Astronomers have known for decades that the universe is expanding. When they use telescopes to observe faraway galaxies, they see that these galaxies are moving away from Earth.

To astronomers, the wavelength of light a galaxy emits is longer the faster the galaxy is moving away from us. The farther away the galaxy is, the more its light has shifted toward the longer wavelengths on the red side of the spectrum. Thus, the higher the redshift.

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• Although the last time a human saw a star in the Milky Way go supernova with their own eyes was 1604, that wasn’t the most recent one at all. It was simply the last one whose light wasn’t blocked.
• In 1667, a core-collapse supernova occurred in the constellation of Cassiopeia, but no one knew about it for hundreds of years, until its remnant was discovered with much more modern technology.
• Now, for the first time, JWST has viewed the remnant of this supernova, known as Cassiopeia A. Not only are the images breathtaking, but there’s a tremendous amount of new science inside them.

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Finding life on other planets might well be the holy grail of astronomy, but the hunt for suitable host planets that can sustain life is a resource-intensive task.

The search for exoplanets (planets outside our solar system) involves competing for time on Earth’s biggest telescopes — yet the hit rate of this search can be disappointingly low.

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Scientists forecasting solar weather have finally acknowledged that the initial predictions for the current solar cycle were way off. The researchers now say that we are fast approaching an explosive peak in solar activity. Earlier this year, Live Science reported that the solar maximum will likely hit harder and sooner than predicted.

The sun is constantly in flux. Roughly every 11 years, our home star cycles from a period of tranquility, known as solar minimum, to a peak of solar activity known as solar maximum — when dark sunspots cover the sun and frequently spit out powerful solar storms. The star then transitions back to solar minimum before the next solar cycle begins.

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The first images captured by a powerful space telescope designed to create the most detailed 3D map of the “dark side” of the universe have been revealed.

Launched by the European Space Agency in July, the Euclid telescope’s initial release includes five observations made from its orbital home 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometers) away from Earth, including views of a stellar nursery and massive clusters of galaxies and stars.

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The sun – our blazing star – has a metaphorical dark side. It has the potential to cause our modern technological civilization to falter. We had a taste of our sun’s destructive effects on September 2, 1859. On that day, around the world, compasses at sea failed to work, causing some ships to become lost. Telegraph networks experienced disruption, with some telegraph lines catching fire. Tellingly, people as far south as the Caribbean and Mexico saw auroras. Scientists now believe that what happened on that day – 164 years ago – was an extreme geomagnetic storm. Since then, the 1859 storm has become known as the Carrington Event.

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Link contributed by Gene Savoy.

Could our planet be something other than a living thing? Could it have a mind of its own? In a recent article that appeared in the International Journal of Astrobiology, a group of scientists posed these queries. Their “planetary intelligence” theory investigates the possibility that Earth has a collective knowledge and intellect. 

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An international team of astronomers has found 62 new moons around Saturn using an innovative technique. These irregular moons contribute to Saturn’s total moon count of 145, surpassing Jupiter, and provide insights into the planet’s moon system’s collisional history. 

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Self-sustaining chemical reactions that could support biology radically different from life as we know it might exist on many different planets using a variety of elements beyond the carbon upon which Earth’s life is based, a new study finds.

On Earth, life is based on organic compounds. These molecules are composed of carbon and often include other elements such as hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur.

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The coronal heating problem is one of the long-standing astrophysical puzzles. The Sun’s core is the sole place where heat is produced. However, the photosphere, the surface of the Sun, is only around 200 times hotter than the corona, the solar atmosphere‘s outermost layer.

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