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The Orion Nebula is a fabulous example of a vast cloud of electrically charged gas which is emitting bright radiation. If the atoms in the gas are cool enough though, they can form giant molecular clouds that obscure light, these are known as dark nebula. A team of astronomers have now found an enormous cloud of molecular hydrogen in our own cosmic backyard just 300 light years away. The cloud contains 3,400 times the mass of the Sun and if we could see it, it would stretch nearly 40 times the width of the Moon across the sky.

How do robots feel in space? This is both a practical and possibly an existential question. Still, today, we'll focus on the practical side by looking at a review paper from Hadi Jahanshahi and Zheng Zhu of York University in Canada that discusses different tactile sensor types and their advantages and disadvantages for use in space.

Ion drives are renowned for their efficiency. They're extremely efficient compared to chemical rockets, so they're preferred for deep space missions where propellant supplies are critical. New research shows how they could run on simple water, making them even more efficient.

It's nearly impossible to overstate the effect supermassive black holes have on their host galaxies. When actively accreting matter, they release colossal amounts of energy as winds, jets, and radiation that shape their surroundings. But stellar mass black holes also shape their surroundings with energetic jets.

Nothing wows new observers like seeing Saturn for the first time. I always check out the ringed planet if it's visible, and telescopes down the line at any star party will invariably be pointed Saturn-ward to a chorus of ‘oh’s’ and ‘ah’s’…. but 2025 gives you another reason to gaze at Saturn, as its largest moon Titan completes a series of rare shadow transits.

NASA's Psyche mission launched in 2023 and has now successfully demonstrated that laser technology can transmit high-bandwidth data across millions of kilometres in space, making it promising for communications from Mars. However, researchers simulating Martian conditions found that while this optical communication works well under normal circumstances, performance degrades during dustier periods and fails completely during global dust storms.

What kind of spacecraft can be used to explore and study the subsurface lunar environment? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) hopes to address as an international team of researchers discussed the benefits of a mission concept called LunarLeaper, which will be designed to traverse and analyze the various aspects of the lunar subsurface environment, including moon pits and lava tubes.

Since the invention of the telescope, astronomers have been hunting for objects in our Solar System in particular and more recently, for the theorised 9th planet. Observations of Kuiper Belt objects suggest a large object might be lurking in the depths of the Solar System but to date, it hasn’t been directly observed. A team of researchers have analysed infrared sky surveys and found 13 objects that matched the estimated flux and motion of Planet Nine! Further analysis ruled out 12 leaving a single object. Is this Planet Nine?

A few years ago, astronomers discovered an exoplanet orbiting the white dwarf 1856+534 b. Now they've used the mighty JWST to do follow-up observations and made some exciting discoveries. It's definitely a planet and not a brown dwarf, with a temperature of 186 K (-87°C/-125°F) and about 6 times the mass of Jupiter. This makes it the coldest exoplanet ever detected, and it's orbiting in the "forbidden zone," which should have been engulfed during the red giant phase.

Magnetars are among the rarest - and weirdest - denizens of the galactic zoo. They have powerful magnetic fields and may be the source of fast radio bursts (FRBs). A team of astronomers led by European Space Agency researcher Ashley Chrimes recently used the Hubble Space Telescope to track one of these monsters called SGR 0501+4516 (SGR0501, for short, and SGR stands for Soft Gamma Repeater). It's whipping through the Milky Way at a rate that could be as high as 65 kilometers per second. The big challenge was to find its birthplace and figure out its origin.

Since the discovery of the first exoplanet in 1992 astronomers have now found over 5,000 alien worlds around other stars. With the discoveries of exoplanets came an entirely new classification of worlds known as the super-Earth; terrestrial planets more massive than Earth but smaller than Neptune. Sadly we don’t have any such planets in our Solar System but a new report suggests planets like this are surprisingly common with at least as many as there are Neptune sized planets.

In a recent paper, a team of engineers from Purdue University describes how sandbox video games that offer players a high degree of freedom and creativity, like the popular Kerbal Space Program (KSP), could be used by space agencies to assist the early-mission development process.

Images of Mars never cease to amaze. This latest image of NASA’s Curiosity Rover captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the rover as a dark speck and the end of a long trail of tracks. It was rattling along at a speed of 0.16 km/h across the Gediz Vallis Channel and was headed towards a region that could have been formed by water billions of years ago. The weather on Mars won’t allow the tracks to persist though so they are likely to last for only a few months.

Lately, there's been plenty of progress in 3D printing objects from the lunar regolith. We've reported on several projects that have attempted to do so, with varying degrees of success. However, most of them require some additive, such as a polymer or salt water, as a binding agent. Recently, a paper from Julien Garnier and their co-authors at the University of Toulouse attempted to make compression-hardened 3D-printed objects using nothing but the regolith itself.

There's no better word for this image of the Sun than Spectacular, which means something impressive, dramatic, or remarkable that creates a spectacle or visual impact. It comes from the Latin word spectaculum, which means a show, spectacle, or public exhibition. Ancient Romans would agree with the word choice if you could somehow show it to them.

An Ultra-Diffuse Galaxy Found With Almost No Dark Matter

Dimethyl Sulfide (DMS) has been in the news again, this time for its discovery in the atmosphere of the hycean world K2-18b as a potential biosignature. In an interesting twist, astronomers have also detected DMS in comets and in giant molecular clouds. It shows there must be an abiotic way for this chemical to be produced. A team of researchers have studied DMS and developed different gas phase reactions that could produce this chemical and explain its presence that doesn’t require life.

Take a look at the Moon through binoculars or a telescope and its clear that its been bombarded through history by space rocks. Some of the impacts are energetic enough that debris is ejected from the surface facer than the Moon’s escape velocity. Much of this rock finds its way to Earth and now, a team of researchers announce they have been simulating these events. They simulated asteroid impacts and tracked the debris that escaped the lunar surface and were surprised at just how much of the ejecta found its way to Earth.

Looking up at the night sky, it’s reasonable to believe that our Solar System is largely empty after all the only things easily visible are the planets. In reality its a cosmic shooting gallery and it’s just a matter of time before an asteroid slams into Earth. A team of scientists propose that space agencies develop a rapid-response flyby reconnaissance mission to reach potential asteroid threats within 2.5 years of detection.

Telescopes can have more than one sensor. Those sensors can utilize some of the same infrastructure, like lenses and mirrors, and specialize in collecting different data. A good example of this is the Inouye Solar Telescope (IST). It is the largest solar telescope in the world, with a primary mirror diameter of 4 meters. It also has five separate instruments, four of which are currently in operation. The latest of these to come online is the Visible Tunable Filtergraph (VTF), which just collected its first light according to a press release by the Max Planck Institute for Solar Research, one of the project partners.