Astro Blog

By Daniel Clery , Science.  Excerpt: In recent years, astronomy has become a big data science, with survey telescopes capturing thousands of objects in a single look. As soon as 30 August, NASA will take that approach into space with the launch of the $4.3 billion Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. With the Hubble Space Telescope’s sharp vision but a field of view 100 times larger, Roman will rapidly survey the sky to tackle some of astronomy’s biggest questions—from the nature of dark energy to the demographics of planets around other stars....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/nasa-s-roman-telescope-readies-sweeping-view-universe .

By Kenneth Chang  and  Katrina Miller , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Vera C. Rubin Observatory...telescope, more than two decades in the making, will provide a comprehensive view of the night sky unlike anything astronomers have seen before. The project’s scientists revealed some of the first imagery it released on Monday. ...The observatory’s treasure trove of data will allow astronomers  to investigate dark energy , a force pushing the universe to expand ever faster,  as well as dark matter , a mysterious substance that behaves somewhat like galactic glue. Closer to Earth, it will identify asteroids that might be on a collision course with Earth. ...The level of detail in the Rubin images is impossible to convey on a computer screen or a newspaper page. As a result, the Rubin team has developed  Skyviewer , which lets people zoom in and out of the giant images....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/23/science/vera-rubin-telescopes-firs...

https://www.science.org/content/article/new-space-telescope-embarks-biggest-3d-map-universe By DANIEL CLERY , Science. Excerpt: The European Space Agency (ESA) today  released the first pictures of galaxies  taken by its new space telescope, Euclid, which aims to help researchers understand the dark components that make up 95% of the universe. ...the Perseus Cluster..., one of the most massive structures in the universe, shows 1000 of its galaxies 240 million light-years from Earth, as well as 100,000 more distant ones, some as far away as 10 billion light-years. Over its 6-year mission, Euclid, launched in July, is  expected to take 30,000 such images , cataloging 1 billion galaxies across one-third of the sky. Researchers will use them to create the biggest 3D map of the universe, spanning three-quarters of its history....

Source:   Lance Knobel, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Excerpt: Saul Perlmutter, a professor of Physics at UC Berkeley ... has been awarded this year’s Einstein Medal, presented by the Albert Einstein Society. The medal was awarded for “discovering the acceleration of the universe” through the observation of very distant supernovae. .In 1998 Perlmutter announced the ... landmark finding that the expansion of the universe is not slowing, as virtually all scientists expected, but accelerating. The cause of the acceleration has been dubbed dark energy, and is estimated to constitute nearly three-quarters of everything in the universe. The nature of dark energy remains unknown. www.berkeleyside.com/2011/02/23/berkeley-labs-perlmutter-wins-einstein-medal/