Special Report

Life in the Cosmos

Exploring the mysteries of the universe

Chandra image of the Antenna Galaxy. X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/J.DePasquale; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Optical: NASA/STScI

Life in the Cosmos

An infrared image of 47 Tucanae, a dense globular cluster of stars located roughly 16,000 light years from Earth. A new study has predicted that a black hole lies at its center.

How Astrophysicists Found a Black Hole Where No One Else Could

Astrolabes were astronomical calculating devices that did everything from tell the time to map the stars. This 16th century planispherical astrolabe stems from Morocco.

The Story of the Astrolabe, the Original Smartphone

CAMS results for November 28 to December 14 from 2010 to 2016. Each point is direction from which a meteor was measured to approach, with red showing faster meteors and blue slower ones.

Introducing the Global Effort to Map the Night Sky

Besides exceptional facial hair, what could these two gentlemen have in common?

The Hidden Connections Between Darwin and the Physicist Who Championed Entropy

The Search for Life

Scott Bray, the U.S. deputy director of naval intelligence, and Ronald Moultrie, under secretary of defense for intelligence and security, testify before a House Intelligence subcommittee hearing on unidentified aerial phenomena on May 17, 2022.

NASA Team Begins Study of UFOs

A picture of Saturn's moon Enceladus, with Saturn in the background, taken by the Cassini spacecraft.

A Moon of Saturn May Be More Habitable Than Expected

An artist's rendition of the exoplanet, called WASP-39b

Webb Telescope Detects Carbon Dioxide on a Far-Away Planet

An image of the original 1970s Arecibo message.

These Space Scientists Want to Update Earth's Message to Extraterrestrials

Margaret Osborne

Webb’s 18 mirror segments can lock into the largest telescopic mirror humankind has ever built.

The Five Big Ways the James Webb Telescope Will Help Astronomers Understand the Universe

Past, Present, Future

Astrolabes were astronomical calculating devices that did everything from tell the time to map the stars. This 16th century planispherical astrolabe stems from Morocco.

The Story of the Astrolabe, the Original Smartphone

Besides exceptional facial hair, what could these two gentlemen have in common?

The Hidden Connections Between Darwin and the Physicist Who Championed Entropy

Matthew R. Francis

An illustration shows the record-breaking supernova ASASSN-15lh as it would appear from an exoplanet about 10,000 light-years away.

Astronomers Have Found the Brightest Supernova Yet

Watch the Universe Evolve Over 13 Billion Years

The Andromeda Galaxy

What Does the Future of the Universe Hold?

Lawrence Krauss

How We Explore

The James Webb Space Telescope's first Deep Field image

NASA Releases First Breathtaking Images Taken by James Webb Space Telescope

By Brian Handwerk

CAMS results for November 28 to December 14 from 2010 to 2016. Each point is direction from which a meteor was measured to approach, with red showing faster meteors and blue slower ones.

Introducing the Global Effort to Map the Night Sky

Sedeer el-Showk

Telescope array

The Hunt for High-Energy Photons Takes Place From a Mountaintop in Mexico

Adam Mann

Astrophysicist Kip Thorne dared to dream of a machine to find gravitational waves.

The Detection of Gravitational Waves Was a Scientific Breakthrough, but What’s Next?

Dragonfly wings have a complex, rigid surface that is maintained by a network of veins. The subtle colors of this immature Black Meadowhawk are caused by sunlight reflecting off the not-quite transparent wings.

These Dragonflies Helped an Astronomer Find Ghostly New Galaxies

Galaxies, Quasars, Clusters

A cluster of galaxies that Slayton created in Minecraft

This 18-Year-Old Recreated the ‘Entire Universe’ in Minecraft

Jacquelyne Germain

The spiral galaxy IC 5332, as captured by the James Webb Space Telescope's Mid-Infrared Instrument

See the Eerily Beautiful Image James Webb Captured of a Spiral Galaxy

James Webb Space Telescope's mosaic image of the Tarantula Nebula

James Webb Space Telescope Snaps Spectacular New Photos of the Tarantula Nebula

Understanding the Cosmos

An infrared image of 47 Tucanae, a dense globular cluster of stars located roughly 16,000 light years from Earth. A new study has predicted that a black hole lies at its center.

How Astrophysicists Found a Black Hole Where No One Else Could

LIGO's founding fathers, from left: Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne and Barry Barish. Not pictured: Ronald Drever

Meet the Team of Scientists Who Discovered Gravitational Waves

Jennie Rothenberg Gritz

After a century in which black holes went from theoretical nuisances to undisputed facts, a new initiative at the Harvard -Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics will study them.

AT THE SMITHSONIAN

Stephen Hawking on Why Black Holes Are Worthy of Your Consideration