Telescope

AtLAST, the telescope that will uncover the “blurred” galaxies in the Universe without spending a single drop of fossil fuels

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An international team of scientists, led from Europe, is launching a telescope that will help us see what lies beneath the erased area of ​​the Universe. Ok, no one has erased half of the cosmos, but it is true that a good part of it is covered in a layer of dust so dense that few telescopes can look beneath it. Those who do it, like him Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)can only focus on a very small portion of the sky. On the other hand, the one presented now, called Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (AtLAST)is capable of looking under dust while acting as a wide angle. All advantages. AtLAST is the result of a project led by Europe, in which Chile, South Africa, Canada, Taiwan, Thailand, New Zealand, Japan and the United States also participate. It consists of a single 50-meter satellite dish and a mirror covered with aluminum panels, as well as a massive steel structure that serves as reinforcement. There is also a 12 meter secondary mirror. It is capable of analyzing very wide regions of the sky and in the process only consumes renewable energy. An attempt has even been made to minimize the carbon footprint in obtaining the aluminum and steel to build the structure. AtLAST vs ALMA. Both AtLAST and ALMA are submillimeter telescopes located in the Atacama desert. This is an ideal place for this type of observations, since it is located at a high altitude, with its telescopes located around 5,000 meters, so that the density of the atmosphere is reduced and does not make observations difficult. In addition, there is no light pollution and it almost never rains, so clouds do not cover the sky either. Until then, everything is fine. The two telescopes are in a privileged location. However, there is something that gives AtLAST many advantages over ALMA. With its 66 antennas, ALMA works as a kind of microscope. It can analyze regions of the sky thousands of times smaller than our Moon. On the other hand, AtLAST, with a single antenna, can see at once the space occupied by 16 moons. Why submillimeter? Submillimeter telescopes are those capable of detecting waves of the electromagnetic spectrum with lengths below a millimeter. This ranges from far infrared to microwave. This makes them the only telescopes capable of clearly seeing what lies beneath the densest layers of dust. Some space telescopes, like James Webbthey can do this to a certain extent. However, this works only from the near-mid infrared. Emissions in the microwave and far infrared range are invisible to him. The secrets of the galaxies. Under those clouds of dust are the stellar nurseries. The gas clouds collapse to give rise to those clusters in which the birth of the star is taking place. Therefore, being able to look clearly down there allows us to analyze the evolution of the Universe in a much more precise way. For example, you can study how it has been expanding and what role dark matter has had in it. You can even investigate how life arises in space. Incredible figures. Other telescopes can detect the light beneath these dust clouds, but they cannot differentiate one galaxy from another. Thanks to AtLAST, however, it is expected to be able to detect up to 50 million galaxies in 1,000 hours of observation. Clean energy. This telescope uses renewable energy, such as solar energy, and stores it in metal hydride batteries. But, in addition, it acts in a similar way to how a hybrid car does. And, after moving to land in different regions of the sky, it loses speed, whose kinetic energy is used to obtain electricity. This way you don’t have to waste fossil fuels. This is just the beginning. It is expected that in the 2040s there will be several such telescopes. This has only just begun. There is still no date for AtLAST to start working, although if everything goes well it is expected to be around the 2030s. Be that as it may, what is clear is that, when it starts working, it will help us reveal the most interesting secrets. Images | Nobeyama Telescope (Lapinov) In Xataka | Chile has a very sweet port for China, Europe and the US. The problem is that it is tiny

NASA’s plan to capture a falling telescope before it burns up in the atmosphere

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After more than 20 years carrying out their work to perfectiona NASA space telescope is about to fall to Earth and burn up in its atmosphere. This would be very serious, both because of the possibility of uncontrolled debris being generated and because of the loss of the valuable work that this instrument is carrying out. For this reason, the US space agency has already teamed up with a private company to launch a ship into space capable of hunting the telescope and sending it to a safer orbit. Key dates. The protagonist of this story is the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. According to the latest measurementscarried out in November 2025, there is a 50% risk that this telescope will leave its orbit and fall to Earth in June 2026. In addition, the risk rises to 90% before 2027. For this reason, NASA has granted $30 million to the company Katalyst to develop a robotic spacecraft capable of capturing the telescope and raising it to a safer orbit. The ship is called LINK and its development is going from strength to strength, although there is still no launch date. The biter bit. Neil Gehrels Swift was sent to space in 2024 to capture and study the explosions of gamma rays. Since then it has provided very useful information; But unfortunately, this could change soon. A subdued atmosphere. The problem lies in the attenuation of the Earth’s atmosphere. When we travel to space, this does not disappear suddenly, but rather fades little by little. Such a weak atmosphere has the ability to slow down spacecraft and send them into a lower orbit. If solar storms are added to this, capable of swelling the atmosphere, great aerodynamic resistance is produced. We are currently in a cycle of high solar activity, which reached its peak in October 2024. This possibly pushed the telescope to its limits, placing it in an unstable orbit, from which it could leave at any time. Work against the clock. NASA and Katalyst are working around the clock to launch the LINK spacecraft on time. But in the meantime, the telescope must hold on. For this reason, some of its instruments have been turned off and their operations modified, in order to minimize their energy consumption. This has made it possible to reposition its solar panels and, thereby, reduce their resistance. Sooner or later this will not be enough, but at least it can buy some time until the LINK launch can take place. In the absence of ground platforms, it is a good plane. In order to hunt this telescope in the orbit in which it is located, a launch configuration is necessary that is not available on any of the platforms available to NASA. Therefore, it is planned to launch the ship directly from an airplane. Thus, the trajectory can be adjusted much better. In short, this will be a unique event in history. A telescope has never been caught on the fly. For now we will have to wait, but we will be very attentive to the release dates. Image | POT In Xataka | Exactly 100 years ago we began to understand how the world works. Quantum physics has radically changed our lives

The James Webb Telescope has finally discovered Saturn’s best kept secret

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Saturn has become a headache for scientists since the Cassini probe in 2004 took action of its rotation speed that did not coincide with the figures accepted in the scientific community. Little by little, new data has been discovered that helps explain this inconsistency, but it has been necessary for the James Webb Space Telescope to come into play to find the definitive answer. Cassini’s incoherence. In 2004, the Cassini probe took advantage of its visit to Saturn to measure some important dataas its rotation speed. Normally this is calculated by analyzing parameters that occur periodically, such as radio emission pulses. It is a very consolidated method, which has been used to calculate the rotation rate of many planets. With Cassini, it was expected to obtain a figure that would coincide with what the Voyager 2 probe had previously taken in 1981. However, to the surprise of the scientists who studied the data, the numbers didn’t add up. A mysterious push. A planet cannot speed up or slow down without an external force driving it. There should be something driving those changes in rotation speed. Or, at the very least, some unknown factor that was falsifying the results. All this was a mystery until 2021, when a team of scientists from the University of Leicester published a study in which new clues were provided. The auroras enter the scene. For a month, scientists at the University of Leicester measured infrared emissions in Saturn’s upper atmosphere. This allowed them to map a series of variable fluxes of activity in the ionosphere, the layer of the atmosphere in which ionized particles are abundant. That is, atoms that have gained or lost electrons and have acquired a negative or positive charge, respectively. These flows were related to the formation of auroras. However, there was something strange. Unlike on other planets, including Earth, a good part of these auroras were produced by the action of rotating winds within Saturn’s own atmosphere, not only by the influence of the magnetosphere. A reminder about the auroras. The auroras are formed when charged particles interact with the atoms that make up a planet’s atmosphere, exciting them and causing the emission of light. Normally, these charged particles come from solar activity, as happens on Earth, or from volcanic eruptions on nearby moons, as happens on Jupiter. Be that as it may, they are concentrated in a region external to the planets, known as the magnetosphere. In the case of Saturn, the 2021 study showed that auroras were also forming within the planet’s own atmosphere. On Earth, auroras are formed by solar activity A puzzle still incomplete. The interaction of molecules and atoms in the atmosphere with charged particles does not only cause the emission of light. It also causes the emission of radiation in other regions of the spectrum. For example, radio pulses. Let us remember that these pulses are the ones that were used to measure the rotation of Saturn. The auroras could be falsifying them. These auroras, as we have seen so far, are produced by the action of rotating winds in Saturn’s own atmosphere. But where do those winds come from? The rock star arrives. The James Webb Space Telescope is the rock star of space telescopes. A state-of-the-art instrument, capable of reaching where other telescopes could not. Therefore, thanks to him, the necessary measurements could be taken to find the origin of Saturn’s winds. Specifically, it has captured the glow caused in the infrared by a molecule in Saturn’s upper atmosphere, called trihydrogen cation. This is very useful, because it acts as a kind of thermometer. It is very susceptible to environmental conditions, so its ionization state helps to know the surrounding temperature. By carefully analyzing its state in different regions of Saturn’s northern hemisphere, it has been possible to make a map of both temperatures and particle density. The missing piece. The temperature and particle density patterns match those predicted in a series of computer models 10 years ago. In these models, these patterns originated when the auroras themselves acted as a heat source. The endless cycle. What happens is this: the auroras, with all their display of light and radiation, heat the atmosphere at a specific point. This heating causes the movement of particles between points at different temperatures, generating a wind charged with electricity. This wind, in turn, propels electrically charged particles, which cause more auroras to form. It’s a vicious circle or, as the authors of the study explaina planetary heat pump. A perfect system that feeds itself. And, of course, the mysterious external factor that upset scientists trying to measure Saturn’s rotation. Image | NASA | Bruce Waters (Wikimedia Commons) | Vincent Guth (Unsplash) In Xataka | James Webb has been detecting red dots in the universe for years: the only problem is that we don’t know what they are

the Webb telescope has just clarified a key doubt

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There are asteroids that go almost unnoticed and others that force us to look at them much more carefully. 2024 YR4 belongs to that second group. When it was discovered at the end of 2024, the first calculations of its trajectory still had enough margin of error to contemplate a very small possibility of impact with Earth. That scenario was soon ruled out, but, as ESA explainsthe case remained under follow-up for a different reason: a doubt was left open about the Moon which was not resolved until new observations arrived. Impact risk. With data available since spring 2025, trajectory models indicated that the asteroid had about a 4% chance of hitting the Moon on December 22, 2032, an estimate that NASA placed at 4.3% in its previous calculations. It was not a high percentage, but it was significant enough for the teams dedicated to monitoring near-Earth objects to follow it with special attention. Furthermore, we are talking about an object of about 60 meters. How Webb came into play. To clear up that doubt, something more than the usual telescopes was needed. An international team of astronomers identified two very specific windows in February 2026 in which the James Webb Space Telescope could try to detect the asteroid, which at that time was just an extremely faint point millions of kilometers away. It involved using one of the most complex scientific instruments built to date to locate an almost invisible object and measure its position with the necessary precision to project its orbit almost seven years into the future. Key piece. The observations were made on February 18 and 26, 2026 with the camera NIRCam of the James Webb telescope. From these images, astronomers compared the position of the asteroid with that of the background stars, whose coordinates are known with great precision thanks to ESA’s Gaia mission. ESA adds a relevant detail to understand why this went ahead: the planning and analysis was coordinated with ESA’s Near-Earth Object Coordination Center, NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies and the Webb mission team. With this new data package, the orbital models were adjusted enough to close the mystery. James Webb analyzed the position of the asteroid in relation to the background stars The flyby distance. With the new calculations, monitoring teams can now estimate quite accurately what the asteroid’s passage through the lunar environment will be like. According to NASA, it will pass on December 22, 2032 about 21,000 kilometers from the surface of the Moon. That range is enough to eliminate the impact scenario that had been on the table for months. In other words, the object will continue on its way through the solar system without hitting either the Moon or Earth. Surveillance doesn’t stop. Programs such as ESA’s Space Security or NASA’s tracking systems continue to detect and analyze near-Earth objects to anticipate any possible future threats. The logic is simple: the sooner a potentially dangerous object is identified, the more room there will be to study its trajectory and assess the real risk. In this case, the result has been reassuring, but it also illustrates, as ESA insists, what planetary defense means in practice when a doubt is resolved with more data and better measurements. Images | THAT In Xataka | We have been burning space junk for years to get rid of the problem. It turned out to be a bad idea

Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, is building a huge space telescope. The question is not how, but why

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If someone today wanted to build something like a new Hubble, it would make sense to think of years of reports, reviews and committees before the first piece of hardware is even manufactured. However, that logic has just been broken with an unexpected announcement: Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, and his wife Wendy have put on the table his own money to power not one, but four telescopes, including a large-scale space observatory. The move not only challenges the sector’s inertia, but raises a question deeper than budget or technology: what exactly is a former Silicon Valley executive pursuing by wading into the heart of modern astronomy. This is a project promoted by the Schmidt Observatory System, it seeks to cover everything from the deep sky to the detailed study of transient phenomena. A change of model. Currently, telescopes are generally in the hands of public agencies and academic consortia. Building ever-larger mirrors and then putting instruments into orbit turned astronomy into a matter of national budgets. The Schmidts’ entry into this arena suggests that, with new technologies and another way to finance risk, that historic balance could be starting to shift again. Risk, speed and open science. The approach behind the observatory system is not to compete with space agencies, but to cover the space left by their own processes, which are long, conservative and highly conditioned by public budgets. The Schmidts seek to finance concepts that have already been imagined by the scientific community, but that rarely overcome the barrier of official financing due to their level of risk or the deadlines they require. The piece that gives meaning to the whole and that really makes the difference is Lazulithe only one of the four projects that will leave Earth. It aims to cover a wide range of science, from transient events lasting minutes or hours to the detailed study of exoplanets, with a level of flexibility that large public observatories cannot always offer. Further, more agile. One of the clearest breaks between Lazuli and Hubble is where it will operate and how. While NASA’s telescope orbits about 500 kilometers from Earth, Lazuli will be placed much further away, in an elliptical orbit that should give it a clearer view and allow for fast and continuous data linking. Lazuli Space Observatory In the official description, Schmidt Sciences frames this operation in a “lunar-resonant” orbit. Added to this is a larger mirror, 3.1 meters compared to Hubble’s 2.4 meters, and an observation philosophy designed to react quickly to unexpected phenomena. One platform, several instruments. Lazuli is designed as a unique platform that integrates three instruments designed to cover everything from wide-field observations to the detailed study of exoplanets and transient phenomena. Wide-field optical imager with high cadence for photometric time series, 30′×15′ field of view and filters between 300 and 1000 nm Integral field spectrograph continuously covering 400–1700 nm, optimized for stable spectrophotometry and rapid sorting High contrast coronagraph to directly observe exoplanets and circumstellar environments, with contrasts of 10⁻⁸ and up to 10⁻⁹ after processing The era of array telescopes. Argus, DSA and LFAST They are not traditional telescopes, but rather distributed systems that take advantage of recent advances in computing, storage, and automated analysis. Instead of concentrating everything in a single structure, they distribute the collection of light or radio signals among tens or thousands of modules that are then digitally synchronized. This modularity aims to accelerate deployments and opens the door to observing the sky almost in real time, something fundamental for the astronomy of fleeting events. Render of the Argus Array (left), Deep Synoptic Array (right) Argus Array will bring together 1,200 optical telescopes in Texas to observe the northern sky almost continuously, with the idea of ​​being able to “rewind” what happened minutes or hours before an event such as a supernova. DSA, in Nevada and under the direction of Caltech, will deploy 1,600 radio antennas to map more than a billion sources and update its view of the sky every fifteen minutes. LFAST, for its part, will be installed in Arizona as a system of 20 80-centimeter mirrors aimed at large-aperture spectroscopy and the search for biosignatures, with a prototype planned for mid-2026. What the Schmidts have launched is, at its core, an experiment on the scientific system itself. Lazuli and his three colleagues on land aim to show that it is possible to build large-scale observatories more quickly and with an openness of data that does not always fit into traditional models. Whether that vision materializes will depend on factors yet to be determined, such as the final contractors, real costs or the feasibility of the schedules, but if it goes well, the impact will not only be measured in new discoveries, but in a new way of deciding what science is done. Images | Village Global | Schmidt Observatory System In Xataka | China has just resolved one of the biggest doubts about going to Mars with the birth of six space mice

A planet has just disappeared. NASA’s Hubble telescope has captured a violent cosmic event that changes everything

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Investigating the universe beyond the Solar System we know sometimes brings up more questions than answers. The search for exoplanets has left findings so different from what we know as fascinating. Thus, more than a decade ago the Kepler space telescope identified the Kepler-16ba planet with “two suns” along Star Wars Tatooine and the James Webb telescope stumbled upon a world of boiling lava that paradoxically it’s colder what the theory says. In the process of investigating the universe you can witness the disappearance of a planet, as NASA’s Hubble has monitored, to discover that there was nothing like a planet: they were in front of a violent cosmic phenomenon. First they detected a bright point of light and assumed that it was a planet covered in dust where the brightness of its star was reflected. Then the object disappeared and a different bright source appeared nearby. Finally, this international research team realized that they were not seeing planets at all: the light came from incandescent debris generated by violent collisions, as they later published in Science. A planetesimal collision that changes everything In their observations in time, they captured two different and very powerful impacts that generated large amounts of dust in the same planetary system, which constitutes a magnificent opportunity to understand how planets are formed and what type of materials they are made of. Their main hypothesis: they have glimpsed not one, but two extremely rare events: one (two) planetesimal collisionthat is, a collision between small rocky objects similar to asteroids. Northwestern University astrophysicist Jason Wang explains that it is the first time they have seen a planetesimal collision outside the solar system and that its study is “key to understanding how planets form and can also provide information about the structure of asteroids, something important for planetary defense programs such as the DART test.” Paul Kalas, an astronomer at the University of California at Berkeley and lead author, insists on the exceptionality of the event: “It is not present in any of our previous Hubble images, which means that we have just witnessed a violent collision between two massive objects and a huge cloud of debris, something that has no parallel in our current solar system.” By NASA, ESA, P. Kalas, J. Graham, E. Chiang, E. Kite (University of California, Berkeley), M. Clampin (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), M. Fitzgerald (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), and K. Stapelfeldt and J. Krist (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory) These collisions occurred in the planetary system surrounding the star Fomalhautwhich is larger than the Sun, is surrounded by an extensive and dense set of dusty debris belts and located about 25 light years from Earth, in the constellation Pisces Austrinus. That dust belt is so large that it is a real candy for research. Planet it seems, cloud of dust it is In 2008 they detected Fomalhaut b, a bright object of unknown nature that some researchers thought was a planet and others believed it was an expanding cloud of dust from a collision. Back in 2023, a new Hubble observation gave an unexpected twist to everything: the original light source was no longer there and another bright object had appeared in a slightly different area. As explains Wang, first They assumed it was Fomalhaut b, but they got a surprise: “We assumed the bright light was Fomalhaut b because it was the known source of the system. But by carefully comparing the new images with the old ones, we realized that it couldn’t be the same source. It was exciting, but also perplexing” So they had to change perspective and nomenclature: the original object was renamed Fomalhaut cs1 and its disappearance supports the idea that it was a cloud of dust that was slowly dispersing after a collision. They called the second bright source Fomalhaut cs2 and its behavior reinforces the conclusion that neither of the two objects was a planet: everything indicates that they are clouds of debris created when large planetesimals collide with each other. Investigating Fomalhaut cs2 they concluded that it looked very similar to the beginnings of cs1 from two decades ago, both in brightness and location. So the team already estimates the frequency of collisions in this guy in the system: every 100,000 years or even less. After all, in 20 years they have already seen two. Kalas explains that “if you took a movie of the last 3,000 years and sped it up so that each year lasted a fraction of a second, imagine how many flashes you would see. The Fomalhaut planetary system would be full of these crashes.” Fomalhaut cs1 no longer exists, but the research team wants to continue monitoring the system and has its eyes on cs2, which could hide more valuable information about how collisions develop in young planetary systems. Of course, in addition to the old Hubble, they will use the near-infrared camera of the James Webb Space Telescope since the NIRCam can capture detailed information about color, so they can determine the size and composition of dust grainsfor example if they contain water or ice. The confirmation of these collisions put a warning on the table for hunters of planets outside the Solar System: the gLarge clouds of dust can very well imitate the appearance of an exoplanetto by reflecting light from its star, which can lead to error using the reflected light detection system. Kalas sums it up: “What we learned from studying cs1 is that a large dust cloud can masquerade as a planet for many years.” As new observatories point to the sky to obtain direct images of Earth-like planets, differentiating between real planets and temporary dust clouds seems providential. In Xataka | Poland and Spain are the European countries that have increased their contribution to space the most. For very different reasons In Xataka | China reveals its cards for 2030: it will go in search of an “Earth 2.0” on its own Cover | Javier Miranda By ESA, NASA, and L. … Read more

The largest telescope in the northern hemisphere is looking for a home. And the Canary Islands have just taken the lead

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Spain is getting closer to having in its territory the most powerful telescope on the entire planet, the Teinta Meter Telescope (TMT). Its location may finally be the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands, which for many years has been the emergency ‘plan B’, in case the original idea of ​​having it in the United States failed. And in the end, due to a large set of triggers, La Palma is gaining a lot of strength. A change of direction. He original use of the TMT was intended Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii. But it is a plan that was paralyzed due to the rejection of the native communities, who consider this a sacred place. Although it is not only the ‘fault’ of the natives, but also of the cuts that the Trump administration has made intended for research and science in general. Given this situation, Spain has offered to host the project in La Palma as announced by the TMT International Observatory LLC on your website. In this case, he thanks the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities for the offer made of commit to invest 400 million euros to install this telescope at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory. The next steps are focused on developing together with the Ministry a “detailed roadmap towards the possible realization of the TMT at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory”, with the aim of this project moving forward at this location. The importance of La Palma. The Roque de los Muchachos Observatory already houses world-renowned facilities such as the Canary Islands Great Telescope (GTC), which is the largest optical and near-infrared telescope on the planet. In addition, it participates in new generation projects such as the Cherenkov telescopes, dedicated to observing high-energy gamma rays. And this is something that the Minister of Science herself, Diana Morant, wanted to remember, who through from your X account has celebrated this advance as the necessary step to turn “the Canarian sky into the main observatory in the northern hemisphere.” Why it is important. The TMT is not just any project: its construction involves some of the most influential scientific organizations on the planet, such as the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) or the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), which represents more than 40 academic entities from around the world. Beyond this, we are also talking about the TMT being one of the three reference telescopes globally along with the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) in Chile or the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) being developed in the Atacama Desert. Its 30-meter diameter mirror, made up of 492 hexagonal segments, will make it a key tool for exploring exoplanets, black holes, dark matter and the formation of the first galaxies, with a resolution ten times higher than that of Hubble. Political impact. Beyond the astronomical potential, hosting the TMT would mean a leap in scale for Spain in its presence in international research, reinforcing the role of the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC) as a strategic partner in global scientific projects and attracting talent and technological investment. Images | Alin Corneliu In Xataka | Which telescope to buy to enjoy the nights and stars: 20 telescopes, binoculars, gadgets, accessories and more

China is building the largest telescope in the world. The question is why he is doing it in secret

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In the select club of first level astronomical observatories, all projects They are advertised to hype and saucer decades in advance. China instead is building a gigantic telescope of 14 and a half meters on the Tibetan plateau without having officially announced it. US suspicions. An article of Wall Street Journal He has raised the hare. A telescope of that size would not only rival the most powerful observatories in the West, but, if it was terminated in time, it would temporarily become the largest terrestrial optical telescope in the world. The question that, according to the Journal, resonates in Harvard’s halls and NASA is not whether they are building it, but why they do it stealthily. The clues that arrive from China. Robert Kirshner, Emerrito Professor of Harvard and leader of the thirty -meter telescope, The American project that Spain now wantsit has been one of the main detectives in this plot. The clues, although discreet, are overwhelming: In January, the state company Nanjing Astronomical Instruments published on social networks that it had gained a tender of 22 million dollars to build the dome of a telescope with a mirror of 14.5 meters In April, some students who visited a scientific institute mentioned in another publication that the researchers had shown them the configuration of the mirrors for a telescope of that same size An outstanding Chinese astronomer declared state media that one of its objectives was to finish “the 14.5 meter telescope” before its retirement Beijing has adopted a low profile. The anomalous thing about this case is that Chinese institutions also do not celebrate their technological sovereignty with the usual triumphalism in this type of project. China, which does not hesitate to celebrate other space milestones, here has opted for a low profile. A clear trace of tenders. Technical documents are scattered, but paint a clear image of an advanced development project. The main test is the tender of its most visible component: the dome. A public announcement of the Chinese Academy of Sciences He was looking for offers for the “Project to Acquisition of the Dome of the Optical/Infrared Telescope of 14.5 m”, with a deadline set for November 2024. On the other hand, a memorandum of China National Astronomical Observatory It justifies the purchase of infrared detectors, describing the project as “a great astronomical telescope to achieve the top of science and technology.” In parallel, published job offers For “the general purpose of the general major caliber in construction in our country.” I even looked for personnel for the system engineering file managementan unequivocal sign that the design phase had given way to the construction. Why not announce it then? Matt Mountain, president of the Aura organization, which manages the Observatorios Hubble and James Webb for NASA, raises two hypotheses. The first is military: A telescope capable of obtaining crisp images of a galaxy to millions of light years can also observe with an unprecedented resolution The spy satellites of other nations in space. The domain of heaven is not only scientific, but also strategic, as We have been seeing in the Earth’s orbit For years. The second hypothesis is a long -term play for technological leadership. Mountain describes it brilliantly: “Astronomy is the entrance drug for science, technology, engineering and mathematics.” Investing in inspiring projects such as a giant telescope is the best way to encourage a whole generation of young people to study Stem races, ensuring that China can overcome the United States in the coming decades. The biggest telescope for a while. To understand the magnitude of this project, you have to put it in context. The Hubble space telescope mirror measures 2.4 meters; The Webb, 6.5 meters. The four largest optical telescopes on Earth are around 10 meters in diameter. If China completes its 14.5 meter telescope soon, it would dwarf all existing observatories until the new generation They will see the light. Precisely these days the thirty -meter telescope (TMT) has been on everyone’s mouth (TMT) that the United States was going to build in Hawaii. After becoming one of the victims of Trump’s science cuts, the Government of Spain has offered 400 million euros To be built on the island of La Palma, in the Canary Islands. Although its final location is yet to be decided. Image | Universidad de Pekín In Xataka | For the first time we have pointed to heaven with a 3,200 megapixel camera. In just 10 hours he has done several years

An older comet that the sun has invaded the solar system. The old and reliable Hubble telescope already has photos

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The veteran space telescope Hubble, With 35 years of service behind themcontinues to demonstrate that it is in full form. His last feat has been to capture the first clear image of 3i/Atlas, an interstellar kite that not only comes from outside our solar system, but seems to be older than the sun itself. The interstellar object number three. 3i/Atlas is the third celestial body beyond the solar system that astronomers have detected on our neighborhood, after the mysterious Asteroid 1i/’Oumuamua In 2017 and the Gigantic Comet 2i/Borisov In 2019. The images, taken on July 21 by NASA’s space telescope, offer a detailed first view of the new member of the club. The first alert was given by an astrophysic student nicknamed Astrafoxen In his bluesky profile: “There are many cosmic rays around, but the comet’s comma looks fantastic and bulky.” And indeed, even without processing, the images let a diffuse and active atmosphere intuit around the code core. An unexpected composition. Scientists have already begun to reveal the secrets of the comet. A Preliminary study Based on previous images, he revealed that 3i/Atlas is an active interstellar kite that contains abundant water. However, its cloud of dust looks more like that of type D asteroids: rocks full of silicates with organic molecules, carbon and water ice inside. The composition of the comet’s comma seems to be adjusted 70% to Tagish Lake Meteoritewith the remaining 30% in water ice grains. An older cosmic fossil than the sun. Everything indicates that 3i/Atlas comes from a region of the Milky Way much older than ours. With an estimated age of 7,000 million years, compared to the 4.6 billion years of the solar system, this kite is a time capsule of an era before ours, which especially excites astronomers. First detected on July 1, 2025 by the Atlas poll, the comet has become the priority objective of observatories around the world. One of those who will join the hunt is the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which with The world’s largest digital camera promises to find many of these invaders. Images | Hubble (NASA), Gemini Observatory In Xataka | This is not normal photos of the cosmos: prepare your hard drive to save these hubble wonders

The most powerful telescope in Europe has seen something rare while observing two brown dwarfs: a perpendicular planet

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Today, in things that we did not know that there were in other star systems: a planet that orbits perpendicular to its two stars. It is as strange as it sounds. A different planet. We have seen everything in the exotic exoplanet gallery that the observable universe offers us, but a new surprise has forced astronomers to readjust their expectations. Using the Vary Large Telescope del Southern European Observatory (ESO) In Chile, astronomers have found the first exoplanet known in a polar orbit around a binary system of stars: two young brown dwarfs. Orbiting at 90 degrees. Baptized as 2m1510 (AB) B, this world has two Tatooine style soles, something extremely common when it comes to more massive stars, but not so much in the case of brown dwarfs. However, what is common is that orbits its two host stars in a way that until now had only theorized: turning perpendicular to them, in a polar orbit of 90 degrees. We sensed that they could exist. Astronomers had already detected planetary training discs in polar orbite and theory suggested that They could form stable planetsBut finding them was another story. 2M1510 (AB) B is the first credible test that this configuration exists. And the most curious thing is that the team was not actively looking for this type of planet, they found it while refining the orbital and physical parameters of the two brown dwarfs, seeing that the path of the two stars was being pushed and pull in unusual ways. It is not a usual system. The planet is not the only rare in this neighborhood, taking into account the host stars. Brown dwarfs are larger than giant giant planets, but too small to maintain nuclear fusion which characterizes the stars “really”. But the rarity does not end there. These brown dwarfs form an eclipsest binary, which means that from Earth we can see how they hide each other. 2M1510 (AB) is an incredibly infrequent system: the second pair of eclipsessing brown dwarfs known to date. With more than 5,800 exoplanets confirmed to date, only about 16 orbit around two stars. That one of them does precisely around a system as atypical as a binary of eclipsessing brown dwarfs, and with a polar orbit, it is a real cosmic jewel. Image | THAT In Xataka | These real images were unthinkable before the Webb Telescope: they are planets orbiting other stars to 130 light years

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