (F. Yusef-Zadeh), #2491 (N. B. Sabha), and #2075 (C. Chan). [Image description: A dense star field fills the entire image, with countless stars scattered across a backdrop of glowing clouds in shades of red, orange, pink, white, and blue. At the centre, a brilliant concentration of stars creates a bright, almost white core surrounded by intricate filaments and wisps of illuminated gas and dust that radiate outward. Dark, irregular patches of opaque dust interrupt the glowing clouds, particularly toward the left side of the image, where they appear as silhouetted shapes against the brighter background. The surrounding stellar population varies in brightness and colour, with cool blue stars and warmer orange and red stars distributed throughout the scene.]

Our galaxy’s supermassive black hole actually doesn’t devour everything

NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft, depicted in this artist’s concept, has enough power to continue operating three science instruments in interstellar space longer than anticipated thanks to some clever engineering by the mission team.

NASA successfully gives Voyager 2 another year of life

An image of a supernova shock breakthrough in space with three additional timelapses images on the right showcasing its luminosity shift over years.

Space Telescope

Extraordinarily rare supernova death spotted 500 million light-years from Earth

This artist's concept depicts a tidal disruption event, which occurs when a star passes fatally close to a supermassive black hole. Crumbs of the splintering star heat up as they swirl around the black hole, creating a glow astronomers can see from far across the cosmos, and the black hole launches a relativistic jet into space.

Super rare black hole devours unlucky star

This illustration shows the system around the star CD-35 2722, with the newly found moon-like object at the centre. The star –– the point source to the left –– has about half the mass of our Sun, and it is orbited by a brown dwarf, the reddish-brown object seen here in the foreground (right). The brown dwarf has about 37 times the mass of Jupiter: too massive to be a planet, but not massive enough to have sustained nuclear fusion like stars. This brown dwarf is, in turn, orbited by a newly discovered object at least as massive as Jupiter, seen at the centre of this image. This new object, found with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), is difficult to label. It behaves like a moon in the sense that it orbits an object that orbits a star. But this ‘moon’ is massive enough to be a planet, and the object it orbits, a brown dwarf, is neither a planet nor a star.

‘Super weird’ object may be space’s first confirmed exomoon

This artist’s concept depicts a near-Earth asteroid with an elongated orbit. A few objects such as these can exhibit significant perturbations in their motion around the Sun and, like the asteroid 1998 SH2, could turn out to be regular comets with a weak tail and coma (the gas and dust around a comet’s nucleus). NASA/JPL-Caltech

Space Telescope

Near-Earth asteroid not an asteroid at all

Side by side photo of meteorite impact hole in house roof, and an image of the meteorite fragment

A meteorite crashed into a New Jersey home in 2024. Inside it were life’s building blocks.