compiled by Arlene & David Kaplan

Fighting for ‘The Right to Night’ Under Starry, Rural Skies On a Saturday in September in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, a dozen people navigated through the woods to the shore of Lake Superior, where the waves licked softly against the land. Above, a wash of stars filled the blue-black sky, cut in half by the haze of the Milky Way…more

Webb First to Show 4 Dust Shells ‘Spiraling’ Apep, Limits Long Orbit NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has delivered a first of its kind: a crisp mid-infrared image of a system of four serpentine spirals of dust, one expanding beyond the next in precisely the same pattern. (The fourth is almost transparent, at the edges of Webb’s image.)…more

Why the Rings of Saturn Seem as if They’re About to Disappear If you head into your backyard this weekend and set up your telescope, the giant planet Saturn will be there for you to see. “Saturn is a spectacular object to look at,” said Damian Peach, an English astrophotographer who frequently observes the giant planet. “Even with small telescopes, you can see the rings.”….more

The Moon Was an Inside Job Not long after Earth formed, it received an almighty sucker punch when an object roughly the size of Mars slammed right into it. The interloper, known as Theia, was destroyed, and parts of it and Earth were sprayed into space. The result was the moon….more

Almost Everything About NASA’s Latest Mission to Mars Is Unusual NASA’s latest robotic mission to Mars, ESCAPADE, should perhaps have been named the Great Escape, given how many times it has eluded doom. The data that the mission eventually collects will provide clues about why Mars, which once possessed a thick atmosphere and flowing water on its surface, is today cold, dry and almost airless…..more

The ‘Lost Sisters’ of the Pleiades Fill the Entire Night Sky Look to the east after sunset on a clear winter night and you’ll spot a bright, tightly packed collection of stars. That’s the Pleiades, a star cluster 445 light-years from Earth that has inspired both myth and measurement for centuries….more

Northern Lights Bring Dazzling Views to Northeast The northern lights could be seen in skies as far south as Texas late Tuesday and early Wednesday after the sun emitted masses of charged particles that disrupted the Earth’s magnetic field — and created a dazzling display. Aurora borealis, or northern lights, are most common over locations closer to the North Pole…more

New ‘nearly interstellar’ comet — wrongly linked to 3I/ATLAS A never-before-seen comet that shares some minor similarities with the infamous interstellar object 3I/ATLAS is about to make its closest approach to our planet just a few days after it was first spotted speeding toward us…more

What Can Cosmic Dust Tell Us About the Changing Arctic? Scientists have reconstructed 30,000 years of changes to sea ice in several locations across the Arctic Ocean by looking for traces of cosmic dust embedded in the seafloor, according to a study published Thursday. Scientists analyzed sediment samples from the Arctic Ocean by looking for traces of space particles,..more

2 Spooky Flashes Lit Up the Moon. Here’s What Made Them Early November, a handful of watching telescopes captured something crashing into the moon. Then over the weekend, a second object punctured its silvery surface. The two incidents were a reminder that the moon is not so much the serene orb we clearly see in night skies a few nights a month but rather a noisy battleground constantly gaining new craters….more

NASA Rover Makes a Shocking Discovery: Lightning on Mars It is shocking but not surprising. Lightning crackles on Mars, scientists reported on Wednesday. What they observed, however, were not jagged, high-voltage bolts like those on Earth, arcing thousands of feet from cloud to ground…more