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Satellites and space junk may make dark night skies brighter, hindering astronomy and hiding stars from our view

March 27, 2023

Since time immemorial, humans around the world have gazed up in wonder at the night sky.

The starry night sky has not only inspired countless works of music, art and poetry, but has also played an important role in timekeeping, navigation and agricultural practices in many traditions.

For many cultures, the night sky, with its stars, planets and the Milky Way, is considered just as important a part of the natural environment as the forests, lakes and mountains below.

Starlink satellites already leave streaks on astronomical photographs – but growth in satellites and debris will make the whole sky brighter. ( Rafael Schmall / NOIRLab, CC BY)

Countless people around the world gaze at the night sky: not only amateur and professional astronomers, but also casual observers who enjoy looking up at the stars to contemplate our place in the cosmos.

However, the night sky is changing.

Not only is

Astronomers just discovered a comet that could be brighter than most stars when we see it next year. Or will it?

March 20, 2023

Hot on the heels of the disappointing Green Comet, astronomers have just discovered a new comet with the potential to be next year’s big story—C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS).

Although it is still more than 18 months from its closest approach to Earth and the sun, comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS already has social media buzzing, with optimistic articles being written about how it could be a spectacular sight. What’s the full story on this new icy wanderer?

Introducing comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS)

Every year, a few dozen new comets are discovered—dirty snowballs moving on highly elongated paths around the sun. The vast majority are far too faint to see with the unaided eye. Perhaps one comet per year will approach the edge of naked-eye visibility.

Occasionally, however, a much brighter comet will come along. Because comets are things of ephemeral and transient beauty, the

Newborn stars sculpt their galaxies in new James Webb telescope images

March 10, 2023 sNawaWebs.ADV

A gaggle of galaxies crackle with intricate detail in new images from the James Webb Space Telescope. JWST’s sharp infrared eyes are revealing how newborn stars shape their surroundings, giving hints to how stars and galaxies grow up together.

“We were just blown away,” says Janice Lee, an astronomer at the University of Arizona in Tucson. She and more than 100 astronomers reported on scientists’ first look at these galaxies with JWST in a special February issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Before JWST launched in December 2021, Lee and her colleagues selected 19 galaxies that, if observed with the telescope, they thought could reveal new details of the life cycles of stars (SN: 1/24/22). These galaxies are relatively close, within 65 million light-years of the Milky Way, and all have different types of spiral structures. The team had observed the galaxies with many observatories, but parts

Japan’s rising research stars: Mariko Kimura

March 9, 2023 sNawaWebs.ADV

This is the first in a Nature Index series of profiles about emerging early-careers researchers in Japan.

About 370 years ago, something odd happened in the binary star system SS Cygni. Normally, the interactions between the two stars that make up SS Cygni mean that it cyclically gets brighter and dimmer every month or so, but for some reason this variation stopped for a short while. When the light from that anomaly finally reached Earth in 2021, Mariko Kimura was watching.

Kimura, an astronomer at the RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research in Saitama, Japan, uses both ground-based optical telescopes and satellite X-ray telescopes to make sense of signals from variable stars, black holes and other celestial phenomena. “Many people think stars and galaxies are constant