compiled by Arlene & David Kaplan

James Webb Space Telescope’s golden mirror in final test
The technological marvel that is the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is going through final testing before being shipped to the launch site. The successor to the mighty Hubble is due to leave Earth in October to begin a new era of astronomical discovery…more

Europe plans sat-nav and telecoms network at the Moon The European Space Agency is proposing a precise navigation system at the Moon, much like the sat-nav technology we have here on Earth. It would enable spacecraft and astronauts to know exactly where they are when moving around the lunar body and to land with precision…more

How They Took the First Picture of a Black Hole A planet-sized network of radio telescopes has assembled the first image of a supermassive black hole. At the center of our galaxy lies Sagittarius A*, a black hole as massive as four million suns. The black hole is obscured by thick dust and a bright haze of superheated gases. A network of eight telescopes called the Event Horizon Telescope tried to use radio waves…more

What Is a Black Hole? Here’s Our Guide for Earthlings Welcome, earthlings, to the place of no return: a region in space where the gravitational pull is so strong, not even light can escape it. This is a black hole. It’s O.K. to feel lost here. Even Albert Einstein, whose theory of general relativity made it possible to conceive of such a place, thought the concept was too bizarre to exist. But Einstein was wrong, and here you are…more

Scientists track meteor shower to unusual comet seen every 4,000 years Meteor showers are the dazzling result of cometary debris building up along well-worn paths through the solar system, then burning up in Earth’s atmosphere as our planet crosses that dust trail. It’s hard to call a path well-worn when something passes by only once every 3,967 years…more

‘Super Flower Blood Moon’ webcasts: How to watch the supermoon eclipse of 2021 online The full moon on Wednesday (May 26) will be something to behold, as the only total lunar eclipse of 2021 arrives together with the year’s biggest “supermoon.” Skywatchers in much of the world will have a chance to see a slightly larger-than-average full moon temporarily appear red during the so-called “Super Flower Blood Moon.” But for those in parts of the world where the eclipse isn’t visible…more

There could be fungus among us on Mars with this wild astronaut house idea A strange consequence of Lynn Rothschild’s current research is that she ends up snapping photos of the more exotic mushroom offerings she encounters in the grocery store’s produce aisle. Rothschild, an astrobiologist and synthetic biologist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California…more

Hubble Space Telescope traces 5 mysterious ‘fast radio bursts’ to distant spiral galaxies New Hubble Space Telescope observations have given more credence to a theory explaining mysterious radio energy bursts. The long-running observatory tracked down five fast radio bursts (FRBs) to the spiral arms of five faraway galaxies. FRBs are notoriously hard to trace because the bright flares fade so quickly…more

 Subsurface Ocean of Enceladus Has Currents, New Theory Suggests A novel theory proposed by planetary scientists from Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory challenges the current thinking that the saltwater global ocean of Enceladus, the sixth largest moon of Saturn, is homogenous. In 2014, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft discovered evidence of a large subsurface ocean on Enceladus and sampled water from geyser-like eruptions…more