compiled by Arlene & David Kaplan

Astronomers find atmosphere around a solar system object that shouldn’t have one 
Astronomers have detected a thin atmosphere around a tiny celestial body in the outer solar system for the first time — an object previously thought to be too small to support the presence of an atmosphere…more

Surprising Signs of an Atmosphere Around a Tiny World, Billions of Miles Away A small world about 300 miles wide and 3.5 billion miles from the sun — nearly as far away as Pluto — appears to be swaddled in a layer of air, astronomers reported on Monday…more

‘It was quite a light show!’ NASA astronaut spies dramatic fireball from the International Space Station “I think it must have been some piece of orbital debris or a satellite breaking up as it entered the atmosphere.” On the International Space Station, you look down to see shooting stars. NASA astronaut Chris Williams just reminded us of that mind-bending fact, sharing footage of a spectacular fireball he saw from the orbiting lab….more

U.S.-China Rivalry Reaches South American Skies In the foothills of the Argentine Andes, the enormous Chinese radio telescope sits in one of the world’s premier stargazing locations, surrounded by vast, undulating mountain ranges and beneath skies untouched by light pollution. It is also on the opposite side of the planet from Beijing, offering China a window on the half of the heavens it would not otherwise see…more

A Physicist Who Thinks in Poetry From the Cosmic Edge Much of the praise for Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s debut book in 2021, “The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey Into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred,” lauded the way she used personal experiences in physics to discuss the social and political inequities that exist alongside scientific breakthroughs…more

Railway, Meet Milky Way: 5 Great Stargazing Trains On nighttime excursions in dark-sky hot spots like Norway, New Zealand and Nevada, all you have to do is relax and look up. The stars will do the rest…more

NASA Missions Track Record-Breaking Radio Burst from Sun
When NASA scientists first observed a particular radio burst from the Sun in August 2025, there was nothing unusual about it. But then the radio burst kept going…more

NASA’s Planet-Hunting TESS Reveals Dazzling Night Sky NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) has released its most complete view of the starry sky to date, filling in gaps from previous observations. Nearly 6,000 colored dots scattered across the image show the locations of either confirmed or candidate exoplanets — worlds beyond our solar system…more

In 1982 the Soviet Union landed a probe on the surface of Venus that survived 127 minutes in heat that melts lead and pressure dense enough to crush a submarine — long enough to scan back two panoramas of flat basaltic rock under an orange-tinted sky before the heat finally ended the mission In March 1982, a Soviet lander survived nearly four times its design life on the surface of Venus, returning panoramic imagery from a place that should have destroyed it within half an hour…more

The Cassini spacecraft was deliberately flown into Saturn in 2017 because its fuel was running low and engineers refused to risk it drifting into Enceladus, a moon with a subsurface ocean, and the final 22 orbits were designed to thread a 1,500-mile gap between Saturn and its innermost ring that no spacecraft had ever attempted. On September 15, 2017, a spacecraft burned up in the cloud tops of Saturn, ending a 20-year mission with a controlled suicide that engineers had planned years in advance…more

NASA’s Psyche Mission Aces Mars Flyby, Targets Metal-Rich Asteroid NASA’s Psyche spacecraft completed its close approach of Mars on May 15, coming within 2,864 miles (4,609 kilometers) of the planet’s surface. This flyby used a gravity assist from Mars to provide a critical boost in speed and to adjust the spacecraft’s orbital plane without using any onboard propellant, sending it on…more

Did You Know a Total Solar Eclipse Is Coming? Here’s How to See It. On Aug. 12, parts of Greenland, Iceland, Spain and Portugal will experience the thrill of daytime darkness. Here’s where you can witness the cosmic spectacle…more