Galaxy that houses the Solar System, visible as a hazy band across the night sky.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has launched from Kennedy Space Center aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy and has separated cleanly. The observatory is travelling toward Lagrange point 2, about one million miles from Earth, for a five‑year primary mission to map billions of galaxies, search for exoplanets and study dark matter and dark energy.
NASA has launched the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope aboard a Falcon Heavy, with a field-of-view more than 100 times wider than Hubble. The bus-sized telescope is heading to a point roughly 1 million miles from Earth to study dark energy, dark matter, and thousands of new worlds, while working with Webb and other observatories. It will take months to reach its destination and will begin rapid, wide-area observations.
Recent findings show white dwarfs can display vibrant colors beyond their expected white glow, with a green WD reflecting light altered by atmospheric elements. A second-generation planet around a dying star is also a possibility under investigation, prompting questions about planetary formation around white dwarfs.
Leaders of the world’s timekeeping bodies have voted to replace leap seconds with a leap hour, aiming to reduce glitches in computers and infrastructure. The move, supported by delegates from 69 countries, would shift UTC adjustments from occasional seconds to occasional hours, with implementation possible next year and effects unlikely to materialize for thousands of years.
Halloween candy sales have fallen 6.7% in the month ending Oct. 17, while small bag purchases rise. Costs from cocoa to fuel are pressuring budgets, with non-chocolate candy prices up modestly and shoppers adjusting trips to stores. Analysts say Halloween will remain soft but not doomed.
Astronomers have released the Lumina model, a large-scale simulation of the universe’s formation in its first two billion years after the Big Bang. The effort uses Frontier supercomputing to map how dark matter and gas shaped the first galaxies, with Webb Observatory data serving as a cross-check. The work aims to test if the laws of physics have the same implications across cosmic time.