Dim Delights in Cancer

Cancer the Crab is a dim constellation, yet it contains one of the most beautiful and easy-to-spot star clusters in our sky: the Beehive Cluster. Cancer also possesses one of the most studied exoplanets: the superhot super-Earth, 55 Cancri e. Find Cancer’s dim stars by looking in between the brighter neighboring constellations of Gemini and […]

Solving Asteroid Bennu’s Mysteries

These X-ray computed tomography (XCT) scans released on March 17, 2026, give us a glimpse inside asteroid Bennu. They show the most common types of crack networks observed in Bennu samples; these networks solved a mystery that baffled NASA for years. When NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft first approached asteroid Bennu in 2018, scientists expected to see smooth, sandy beach-like surfaces. Instead, they […]