The small step back to Earth’s satellite will provide a giant leap for exploring our solar system.

Astronomy enthusiasts, brace yourselves for a dazzling display as the Quadrantids, the first meteor shower of 2025, light up the sky.

The Quadrantids are unique among meteor showers as they originate from debris left by an asteroid, rather than a comet. This shower, best viewed in the Northern Hemisphere, is renowned for its bright fireballs and has been described by NASA as one of the strongest and most consistent meteor showers of the year. However, the peak visibility window is relatively short, lasting just six hours on the night of Jan. 2 into Jan. 3, and winter weather conditions such as frigid temperatures and overcast skies may challenge observers.

The Quadrantids are named after Quadrans Muralis, an 18th-century constellation astronomers no longer use. Both the constellation and the shower are named after an instrument called the quadrant, which was once used to measure the altitudes of stars and other bodies in the night sky.

According to a tenet scientists call the cosmological principle, our place in space is in no way exceptional. But recent observations could overturn this long-held assumption.

By Sarah Scoles edited by Lee Billings & Jeanna Bryner

Ever since humans started gazing at the heavens through telescopes, we have discovered, bit by bit, that in celestial terms we’re apparently not so special. Earth was not the center of the universe, it turned out. It wasn’t even the center of the solar system! The solar system, unfortunately, wasn’t the center of the universe either. In fact, there were many star systems fundamentally like it, together making up a galaxy. And, wouldn’t you know, the galaxy wasn’t special but one of many, which all had their own solar systems, which also had planets, some of which presumably host their own ensemble of egoistic creatures with an overinflated sense of cosmic importance.

The first dark comet—a celestial object that looks like an asteroid but moves through space like a comet—was reported less than two years ago. Soon after, another six were found. In a new paper, researchers announce the discovery of seven more, doubling the number of known dark comets, and find that they fall into two distinct populations: larger ones that reside in the outer solar system and smaller ones in the inner solar system, with various other traits that set them apart.

The findings were published on Monday, Dec. 9, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Scientists got their first inkling that dark comets exist when they noted in a March 2016 study that the trajectory of “asteroid” 2003 RM had moved ever so slightly from its expected orbit. That deviation couldn’t be explained by the typical accelerations of asteroids, like the small acceleration known as the Yarkovsky effect.

It could have huge consequences 😰 Read more.

NASA has been monitoring an anomaly in Earth’s magnetic field, growing 40,000 miles above the planet’s surface between South America and southwest Africa.