Here’s something to think about as you kick off 2025: We are all stardust. Every atom of oxygen in our lungs, of carbon in our muscles, of calcium in our bones, of iron in our blood—was created inside a star before Earth was born. Hydrogen and helium, the lightest elements, were produced in the Big Bang. Almost all of the other, heavier, elements were produced inside stars. Stars forge heavy elements by fusion in their cores. In a star of intermediate mass, these elements can mix into the star’s atmosphere and be spread into space through stellar winds.

Image: NASA Hubble Space Telescope, CC BY 2.0, flickr

How can astrophysicists make predictions about parts of the universe they’ve never observed? Join Museum Curator Mordecai-Mark Mac Low to learn how weather-modeling techniques can predict star formation and how computer gamers have helped along the way!

Research alert! Rebecca Oppenheimer, a curator in the Museum’s Department of Astrophysics, co-discovered the first brown dwarf, Gliese 229B, in 1995. Since then, there’s been a long-standing mystery: Why does this brown dwarf shine so faintly despite having a significant mass—70 times that of Jupiter?

The answer, which is detailed in her latest study with Caltech—out today in the journal Nature—is that this brown dwarf is actually two objects, orbiting very closely around each other.

“These two worlds whipping around each other are actually smaller in radius than Jupiter. They’d look quite strange in our night sky if we had something like them in our own solar system,” Oppenheimer said. The discovery leads to new questions about how tight-knit brown dwarf duos like this one form and suggests that similar systems are likely out there. Read more.

Image: K. Miller, R. Hurt (Caltech/IPAC)

On this day in 1977, Voyager 1 launched from Florida’s NASA Kennedy Space Center. Over the past 47 years, together with its twin Voyager 2, the spacecraft outperformed all expectations—gathering invaluable information about Jupiter and Saturn, then becoming the first human-made object to cross into interstellar space in 2012 (Voyager 2 entered interstellar space in November 2018). Both spacecraft are still exploring as part of our farthest and longest-lasting space mission and carrying the Golden Record, with recordings of nature, human languages, and music, into the universe.

Photo: NASA, PD, Wikimedia Commons

When the Hayden Planetarium opened in October 1935, it was only the fourth planetarium in the United States. Nearly a century later, the Museum is still bringing audiences the latest science about our cosmos. Visit the Hayden Planetarium and the Rose Center for Earth and Space to learn about the 13-billion-year history of the universe!

How do we discover new types of objects in space? One way is to invent new kinds of telescopes. Join Museum Curator Michael Shara on an exploration of evolving telescope technologies, the most powerful telescopes ever built, and how the future of stargazing might already be in your pocket.

Along the way, learn about the “wild and crazy” things stars do through Shara’s research into novas (stellar explosions that often repeat over time) and supernovas (the explosive deaths of stars).

How did the earliest galaxies form, and what implications does that have for fundamental laws of physics? Join Neil deGrasse Tyson, the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium, and a panel of leading scientists and experts for a spirited conversation around the profound impact NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is having on our understanding of the universe since it began transmitting images and astronomical data in 2022. Watch the 2024 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate.

☄️This week in space news! Where will you be watching the Geminids Meteor Shower from? Here are some tips, no matter where you are.

✨ What makes a galaxy irregular? It’s usually small and has a chaotic appearance that’s likely due to recent disturbances. Some acquire their unusual shapes from galactic encounters: When galaxies pass near each other or collide, gravity pulls and distorts their shapes—often resulting in long “tails” of stars and gas.

Image: NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, C BY 2.0, flickr

🚀New 360 immersive video! Travel from the Himalayas through Earth’s atmosphere, out past the Milky Way and into the inky black of space, all the way to the afterglow of the Big Bang.

Every planet, star, and quasar shown in this video is based on real scientific data from space missions and telescopes around the world (and in outer space!), visualized in OpenSpace, an open source interactive data visualization software designed to dynamically portray the entire known universe and our ongoing efforts to investigate the cosmos.

Frontiers Lecture: A JUICE-y Journey to Jupiter

Join Professor Emma Bunce, director of the Institute for Space at the University of Leicester and co-investigator on the JUICE mission, for a special journey to Jupiter on Tuesday, October 10! The ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) launched in April 2023 and is expected to arrive at Jupiter in 2031. It will explore three of the planet’s moons, Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa—and study the potential for habitability and search for evidence of a global ocean underneath the icy crust.

Don't miss this opportunity to learn about the exciting discoveries that await us in the outer reaches of our Solar System! Check out the link below for more details and to register for tickets.

Have you ever looked up at the night sky to find a view like this? Aurora, also known as the Northern or Southern Lights, are most often seen in high-latitude regions around the Arctic and Antarctic. These spectacular displays are caused by collisions between charged particles from solar wind and oxygen and nitrogen in Earth’s atmosphere. As the oxygen and nitrogen molecules revert to their normal state, they release photons, or small bursts of energy in the form of light—which is what we see on the ground below. The color of these hypnotizing displays is determined by what’s colliding: oxygen produces yellows and greens, while nitrogen is responsible for reds, violets, and blues. Photo 1: Beverly & Pack, CC BY 2.0, flickr (Northern Lights) Photo 2: Ben, CC BY-ND 2.0, flickr (Southern Lights) Photo 3: Jukka Hernetkoski, CC BY-NC 2.0, flickr (Northern Lights) Photo 4: Trey Ratcliff, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, flickr (Southern Lights) #world #amazingplanet #space #northernlights #southernlights https://www.instagram.com/p/Cm2S-murGoy/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

🌌What makes an irregular galaxy irregular? ✨It’s usually small and has a chaotic appearance that’s likely due to recent disturbances. Some acquire their unusual shapes from galactic encounters: when galaxies pass near each other or collide, gravity pulls and distorts their shapes, often resulting in long “tails” of stars and gas. Credit: Image of the Irregular Galaxy ESO 99-4 by NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, and A. Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University) #space #galaxies #IrregularGalaxy #dyk #spaceexploration https://www.instagram.com/p/CjonSZPLWep/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

🚨#NewResearch alert! A recent study co-authored by Museum Senior Research Scientist Jackie Faherty highlights 34 “ultracool” dwarfs, also known as brown dwarfs, that were discovered by a citizen scientist from the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 citizen science project. 🔭Brown dwarfs are star-like, with more mass than planets but less mass than stars, which makes them much harder to spot. The question of how often stars exist alone is an enduring question in the field of astronomy, and for brown dwarfs, the answer to this question is especially elusive. But these discoveries could help astronomers determine if brown dwarfs are more akin to oversized planets or undersized stars, as well as providing insights into how star systems evolve over time. Read more about their findings in the link in our bio! Image: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Garlick #research #STEM #science #space #astronomy #CitizenScience #CitizenScientist #amnh #museums #BackyardWorlds #planets #stars #BrownDwarf https://www.instagram.com/p/CfuM79VPTmz/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

From the observed rate of expansion, astronomers can estimate the age of the universe. For every year, light travels one light-year across space. So the farthest parts of the universe that we can see are as distant in light-years as the universe is old in years. Light from more distant regions has not had time to reach us. This distance marks the limits of the observable universe–our “cosmic horizon.” Image: NASA Hubble Space Telescope

Happy birthday to Carl Sagan, born on this day in 1934 in Brooklyn, New York. The American astronomer, astrophysicist, and author (among other things) helped explain space to the general public through hundreds of articles, dozens of books, and his popular public television series “Cosmos"—watched by more than 500 million people in 60 countries. He also researched extraterrestrial life and assembled the first physical message sent into space. Sagan helped solve mysteries of the universe, including the greenhouse effect on Venus that explains the planet’s high temperatures. In 1980 he wrote, "Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.” Photo: Michael Okoniewski

Join us for the opening of the 10th season of SciCafe! Museum astrophysicist Jackie Faherty discusses her current work visualizing and studying the universe using newly-released data from the Gaia catalog. In April, the Gaia space telescope released its second catalog of over 1.3 billion stellar distances, this unprecedented dataset is helping astronomers map the Milky Way like never before.

Doors open at 6:30pm.

Event details: https://bit.ly/2OwJN3r