Harry Baker

Earth from space This 2012 satellite photo shows a series of giant windblown ridges, known as yardangs, and a group of towering sand dunes at the heart of Iran's Lut Desert.

A pair of massive thunderstorms have been spotted swirling in Jupiter's "South Equatorial Belt" and are likely unleashing massive bolts of green lightning. Some experts think the pale clouds could end up altering the rusty band's color — and potentially even making it "disappear."

On Dec. 5, 2024 the European Space Agency's Proba-3 mission sent two spacecraft into orbit around Earth. By aligning the probes, researchers will create 6-hour-long mini eclipses, allowing the sun's atmosphere to be studied like never before.

Space weather experts warn that solar activity will persist or even increase after solar maximum has ended and we enter a phase of the solar cycle dubbed the "battle zone."

A "bizarre" E-shaped aurora was recently photographed dancing in the sky above Alaska. The unusual light show was caused by rare black auroras, a.k.a. anti-auroras, which catapult charged particles from the sun back out of Earth's atmosphere and into space.

Earth from space A 2014 satellite photo of the Sivash region shows off the kaleidoscopic colors of a series of shallow, hypersaline lagoons — each filled with a different kind of algae.

Curiosity has just finished the latest leg of its 12-year Mars mission and will now set out to explore miles of web-like surface features left behind by ancient water on the Red Planet. The zig-zagging rocks could also provide clues about whether Mars once harbored extraterrestrial life.

An asteroid that fell to Earth and exploded above Canada in 2022 was only around 20 inches wide — the smallest space rock ever properly measured, researchers say.

A new study has identified an exoplanet that is just 3 million years old — around 1,500 times younger than Earth — alongside a misaligned protoplanetary disk that researchers cannot explain.

New images show the rapidly rotating pulsar of the "Guitar Nebula" shooting out a gigantic cosmic plume of plasma, X-rays and supercharged particles spinning along a magnetic field line in interstellar space.

Chinese officials have announced the discovery of a massive deposit of high-quality gold ore, potentially worth around $83 billion, which could end up being the largest known deposit of the precious metal anywhere in the world.

Astronomers have taken a superdetailed, zoomed-in photo of the Large Magellanic Cloud's "behemoth star." The stunning image, which is the first of its kind from outside the Milky Way, shows that the giant star is right on the edge of going supernova.

Earth from space This 2013 astronaut photo shows a giant eye-shaped impact crater in the Sahara Desert that is slowly being circled by migrating sand dunes, helping researchers track how far these dunes can move over time.

A new study reveals that the asteroid 2024 PT5, which has been orbiting Earth for 2 months, may have a "lunar origin." However, it is about to break free from our planet, making it tricky to tell for sure.

Aftershock II, a new rocket built by students at the University of Southern California, recently broke a number of 20-year-old amateur spaceflight records for altitude, power and speed. It reached more than 470,000 feet above Earth's surface and went "hypersonic."

A 70-foot-long Apatosaurus skeleton, named Vulcan, recently became the biggest dinosaur fossil ever sold when it was acquired for around $6.4 million at an auction in France. The sizable remains weigh more than 22 tons.

A new JWST study has revealed the true origins of a luminous quasar that has been duplicated six times as its light "zig-zags" through space-time via a phenomenon first predicted by Albert Einstein. The unusual light show could help tackle one of cosmology's biggest problems, experts claim.

Earth from space This 2023 satellite photo shows New Zealand's Mount Taranaki, which is surrounded by a near-perfect circle of deformed trees. The volcano was recently granted the same legal rights as a person.

Until now, Antarctica was the only continent on Earth without any known amber fossils. But sediment cores taken from below the seafloor have revealed a tiny piece of fossilized resin holding fragments of an ancient rainforest that covered the South Pole during the Cretaceous period.

A new model based on the famous alien-hunting Drake equation suggests that some parallel universes within the hypothetical "multiverse" could have higher chances of containing extraterrestrial life than our universe.

Earth from space A 2010 satellite image shows dozens of golden islands covered with strange parallel lines shining among the shallow waters of a massive, half-full ephemeral lake in Australia's Great Sandy Desert.

The cryovolcanic "centaur" comet 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann has erupted four times in less than 48 hours, becoming unusually bright in the process. It is the most powerful outburst from the city-size oddball in more than three years.

A student-led project comparing satellite images of the Arctic has discovered that a small Russian island has recently vanished after "completely melting" away.

Scientists have discovered a new way of creating superheavy elements by firing supercharged ion beams at dense atoms. The team believes this method could potentially help synthesize the hypothetical "element 120," which would be heavier than any known element.