Scientists used Juno spacecraft data and models of how Jupiter's inner core should look to probe the giant planet's early history. They now think an object with 10 times Earth's mass might have struck Jupiter billions of years ago.
NASA astronaut Christian Koch snapped this image of Hurricane Dorian from the International Space Station on Monday, September 2, 2019. The station orbits more than 200 miles (300 km) above Earth.
On August 28, 2019, NASA announced that the 2 halves of the James Webb Space Telescope have now been successfully connected. The telescope is being assembled at Northrop Grumman’s facilities in Redondo Beach, California.
Today - August 30, 2019 - presents the closest new moon of the year, exactly a fortnight (about 2 weeks) before the year's farthest and smallest full moon on September 14, 2019.
Rather than leaving home young, as expected, star siblings are more likely to stick together in long-lasting, string-like star groups, according to a new study of data from ESA's Gaia spacecraft.
By late August and early September, the constellation Orion is rising in the hours after midnight and is well up by dawn. It'll continue to rise earlier … and earlier.
NEOs are near-Earth objects, asteroids and small comets that sweep near Earth and have the potential to cause harm. Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico has, since the 1990s, been finding about 60 to 120 of these objects every year.
So we can't see Mars in our night sky. But, more importantly for NASA, beginning this week, space engineers won't be able to risk sending commands to our fleet of spacecraft at Mars. What happens instead? Watch this video.
On August 14, gravitational wave detectors in the US and Italy sensed ripples in space-time. Data analysis suggests they came from a black hole engulfing a neutron star, 900 million light-years from Earth. If so ... it's a first-ever detection by earthly scientists.
Deborah Byrd (asteroid 3505 Byrd) helps edit EarthSky.org and is a frequent host of EarthSky videos. Deborah created the EarthSky radio series in 1991 and founded EarthSky.org in 1994. Prior to that, she had worked for the University of Texas McDonald Observatory since 1976, and created and produced their Star Date radio series. She has won a galaxy of awards from the broadcasting and science communities, including having an asteroid named in her honor in 1990, a Public Service Award from the National Science Board in 2003, and the Education Prize from the American Astronomical Society in 2020. A science communicator and educator since 1976, Byrd believes in science as a force for good in the world and a vital tool for the 21st century. "Being an EarthSky editor is like hosting a big global party for cool nature-lovers," she says.