The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) will have a light-collecting power 10 times greater than today’s best telescope.
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Even from a single pixel, multiwavelength data taken over time can reveal clouds, icecaps, oceans, continents, and even signs of life.
New telescopes, radio dishes, and gravitational wave detectors are needed for next-generation science. Will the USA lead the way?
In just its first 10 hours of observations, the Vera Rubin observatory discovered more than 2000 new asteroids. What else will it teach us?
The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, was originally seen as a colossal mistake. This one image, taken in 1995, changed everything.
The sharpest optical images, for now, come from the Hubble Space Telescope. A ground-based technique can make images over 100 times sharper.
After drastic cuts to the NIH, the FDA, the NSF, and the DOE, NASA science faces down its smallest budget ever. All of society will suffer.
The space telescope’s findings challenge the notion of a galaxy brimming with life.
Our scientific instruments are constantly improving, revealing nature’s workings as never before. Without them, we’ll remain in the dark.
In November 1974, astronomers used the radio telescope at Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory to send a hello to the universe.
The most famous Hubble images show glittering stars and galaxies amidst the black backdrop of space. But more was captured than we realized.
There are a number of factors to consider when choosing where to build a telescope. These 3 locations, on their merits, surpass all others.
National Geographic’s first James Webb Space Telescope book shows us the cosmos like never before.
NASA’s space telescopes and observatories bring humanity unrivaled science images and scientific discoveries. Here’s what should be next.
Interferometry gave us a black hole’s event horizon, but that was in the radio. What can we accomplish with a new optical interferometer?
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile will image the southern sky using the largest digital camera ever built.
Lasers, mirrors, and computational advances can all work together to push ground-based astronomy past the limits of our atmosphere.
“Asking the question of, where did the entire universe come from, is no longer a question for poets and theologians and philosophers. This is a question for scientists, and we have some amazing scientific answers to this question that have defied even the wildest of our expectations.”
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Many were hoping that JWST would find the first stars of all. Despite many hopeful claims, it hasn’t, and probably can’t. Here’s how we can.
More than two years after JWST began science operations, our Universe now looks very different. Here are its biggest science contributions.
Ground-based facilities enable the greatest scientific production in all of astronomy. The NSF needs to be ambitious, and it’s now or never.
NASA astrophysics, which gave us Hubble, JWST, and so much more, faces its greatest budget cut in history. All future missions are at risk.
We may be close to finding life beyond Earth. But would we even recognize it if we did? Astrobiologist Betül Kaçar explains what signs NASA is looking for.
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Coming from just 280 million years after the Big Bang, or 98% of cosmic history ago, this new, massive galaxy is a puzzle, but not a mirage.
Over the first half of 2025, the US has cut science as never before. This disaster for American science may be a gift to the rest of the world.
“It’s a very, very beautiful calculation, but it’s the best example I know of the relationship between these rather abstract quantities perhaps and something that you can look at in a telescope.”
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A new SETI study shows how far the field of technosignatures has come.
The detection of two celestial interlopers careening through our solar system has scientists eagerly anticipating more.
The most iconic, longest-lived space telescope of all, NASA’s Hubble, is experiencing orbital decay as the solar cycle peaks. Here’s why.
The “little red dots” were touted as being too massive, too early, for cosmology to explain. With new knowledge, everything adds up.