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Voyager 1 is once again returning data from two of four science instruments onboard. Things are looking better for one of NASA’s longest running deep space missions. After a several-month period of problems, engineers have announced that the Voyager 1 spacecraft is not only back online but also transmitting useful data from two of four science instruments. Work is now underway to bring the remaining two instruments up to operational status. Problems began last November, when Voyager 1 suddenly began sending a repeating gibberish signal instead of the science and engineering data it typically sends. Troubleshooting on the 46-year-old spacecraft...

Explanation: Made with narrowband filters, this cosmic snapshot covers a field of view over twice as wide as the full Moon within the boundaries of the constellation Cygnus. It highlights the bright edge of a ring-like nebula traced by the glow of ionized hydrogen and oxygen gas. Embedded in the region's expanse of interstellar clouds, the complex, glowing arcs are sections of shells of material swept up by the wind from Wolf-Rayet star WR 134, brightest star near the center of the frame. Distance estimates put WR 134 about 6,000 light-years away, making the frame over 100 light-years across. Shedding...

The most distant galaxy discovered to date, JADES-GS-z14-0, less than 300 million years after the Big Bang. (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Brant Robertson/UC Santa Cruz, Ben Johnson/CfA, Sandro Tacchella/Cambridge, Phill Cargile/CfA) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A newly discovered galaxy has just smashed the record for the earliest seen yet, presenting a major challenge to our current models of galaxy formation. It's called JADES-GS-z14-0, and its brightly gleaming in the early Universe, as it looked less than 300 million years after the Big Bang. A second recent discovery, called JADES-GS-z14-1, was confirmed to be nearly as distant. The detections, astronomers say, are now "unambiguous",...

Gliese 12 b is a newly discovered rocky exoplanet, between Earth and Venus in size. It orbits a red dwarf star 40 light-years away..."Transiting" means this world passes in front of its star from our earthly perspective. That fact makes it possible to observe with TESS, whose full name is the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite...The uncertainties about Gliese 12 b center on its possible atmopshere. If it doesn't have an atmosphere, computer models indicate its average surface temperature are slightly warmer than Earthlike, with an average temperature of only around 107 degrees Fahrenheit (42 degrees Celsius). That's in contrast to...

Explanation: Why does a cloudy moon sometimes appear colorful? The effect, called a lunar corona, is created by the quantum mechanical diffraction of light around individual, similarly-sized water droplets in an intervening but mostly-transparent cloud. Since light of different colors has different wavelengths, each color diffracts differently. Lunar coronae are one of the few quantum mechanical color effects that can be easily seen with the unaided eye. Solar coronae are also sometimes evident. The featured image was taken last month from Paris, France. The blue beacon emanating from the Eiffel Tower did not affect the colorful lunar corona.

Explanation: What happens if you ascend this stairway to the Milky Way? Before answering that, let's understand the beautiful sky you will see. Most eye-catching is the grand arch of the Milky Way Galaxy, the band that is the central disk of our galaxy which is straight but distorted by the wide-angle nature of this composite image. Many stars well in front of the Milk Way will be visible, with the bright white star just below the stellar arch being Altair, and the bright blue star above it being Vega. The air glows green on the left, just above the...

Explanation: It's back. The famous active region on the Sun that created auroras visible around the Earth earlier this month has survived its rotation around the far side of the Sun -- and returned. Yesterday, as it was beginning to reappear on the Earth-facing side, the region formerly labeled AR 3664 threw another major solar flare, again in the highest-energy X-class range. The featured video shows the emerging active region on the lower left, as it was captured by NASA's Earth-orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory yesterday in ultraviolet light. The video is a time-lapse of the entire Sun rotating over 24...

A strange-looking object recently discovered in the mountains of Western North Carolina by an area maintenance worker is believed to be debris that fell from space earlier this week. The object, discovered by Haywood County resident Justin Clontz, was found along a scenic hiking trail on property owned by The Glamping Collective, a vacation home rental company. The unusual discovery, first reported by WLOS News, was so large that Clontz reportedly had to use a lawn mower to help remove it. Images of the object were made available on the news outlet’s website and can be seen below. “We don’t...

Explanation: Dark markings and bright nebulae in this telescopic southern sky view are telltale signs of young stars and active star formation. They lie a mere 650 light-years away, at the boundary of the local bubble and the Chamaeleon molecular cloud complex. Regions with young stars identified as dusty reflection nebulae from the 1946 Cederblad catalog include the C-shaped Ced 110 just above and right of center, and bluish Ced 111 below it. Also a standout in the frame, the orange tinted V-shape of the Chamaeleon Infrared Nebula (Cha IRN) was carved by material streaming from a newly formed low-mass...

Explanation: What's happened to our Sun? Nothing very unusual -- it just threw a filament. Toward the middle of 2012, a long standing solar filament suddenly erupted into space, producing an energetic coronal mass ejection (CME). The filament had been held up for days by the Sun's ever changing magnetic field and the timing of the eruption was unexpected. Watched closely by the Sun-orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory, the resulting explosion shot electrons and ions into the Solar System, some of which arrived at Earth three days later and impacted Earth's magnetosphere, causing visible auroras. Loops of plasma surrounding the active...

In 5,259 BC, our planet was bombarded with a shower of highly energetic particles resulting from a rare cosmic event of exceptional magnitude. Initially revealed through the discovery of carbon isotopes measured in ancient tree ring data, the event produced a roughly two percent increase in atmospheric Carbon-14 (14C), making it one of the strongest events of its kind known to scientists...The breakthrough relied on the combination of annual growth ring measurements with the measurable spike in cosmogenic radiocarbon that occurred during the 5259 BC event. This allowed them to establish a chronological reference point for producing accurate dates for...

Explanation: Orbiting 400 kilometers above Quebec, Canada, planet Earth, the International Space Station Expedition 59 crew captured this snapshot of the broad St. Lawrence River and curiously circular Lake Manicouagan on April 11. Right of center, the ring-shaped lake is a modern reservoir within the eroded remnant of an ancient 100 kilometer diameter impact crater. The ancient crater is very conspicuous from orbit, a visible reminder that Earth is vulnerable to rocks from space. Over 200 million years old, the Manicouagan crater was likely caused by the impact of a rocky body about 5 kilometers in diameter. Currently, there is...

Explanation: Star formation can be messy. To help find out just how messy, ESA's new Sun-orbiting Euclid telescope recently captured the most detailed image ever of the bright star forming region M78. Near the image center, M78 lies at a distance of only about 1,300 light-years away and has a main glowing core that spans about 5 light-years. The featured image was taken in both visible and infrared light. The purple tint in M78's center is caused by dark dust preferentially reflecting the blue light of hot, young stars. Complex dust lanes and filaments can be traced through this gorgeous...

Explanation: Spiral galaxy NGC 3169 looks to be unraveling like a ball of cosmic yarn. It lies some 70 million light-years away, south of bright star Regulus toward the faint constellation Sextans. Wound up spiral arms are pulled out into sweeping tidal tails as NGC 3169 (left) and neighboring NGC 3166 interact gravitationally. Eventually the galaxies will merge into one, a common fate even for bright galaxies in the local universe. Drawn out stellar arcs and plumes are clear indications of the ongoing gravitational interactions across the deep and colorful galaxy group photo. The telescopic frame spans about 20 arc...

(Credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by M. Montes (IAC) and J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay)) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Euclid satellite mission has dispatched its first collection of scientific imagery, revealing a dazzling display of orphan stars numbering in the billions amidst the Perseus cluster of galaxies. 240 million light-years away, the Perseus cluster represents one of the most massive structures known to astronomers. Amidst its thousands of galaxies, Euclid was successfully able to discern the faint light emitted by orphan stars dispersed throughout the cluster. The new effort, led by astronomers from the University of Nottingham, has provided potentially crucial new information...

Explanation: Can a gas cloud eat a galaxy? It's not even close. The "claw" of this odd looking "creature" in the featured photo is a gas cloud known as a cometary globule. This globule, however, has ruptured. Cometary globules are typically characterized by dusty heads and elongated tails. These features cause cometary globules to have visual similarities to comets, but in reality they are very much different. Globules are frequently the birthplaces of stars, and many show very young stars in their heads. The reason for the rupture in the head of this object is not yet known. The galaxy...

Explanation: It was bright and green and stretched across the sky. This striking aurora display was captured in 2016 just outside of Östersund, Sweden. Six photographic fields were merged to create the featured panorama spanning almost 180 degrees. Particularly striking aspects of this aurora include its sweeping arc-like shape and its stark definition. Lake Storsjön is seen in the foreground, while several familiar constellations and the star Polaris are visible through the aurora, far in the background. Coincidently, the aurora appears to avoid the Moon visible on the lower left. The aurora appeared a day after a large hole opened...

Two dwarf galaxies (top and bottom) orbit the much larger Andromeda galaxy. DAVID DAYAG/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When astronomers fret about the “missing satellites problem,” they’re not talking about spacecraft in Earth orbit. Their problem is much bigger: For decades, far fewer dwarf galaxies have been seen orbiting the Milky Way and other large galaxies than predicted by models of galaxy formation. But now, two groups of astronomers have found evidence for not just a sufficient number of satellite galaxies to satisfy the simulations—but too many. “Maybe we’ve oversolved the problem,” says Marcel Pawlowski, an astronomer at the Leibniz Institute for...

Scientists using the SPECULOOS (Search for Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars) telescope network have reported the discovery of an Earth-sized planet orbiting the most common star type in the galaxy a mere 55 light years away. Given that the farthest star ever spotted by human scientists lies over 9 billion light-years from Earth, this newly discovered rocky world is one of the closest such space bodies ever spotted. Dubbed SPECULOOS-3 b, the planet orbits an ultracool red dwarf star, the most common star in the Milky Way galaxy. This type of star can live 100 times longer than our Sun, making...

A groundbreaking new pulsed plasma propulsion system could soon enable faster and safer crewed missions to planets like Mars, according to a leading developer of novel technologies aimed at advancing the next stages of human space exploration. Scottsdale, Arizona-based space technology developer Howe Industries recently announced that its Pulsed Plasma Rocket (PPR) could represent a game-changer in advanced propulsion for space travel, allowing crewed missions to significantly reduce the travel time required to reach Mars. According to current timelines, NASA aims to send the first crewed missions to Mars within the next two decades using habitat-like spacecraft paired with hybrid...