Astronomy Trek News: Stay Updated on Cosmic Discoveries

Is Kepler-1625b The First Exoplanet With A Moon To Be Discovered?

The image above shows an artists’ impression of the star Kepler- 1265, with the bigger of the black dots representing its associated gas planet, designated Kepler- 1265b, while the smaller dot represents the planet’s putative …

Latest Mars Colonization Plan May Be Waste of Time and Resources

James Miller

The image above shows what may turn out to be a proposed semi-permanent base on Mars, but the notion that Mars could be colonized by humans is not new, and a plethora of plans on …

Has Substantial Evidence Of Extant Microbial Life On Mars Been Found?

James Miller

Although the consensus among planetary scientists and biologists is that the existence of life on Mars, both present and past has not been proven, one investigator, who was the lead scientist during the Viking 2 …

New Study Doubles the Milky Way’s Diameter

James Miller

The image above shows an annotated map of the Milky Way, based on recent distance measurements to distant stars located within dense and massive components of the galaxy. Although it has long been known that …

New Finding Resolves One More Mystery about How Massive Galaxies Form

James Miller

The upper panel in the image above shows the observed average movements of stars within two sample galaxies. The image on the left in the bottom panel shows the typical motion of stars around the …

Why Pluto’s Dunes Are Similar to Dunes on Earth

Why Pluto’s Dunes Are Similar to Those on Earth

James Miller

The image above, taken by the New Horizons space probe in July of 2015, shows some detail of an extensive dune field (lower right) that abuts onto a major mountain range (upper left) on the …

Why We May Not Want To Visit Some Exoplanets

James Miller

The image above shows an artists’ impression of the exoplanet Kepler-452b, the first exoplanet that was found to orbit a Sun-like star. Dubbed a super-Earth, the planet is about 60% bigger than Earth, which is …

Making Stuff in Space: Off-Earth Manufacturing is Just Getting Started

James Miller

Space is a perilous place for humans to inhabit: microgravity slackens our muscles and upsets our fluid balance, radiation threatens to ravage DNA, and the yawning vacuum outside is a constant threat. However, for other …

Astronomers Find the Oldest Known Oxygen in the Universe

James Miller

The image above shows some detail of cluster of galaxies known as MACS J1149.5+2223, which is located almost at the edge of the observable Universe. The inset shows a member of the cluster known as …

Proof Found That Venus and Jupiter Affect Earth’s Climate

James Miller

The image above shows rock formations within the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. It was from deep within the rock formations shown here that scientists extracted a 518-metre-long core sample that proved the correlation …