A team mapping radio waves in the universe has discovered something unusual that releases a giant burst of energy three times an hour, and it's unlike anything astronomers have seen before.

The team that discovered it think it could be a neutron star or a white dwarf — collapsed cores of stars — with an ultra-powerful magnetic field. Spinning in space, the strange object sends out a beam of radiation that crosses Earth's line of sight, and for one minute in every 20, is one of the brightest radio sources in the sky.

Astrophysicist Dr. Natasha Hurley-Walker, from the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, led the team that made the discovery. "This object was appearing and disappearing over a few hours during our observations," she said. "That was completely unexpected. It was kind of spooky for an astronomer because there's nothing known in the sky that does that. And it's really quite close to us — about 4,000 light-years away. It's in our galactic backyard."

The object was discovered by Curtin University Honors student Tyrone O'Doherty using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope in outback Western Australia and a new technique he developed. "It's exciting that the source I identified last year has turned out to be such a peculiar object," said Mr O'Doherty, who is now studying for a Ph.D. at Curtin. "The MWA's wide field of view and extreme sensitivity are perfect for surveying the entire sky and detecting the unexpected."

A skier in northern Finland was treated to a stunning display as the vivid aurora borealis and a bright moon shone in the sky early on Saturday 15 January. Jari Romppainen filmed the footage in Ranua, a municipality in the Finnish province of Lapland. According to Finland's national tourist site, the northern lights are visible for about 200 nights a year from Lapland.

During the 1990s, American families gathered around their televisions on Sunday nights and watched The X-Files, where FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully were part of secret government research into Unidentified Flying Objects.

Then in 2017, The New York Times revealed conspiracy theorists were right all along. The government for decades really did have secret agencies investigating UFOs and military pilots reported numerous contacts with flying objects.

Unidentified flying objects (UFOs) have appeared throughout human history and are typically associated with extraterrestrial life visiting Earth. As early as 1639, Massachusetts Bay Colony cofounder and governor John Winthrop reported a "sober, discreet man" named James Everell had seen a "great light" in the sky running back and forth over the Muddy River for several hours. By the time it vanished, Everell and the other men in his boat were a mile upstream from where they'd been and they had no memory of how they'd arrived there, according to an account in New England Today.

In modern times, "the first well-known UFO sighting occurred in 1947 when businessman Kenneth Arnold claimed to see a group of nine high-speed objects near Mount Rainier in Washington while flying his small plane," reports History.com. Though Arnold described the shapes as being crescent-shaped, they were mistakenly reported as being saucer-shaped in the media, leading to the first usage of the term "flying saucer."

Utah, with its barren deserts and dark, starry skies has long been considered a hotbed for unidentifiable sightings.

Over the years, there have been more than 1,000 UFO sightings in Utah, according to journalistic data analysis website Stacker.com. Some of these sightings have a reasonable explanation, including recent reports of lines of lights moving across the night sky.

These trains of brightly lit objects, reportedly seen over Utah as recently as February 2021, turned out to be Starlink Satellites, a SpaceX project launched by Elon Musk, which aims to provide internet service everywhere on Earth, according to Space.com.

Other sightings, however, are not so easily explained.

New sunspot counts from NOAA confirm that the young solar cycle is outperforming the official forecast. You are here:

See the complete labeled plot or play with an interactive version from NOAA.

Sunspot counts have exceeded predictions for 15 straight months. The monthly value at the end of December 2021 was more than twice the forecast, and the highest in more than 5 years.

The "official forecast" comes from the Solar Cycle Prediction Panel representing NOAA, NASA and International Space Environmental Services (ISES). Using a variety of leading indicators, the Panel predicted that Solar Cycle 25 would peak in July 2025 as a relatively weak cycle, similar in magnitude to its predecessor Solar Cycle 24. Instead, Solar Cycle 25 is shaping up to be stronger.

Sky watchers have already noticed the change. "We are definitely seeing the effects on the ground in the Arctic!" reports Chad Blakley of the Swedish tour guide service Lights over Lapland. "Auroras now are the best in years."

This year's hole in the Earth's protective ozone layer — which grew to be larger than Antarctica — is finally set to close this week, atmospheric scientists have said.

Acting like a shield, ozone absorbs UV light from the sun. Its absence means more of this high-energy radiation reaches the Earth, where it can harm living cells.

The ozone layer is depleted by chemical reactions, driven by solar energy, that involve the by-products of human-made chemicals that linger in the atmosphere.

An unidentified flying object, or UFO, in its most general definition, is any visible anomaly in the sky that cannot be identified as a known object or phenomenon. Although this definition covers any unexplained aerial phenomenon, in popular culture the term has become synonymous with extraterrestrial spacecraft.

UFO sightings throughout history

UFO sightings have been reported throughout human history and in different parts of the world, raising questions about life on other planets and whether aliens have visited Earth. They have become one of the main subjects of interest and inspiration for numerous films and books. Unfortunately, however, they are also the target of intense ridicule.

For decades, there have been attempts, whether deliberate or not, to downplay the significance of UFOs and create a public belief in society that UFOs are part of some elaborate hoax. Nevertheless, reports of unexplained UFO sightings from the air have been received throughout human history, from prehistoric times to the present day.

Some ancient images of objects flying in the sky were undoubtedly astronomical in nature, most likely comets, bright meteors and planets that can be seen with the naked eye, or atmospheric optical phenomena such as lenticular clouds.

An example is Halley's comet, which was first recorded by Chinese astronomers in 240 BC, and possibly as early as 467 BC. Throughout human history, such phenomena have often been viewed as supernatural portents, angels, or other religious omens.

However, we cannot simply assume that what our ancient ancestors saw and wrote on cave walls or in ancient texts was an astronomical or ecological phenomenon. As with today's phenomena, there is a small percentage of phenomena that are simply inexplicable. Many records from our ancient past certainly spark curiosity, such as the prehistoric cave paintings.

The rock paintings bear a striking resemblance to those painted hundreds of years later on the 16th century Triumph of Summer tapestry. The UFO images on this tapestry are also closely related to modern UFO stories. There are also Aboriginal rock carvings depicting Wanjin's celestial beings who appear to represent alien guests.

Astronomers from Costa Rica and Australia have reported the detection of a new supernova remnant (SNR) by inspecting a gamma-ray source known as FHES J1723.5−0501. The researchers found that this source is an SNR and it has been designated G17.8+16.7. The finding is detailed in a paper published December 3 on arXiv.org.

SNRs are diffuse, expanding structures resulting from a supernova explosion. They contain ejected material expanding from the explosion and other interstellar material that has been swept up by the passage of the shockwave from the exploded star.

Studies of supernova remnants are important for astronomers, as they play a key role in the evolution of galaxies, dispersing the heavy elements made in the supernova explosion and providing the energy needed for heating up the interstellar medium. SNRs are also believed to be responsible for the acceleration of galactic cosmic rays.

FHES J1723.5−0501 (also known as 4FGL J 1723.5−0501e) is a gamma-ray source detected outside the galactic plane with NASA's Fermi spacecraft. Previous observations have revealed the presence of an unclassified radio shell along the southwestern edge of this source, suggesting that FHES J1723.5−0501 may be potentially associated to an SNR or a pulsar wind nebula (PWN).

Strange things happen in Earth's atmosphere at high latitudes. Around local noon, when the Sun is at its highest point, a funnel-shaped gap in our planet's magnetic field passes overhead. Earth's magnetic field shields us from the solar wind, the stream of charged particles spewing off the Sun. The gap in that field, called the polar cusp, allows the solar wind a direct line of access to Earth's atmosphere.

Radio and GPS signals behave strangely when they travel through this part of the sky. In the last 20 years, scientists and spacecraft operators noticed something else unusual as spacecraft pass through this region: They slow down.

"At around 250 miles above Earth, spacecraft feel more drag, sort of like they've hit a speed bump," said Mark Conde, a physicist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the principal investigator for NASA's Cusp Region Experiment-2, or CREX-2, sounding rocket mission. That's because the air in the cusp is noticeably denser than air elsewhere in the spacecrafts' orbits around Earth. But no one knows why, or how. By understanding the forces at play in the cusp, scientists hope to better anticipate changes in spacecraft trajectories.

The CREX-2 payload was successfully launched at 3:25 a.m. EST on December 1, 2021, from the Andøya Space Center in Norway. The four-stage Oriole IV sounding rocket carried the payload to an apogee of 392 miles. Preliminary reports are that the flight was successful and the ampules carrying the vapors performed as planned. Good data was received including data from the vapor imaging team.

It's likely a large boulder excavated by an ancient lunar impact.
China's Yutu 2 rover has spotted a mystery object on the horizon while working its way across Von Kármán crater on the far side of the moon.

Yutu 2 spotted a cube-shaped object on the horizon to the north and roughly 260 feet (80 meters) away in November during the mission's 36th lunar day, according to a Yutu 2 diary published by Our Space, a Chinese language science outreach channel affiliated with the China National Space Administration (CNSA).

Our Space referred to the object as a "mystery hut" (神秘小屋/shenmi xiaowu), but this a placeholder name rather than an accurate description.

Team scientists have expressed a strong interest in the object and Yutu 2 is now expected to spend the next 2-3 lunar days (2-3 Earth months) traversing lunar regolith and avoiding craters to get a closer look, so updates can be expected.

A likely explanation for the shape would be a large boulder which has been excavated by an impact event.

Eliot Herman in Tucson, Arizona - a veteran sky photographer and EarthSky community member - captured this extraordinary photo during the partial lunar eclipse on November 19, 2021. The photo of the moon shows an all-sky overhead view with one bright ring centered around the moon, a second ring that runs through the moon, and a set of arcs that connect the two. It's incredibly rare to have all three phenomena appear together in one photo in this configuration.