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Saturn's Rings Will Disappear (Temporarily) in 2025

As Saturn approaches its equinox, its rings will vanish from view. The planet's rings have "disappeared" before, during the last Saturnian equinox in 2009.

Adrian-griffin-oliver-jackson-cohen , Cecilia-kass-elizabeth-moss , Nasa-jpl-caltech-space-science-institute , Cecilia-kass , Elizabeth-moss , Adrian-griffin , Oliver-jackson-cohen , Rings-have-disappeared-before , Plait-bad-astronomy , Space-science , Northern-hemisphere ,

Everything You Need to Know About NASA's "Asteroid Autumn"

We are in the midst of asteroid autumn, here's everything you need to know about NASA's various asteroid missions.

Southwest-research-institute , Texas , United-states , Ellington-field , Utah , France , Houston , Johns-hopkins , Raphael-marschall , Research-institute , Johnson-space-center , Psyche-mission-prepares-for

Bad Astronomy | Protocluster has too many dead galaxies in it

Protocluster has too many dead galaxies in it, could reveal what's killing extremely distant galaxies

Australia , Australian , J-mack-stsc , Rogelio-bernal-andreo , Rogelio-bernal-andreophoto , J-madrid-australian-telescope-national-facility-photo , J-madrid-australian-telescope-national-facility , Milky-way , Australian-telescope-national-facility , Virgo-cluster , Plait-bad-astronomy

Bad Astronomy | The Milky Way's thick disk is much older than thought

We live in the Milky Way galaxy, an immense, flat, spiral galaxy surrounded by a massive halo of stars and dark matter. The disk of stars, gas, and dust in which the Sun resides is fully 120,000 light years across; a soul-crushing distance on the human scale. In the middle of the disk is the central bulge, a lozenge-shaped hub of stars.

China , Chinese , Stefan-payne-wardenaar , Caltech-university-of-massachusetts , Milky-way , Area-multi-object , Spectroscopic-telescope , Plait-bad-astronomy , Gaia-enceladus-sausage ,

Bad Astronomy | Farthest star ever seen almost 13 billion light-years away

Staring at the same spot in the sky for the better part of a day, Hubble Space Telescope — aided by a quirk of gravity that can massively magnify distant objects — may have spotted the most distant star ever seen… by a huge margin. If confirmed, the star is nearly 13 billion light years away, and we see it as it was when the Universe was only 900 million years old.

If confirmed, this is the farthest star in the Universe ever seen by humans.

Brian-welch , Dan-coe-stsc , Alyssa-pagan-stsc , Nicolas-laporte-university-of-cambridge , Hubble-space-telescope , Dan-coe , Alyssa-pagan , Old-english , Nicknamed-earendel , Plait-bad-astronomy , Big-bang , Nicolas-laporte

Bad Astronomy | Milky Way ate another galaxy 10 billion years ago

Our Milky Way galaxy is huge, 120,000 light years across its flat disk, and two million light years across its immense halo, a cloud of stars surrounding the disk in a vaguely squashed spherical shape.

But it wasn’t born that way. Instead, it grew via cannibalism.

Arizona , United-states , Virgo-overdensity , Federico-pelliccia , Rolf-olsen , Stellar-spectroscopic , Milky-way , Gaia-sausage , Spectroscopic-survey , Antennae-galaxies , Plait-bad-astronomy , Hercules-aquila-cloud

Bad Astronomy | Quadruple asteroid Elektra has three moons

We've known for a long time that asteroids can have moons — heck, in a few months NASA is slamming a probe into a tiny moon to test the idea that we can move one out of the way should it be headed for Earth — and it's estimated that a significant fraction of asteroids have smaller ones orbiting them.

Vltsphere-elektra-threemoons , Johannes-kepler , Very-large-telescope , Plait-bad-astronomy ,

Bad Astronomy | Asteroids 2019 PR2 and QR6 resulted from a single rock splitting

Congratulations! It's a bouncing baby asteroid!

Wait... wait... it's twins!

Well, kinda.

Sweden , King-frederic , Catalina-sky , Catalina-sky-survey , Plait-bad-astronomy , Near-earth-asteroids ,

Bad Astronomy | Three exoplanets in tight orbits around dying stars

The astronomy community was shocked in 1995 when the first planet orbiting a Sun-like star was found. Not just because of the discovery itself, but because the planet was what we now call a hot Jupiter: A gas giant orbiting very close to its host star.

In our solar system the gas giants keep a respectable distance form the Sun; Jupiter is five times farther from the Sun than Earth and takes twelve years to orbit. But as we've now seen, many big planets orbit their stars much, much closer in, and take mere days to go around them.

Exoplanet-survey-satellite , Plait-bad-astronomy , Transiting-exoplanet-survey-satellite , James-webb-space-telescope ,

Bad Astronomy | Extremely ancient remnants of a star cluster found

One of my very favorite kinds of cosmic objects are globular clusters: Roughly spherical collections of hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions of stars, all held together by their mutual gravity.

They tend to be pretty compact, just a few dozen light years wide, so the stars are incredibly crowded, making them look like glittering bees swarming around a hive. They're beautiful.

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