#star-axis

#star-axis

Since every planet spins at a different speed, the gears are built with different ratios: Earth takes about 24 hours to spin once, Mars takes about 24.6 hours, Jupiter spins much faster, and Saturn spins fast too. Because of this, each dial shows the real day cycle of that planet, so the clock doesn't calculate time digitally.

This system is truly extraordinary. We're seeing the radio equivalent of a laser halfway across the universe. Fundamentally, masers and lasers are focused beams of light in the same frequency. In the realm of astrophysics, these can arise from clouds of dust being excited into a higher energy state from the light emitted by other sources, like stars and black holes.

The first time that University of Oxford astronomer Lyla Jung saw the cosmic configuration on her monitor, she almost didn't believe it was real. But it wasand Jung and her colleagues went on to identify one of the largest rotating structures ever found in space: a chain of galaxies embedded in a spinning cosmic filament 400 million light-years from Earth. The finding, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, may give astronomers new insights into galaxies' formation, evolution and diversity, Jung says.

A dead star 730 light years away appears to be forming a powerful structure around itself - and despite their best efforts, astronomers aren't sure how. The cosmic corpse, designated RXJ0528+2838, is an incredibly dense stellar remnant known as a white dwarf, with a Sun-like star orbiting around it. This binary arrangement isn't uncommon throughout the universe, but what is strange is the structure surrounding the former body: a highly energetic and luminescent cloud known as a nebula,

Looking skyward fills us with wonder. Off-world, the Sun, planets, stars, and galaxies all await. Our Solar System encompasses our own cosmic backyard. Farther away, stars and star clusters abound within the Milky Way. Hundreds of billions of stars exist just within our home galaxy. Inside our Local Group, only Andromeda surpasses us in mass, size, and stars. More than 5 million light-years away, galaxies abound in groups and clusters.

Okay, first thing first: the universe is in fact expanding. We've known this for more than a century now, and it's the basis for modern cosmology. This idea is called the big bang modelwhich is an unfortunate name because it brings to mind a cosmos expanding like an explosion, with galaxies moving away from each other through space like shrapnel. But in fact space itself is expanding, and that's different.

Except for penguins and Antarctic scientists, few will be able to enjoy February's annular solar eclipse. That's because this eclipse will see the moon pass between the Earth and sun across the path of the southern continent, reaching a maximum at around 12:12pm UTC. People living in Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mozambique, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and the southern parts of Botswana, Malawi, Namibia, Tanzania and Zambia, will only see a partial eclipse March 3.

There is a profound, quiet magic in standing alone under a truly dark sky, but the experience becomes something else entirely when shared with a community of fellow explorers. Star parties are the heartbeat of this experience: communal, high-energy gatherings where everyone from veteran astronomers to total beginners can share a wide-angle view of the cosmos. It's a chance to level up your astrophotography skills, learn the latest in deep-space science from experts,

With Webb, we are able to see farther than humans ever have before, and it looks nothing like what we predicted, which is both challenging and exciting,

The solar system's most giant planet is slightly less of a giant than scientists once thought. Jupiter, a world that is so huge that it could hold 1,000 Earths, is eight kilometers narrower in width at its equator and 24 kilometers flatter at its poles than had been previously estimated, according to a new study. Textbooks will need to be updated, said Yohai Kaspi, a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and senior author of the study, in a statement.