New infrared observations of the Eskimo Nebula, a bipolar double-shell planetary nebula in the constellation of Gemini, reveal clumps of dust, ionized gas and expanding shells surrounding a central star.
The post Webb Captures Stunning Infrared View of Eskimo Nebula appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
Portugal vai assistir ao primeiro eclipse solar total desde 1912. Explicamos se é seguro fotografá-lo com o smartphone ou com a câmara, usando dicas de especialistas, para evitar danificar o sensor, e ferir os seus olhos.
The post É seguro fotografar o eclipse solar? Saiba como fazê-lo sem estragar o smartphone ou a câmara appeared first on Tek Notícias.
Stunning new imagery of the distant celestial object NGC 2392, better known as the “Lion Nebula,” has been obtained by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.
The cosmic vista captured by Webb reveals a colorful view of the ancient nebula, whose characteristic appearance resembles one of nature’s most respected apex predators, complete with a bushy-looking “mane” composed of hazy stellar gases and objects similar to comets.
The new high-resolution imagery offers one of the clearest and most detailed views of the Lion Nebula ever seen. Previous images captured by Webb’s predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, were obtained in 2000, featuring the same celestial feature in visible light.
With the added spectral ranges Webb’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) can capture, the Lion Nebula now appears in colorful pinks and indigo hues, surrounded by distant galaxies blazing in brilliant orange from across vast cosmic distances, whose light has traveled billions of years to reach our Solar System.
A particularly striking feature about the new imagery is the way cosmic dust and regions of ionized gas are showcased in the new Webb imagery.
“It’s taken several thousand years for this collection of gas and dust to reach its current shape, and the nebula’s components continue to be altered,” read a portion of a statement released by the European Space Agency (ESA) that accompanied the new images.
One reason that helps account for the changing appearance of the Lion Nebula over time can be found at its center, where the remnants of a slowly dying white dwarf star (which effectively forms the nose in the lion’s face after which the nebula is named) continues to supercharge the surrounding cosmic structures made visible in the new Webb imagery.
The rest of the lion’s face is composed of an expanding bubble of ionized gas, the nature of which remains somewhat mysterious. Presently, astronomers are uncertain about what exact mechanisms give rise to the complex appearance of this gassy bubble and its internal structures, which are a recurring element in ancient nebulae such as this.
NGC 2392 isn’t the only celestial feature known as the “Lion Nebula.” An entirely separate diffuse nebula located in the Cepheus constellation, known as Sharpless 2-132, also shares this nickname due to its shape, which resembles a lion’s body seen from the side.
For now, the Lion Nebula is captured in the Webb imagery, which, despite its almost serene beauty, represents a highly active area of the cosmos, undergoing constant change as material is continually ripped away from the stellar central core.
Sometime in the next 10,000 years or so, this striking celestial feature will eventually be destroyed, once the white dwarf powering the nebula completely dies and the remnants of stellar material are completely dispersed into the surrounding space.
Until then, this remarkable cosmic feature will remain a target of study by astronomers, whose inquiries are helped significantly by the unprecedented clarity offered in the latest Webb images.
Additional information about the Lion Nebula (NGC 2392) can be found on NASA’s official page documenting the Webb MIRI imagery.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.
A stunning new image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope reveals a comet-shaped cloud in the Carina Nebula hiding a cluster of about 70 young stars, including a rare giant of O-type nearly 19 times as massive as the Sun.
The post Webb Finds Stellar ‘Treasure Chest’ in Carina Nebula appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
An unusual dead star displaying one of the strongest magnetic fields astronomers have ever seen may offer the clearest evidence yet that regions of space appearing to be void of matter are anything but empty.
An international team of astronomers has revealed that the magnetar 1E 1547-5408 displays behavior consistent with vacuum birefringence, a phenomenon first predicted almost a century ago, but never directly observed—until now.
The findings, detailed in a new study published in the journal Nature, were the product of more than 140 hours of observations in 2025 using NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), and Australia’s Murriyang radio telescope.
Ranking among the most extreme objects known to astronomers, magnetars are a variety of neutron stars that display unusually strong magnetic fields.
These extreme celestial objects pack more mass than our Sun into a region of space spanning only a few miles; yet they also manage to generate magnetic fields that are sometimes as much as trillions of times that of our planet.
For the recent study, scientists focused on 1E 1547-5408, a magnetar that spins once every two seconds. This magnetar is atypical since it also emits both intense X-rays and bright radio waves. Measuring the polarization of light it produces, researchers were able to discern that X-ray polarization was almost three times stronger than expected, based on current models that characterize the star’s surface, as well as the geometry of its magnetic field.
The observed characteristics were unexpected, and to explain this, the researchers looked to the concept of vacuum birefringence, a phenomenon originally predicted in 1936. This predicts that magnetic fields possessing enough power could potentially alter the vacuum of space.
According to quantum theory, the vacuum of space isn’t truly empty—it is filled with fleeting “virtual” particles, and when subjected to the influence of such a strong magnetic field, the quantum vacuum is predicted to behave like an extremely large optical filter, whereby light that passes through it is subtly changed, with its polarization increasing.
Based on computer simulations, the researchers found that the proposed vacuum birefringence phenomenon produced results that appeared to be consistent with both the X-ray and radio observations.
Hoa Dinh Thi, a researcher at Rice University and the recent study’s co-lead author, said the team’s model “suggests that reproducing the observed X-ray polarization signatures, while also satisfying the constraints set by radio observations, requires the presence of vacuum birefringence in the neutron star’s environment.”
“This finding exemplifies how neutron stars enable us to test fundamental physics in environments not replicable in labs on Earth,” Thi added.
Although the team says further observations will be required to confirm their findings, their current results offer the strongest evidence to date for one of the longest-standing predictions in quantum physics.
If confirmed through future observations of magnetars, such findings could reveal the presence of other exotic phenomena that may provide astronomers with a unique opportunity to explore the fundamental nature of space itself—and potentially even more surprises in regions of the cosmos that were long assumed to be “empty.”
The recent study, “Vacuum birefringence and the polarized X-ray emission from a radio magnetar,” appeared in the journal Nature.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.
More than 140 million miles away from Earth, a rare event recently occurred in the twilight skies above Mars, and it was all captured on camera by NASA’s Perseverance rover.
Imagery of a celestial alignment, featuring Earth as it briefly vanished behind the Martian moon Phobos, was revealed in composite photos captured by Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z instrument in early July as the intrepid rover embarked on its 1,907th Martian day, or sol, on the Red Planet.
The rover’s Mastcam-Z camera system, developed by Arizona State University in collaboration with Malin Space Science Systems, was built for capturing high-resolution panoramic zoom imagery of the Martian landscape. Although its main objectives involve its investigations of Jezero Crater and ancient geological features preserved there for eons, which may even include evidence of past microbial life, cases like the recent celestial alignment showcase how the rover’s cameras can also provide unique insights into astronomical events.
Captured against fading twilight, our Earthly home appears as little more than a tiny, bright speck of light as it slowly passes behind the irregularly shaped Martian moon, in what astronomers refer to as an occultation.
NASA applied processing to the rare images, which helped to filter out some of the background light, revealing the brief celestial pairing in greater detail. The resulting imagery offers a glimpse of a dark backdrop that now better highlights the motion of Earth and Phobos in their treks through the Martian sky.
The image was obtained roughly 40 minutes after the Martian sunset, as the natural orbital path Phobos follows causes it to appear to drift upward in the new sequence of images, while Earth moves diagonally downward, then slips out of view behind the oddly shaped Martian companion.
In an annotated version released by NASA, timestamps spanning just 40 seconds illustrate the progression of the event in single frames, offering a look at a sunset unlike any ever seen on Earth.
That isn’t to say that the same effect can’t be seen from our planet, but in reverse: a lunar occultation where Mars passes behind the Moon can also be observed here, under the right conditions.
Occultations are frequently used by astronomers to help study the positions and motions of various celestial bodies in this way. However, seeing one from the surface of another planet is a rare treat, offering a view of Earth as a distant point of light.
In the past, Perseverance has also captured images of a lunar eclipse from its position on the Martian surface, as Phobos was seen passing in front of the Sun. Past imagery collected by NASA’s robotic explorer has also documented appearances of the Martian moon Deimos in the Red Planet’s early morning skies.
Although Mars’ characteristic rusty hues are ever-present, the recent imagery also offers a glimpse of other subtle colors seen in the Martian environment, particularly at twilight. With subtle bluish grays that gradually transition to redder tones, the new images offer a more nuanced and colorful look at the Red Planet.
Perseverance has now spent more than five years exploring Mars, and its ongoing discoveries have added a wealth of new information to the growing body of knowledge scientists have collected about our nearby planetary neighbor.
As for the recent imagery the rover captured, such a unique view requires careful timing, along with a bit of good fortune, according to Mark Lemmon, a Mastcam-Z co-investigator at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
“Phobos crosses the Martian sky three times a day, and Earth is visible for months at a stretch,” Lemmon said in a statement, adding that “catching one directly behind the other takes planning and a little luck.”
Additional details provided by NASA about the new imagery can be found here and here.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.
The Oort Cloud is one of the strangest places in the Solar System because it has never been seen directly. Astronomers infer its existence from the paths of long-period comets: icy bodies that spend most of their lives in deep space and only occasionally fall toward the Sun. NASA describes the Oort Cloud as a […]
The post The Oort Cloud: The Distant Shell of Comets We Have Never Seen Directly appeared first on Curiosmos.
The company that developed a spacecraft to boost the orbit of a NASA observatory says it is making progress in recovering from its own spacecraft’s problems.
The post Katalyst Space makes progress in restoring control of Swift servicing spacecraft appeared first on SpaceNews.
Planetary researchers analyzing images from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft have found evidence that liquid nitrogen may still be seeping up from beneath the dwarf planet’s giant glacier, Sputnik Planitia, marking the first suggested case of recently flowing liquid on Pluto’s surface.
The post Liquid Nitrogen May Have Flowed on Pluto’s Surface in Recent Past appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
NASA is currently targeting August 30 for the launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from Florida. The date can move, as launch dates do, but the mission is close enough to the pad that its central idea deserves a clear look: Roman will survey huge stretches of the universe in one exposure, gathering […]
The post NASA Is Targeting an August Launch for Roman. Here’s What the Telescope Will See appeared first on Curiosmos.
Northrop Grumman and the Canadian Space Agency will adapt what they had been working on for NASA’s lunar Gateway into applications for a planned lunar base, albeit with few specifics.
The post Northrop Grumman, Canadian Space Agency repurpose their Gateway projects appeared first on SpaceNews.
NASA says a new four-spacecraft mission has completed an early test that could make one of the hardest parts of space-weather forecasting much more precise: estimating when a solar eruption will reach Earth. In a proof-of-concept exercise announced on August 4, NASA’s PUNCH mission used continuous images of a coronal mass ejection, or CME, to […]
The post NASA’s PUNCH Mission Predicted a Solar Storm Arrival Within 30 Minutes appeared first on Curiosmos.
For nearly three decades, 1998 SH2 looked like a fairly ordinary near-Earth asteroid. It was discovered in 1998, catalogued, and followed through a 4½-year orbit around the Sun. Then, during a close but safe pass by Earth in August 2025, its motion refused to match the path astronomers had calculated. The explanation, announced by NASA […]
The post A Near-Earth Object Called an Asteroid for Decades Turns Out to Be a Comet appeared first on Curiosmos.
Messier 87 is already famous for a photograph most people have seen: the Event Horizon Telescope image of the black hole at its center. Yet the black hole’s most dramatic feature is not the dark ring at the core. It is a jet of particles that extends thousands of light-years into space. Now, a team […]
The post Chandra Has Tracked the Jet of M87’s Black Hole as It Changes appeared first on Curiosmos.
On Wednesday, August 12, the Moon’s shadow will sweep across a narrow stretch of the Northern Hemisphere. Greenland, Iceland, northern Russia, the Atlantic, Spain and a small corner of Portugal lie in the path of totality. Much of Europe, northwestern Africa, Canada and parts of the United States will see a partial eclipse. It is […]
The post The August 12 Total Solar Eclipse: Where to See It—and Why NASA Is Flying Through Its Shadow appeared first on Curiosmos.
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