Astrophysics

11,400 ‘Citizen Scientists’ Help Discover 1,031 New Asteroids After Search Of Old Hubble Images

Forbes: So-called “citizen science” initiatives are a powerful tool for astronomers looking for help to process huge datasets—and the Hubble Space Telescope makes a fine asteroid hunter. They’re the…

We’re Going To Uranus! NASA Will Spend $4.2 Billion And $4.9 Billion On New Flagship Missions To The ‘Ice Giant’ And Saturn’s ‘Wet Moon’ Enceladus

Forbes: It’s official—NASA is being sent to orbit the seventh planet Uranus and land on Saturn’s moon Enceladus. It should arrive at these two distant targets in 2045 and…

What’s Happening To Neptune? Massive Telescopes See Something Weird Going On With The Eighth Planet

Forbes: Something unexpected is happening on Neptune and astronomers aren’t sure why. Using a fleet of ground-based telescopes—including the massive Very Large Telescope in Chile—an international team of astronomers…

Are Telescopes the Only Way to Find Dark Matter?

Scientific American: How do you think the dark matter problem is solved?” Vera C. Rubin urgently asked me, within minutes of being introduced at a 2009 Women in Astronomy conference. To this day, I can’t remember what I said in response….