Ghost Galaxy Discovery Today & Uranus Atmosphere Mapped by Webb - Space News (Feb 21, 2026)
February 21, 20264m 58s
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Today's topics: Ghost Galaxy Discovery Today - Hubble Space Telescope discovers CDG-2, a nearly invisible galaxy made of 99% dark matter located 300 million light-years away. Scientists used globular star clusters as cosmic breadcrumbs to find this mysterious object. Uranus Atmosphere Mapped by Webb - James Webb Space Telescope reveals Uranus's three-dimensional upper atmosphere structure with auroras and unusual magnetic field effects. New measurements show the ice giant continues cooling over the past thirty years. SpaceX Starlink Launch Success - SpaceX successfully launches Falcon 9 rocket carrying 25 Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base after three weather delays. Booster B1063 achieved its 31st flight, landing safely on the OCISLY droneship. Artemis II March Launch Target - NASA confirms March 6 as the target launch date for Artemis II after successful wet dress rehearsal test. Astronauts entered quarantine following extensive fueling operations and countdown demonstrations.
Episode Transcript
Ghost Galaxy Discovery Today
Let's start with that ghost galaxy we teased. Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have confirmed the discovery of what might be one of the darkest galaxies ever found. It's called CDG-2, and it's located about 300 million light-years away in the Perseus galaxy cluster. Here's where it gets really interesting: this galaxy is almost entirely made of dark matter. We're talking 99 percent of its total mass is this invisible stuff we can't even see. To find it, researchers had to get creative. Instead of looking for starlight like they normally would, they searched for tight clusters of stars called globular clusters. Think of them like cosmic breadcrumbs leading to a hidden galaxy. The team found four of these clusters bunched together, and sure enough, there was something faint glowing around them. Using Hubble's high-resolution imaging along with the Euclid space observatory and the ground-based Subaru telescope, they confirmed they'd found something extraordinary. While CDG-2 only shines with the light of about six million suns, its globular clusters alone make up sixteen percent of all the visible light in the entire galaxy. That means the rest of it is just... dark. Scientists think gravitational interactions with other galaxies in this crowded cluster stripped away most of the normal matter that would have formed stars. This discovery opens new doors for finding other failed galaxies out there.
Uranus Atmosphere Mapped by Webb
Speaking of ground-breaking observations, the James Webb Space Telescope has just given us our first-ever three-dimensional view of Uranus's upper atmosphere. Researchers led by Paola Tiranti from Northumbria University spent about fifteen hours observing Uranus, measuring temperatures and charged particles up to five thousand kilometers above the clouds. What they found was fascinating. Webb detected two bright auroral bands near the planet's magnetic poles, separated by an area with much fewer ions. This dark region appears to be shaped by Uranus's wildly tilted magnetic field, which is one of the strangest in our entire solar system. The planet's magnetic axis doesn't line up with its rotation axis at all, so auroras there behave in unusual ways. The team also confirmed something scientists have suspected for decades: Uranus is cooling. The average temperature in the upper atmosphere is about 426 Kelvin, which is lower than readings from earlier spacecraft and ground-based observatories. This new three-dimensional mapping gives us insights into how ice giant planets manage energy in their upper layers, which could help us understand giant planets around other stars.
SpaceX Starlink Launch Success
Switching gears to something closer to home, SpaceX had a successful Saturday morning. A Falcon 9 rocket launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California early this morning, carrying twenty-five Starlink satellites into orbit. The mission had been delayed three times due to severe weather, but SpaceX was ready to go at just after one in the morning Pacific time. This particular booster, B1063, is becoming something of a workhorse. Today marked its thirty-first flight, which makes it the joint-second most flown booster in the SpaceX fleet. It's previously launched batches of Starlink and Starshield satellites, plus various government and scientific missions. After dropping off the payload, the booster executed a textbook landing on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You, out in the Pacific Ocean.
Artemis II March Launch Target
And finally, NASA's getting closer to sending astronauts to the moon. The space agency confirmed today that March 6th is their target launch date for Artemis II, the first crewed mission to fly around the moon in over fifty years. This comes after a successful wet dress rehearsal test on Thursday, where NASA loaded more than 700,000 gallons of liquid propellant into the Space Launch System rocket and practiced the launch countdown. The test went well enough that the Artemis II crew officially entered quarantine this afternoon in Houston. That's a roughly two-week quarantine period to keep the crew healthy before launch. Of course, NASA emphasized that this is still a test flight, and they want to make sure everything is absolutely right before sending four astronauts on this historic mission around the moon.
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Today's topics: Ghost Galaxy Discovery Today - Hubble Space Telescope discovers CDG-2, a nearly invisible galaxy made of 99% dark matter located 300 million light-years away. Scientists used globular star clusters as cosmic breadcrumbs to find this mysterious object. Uranus Atmosphere Mapped by Webb - James Webb Space Telescope reveals Uranus's three-dimensional upper atmosphere structure with auroras and unusual magnetic field effects. New measurements show the ice giant continues cooling over the past thirty years. SpaceX Starlink Launch Success - SpaceX successfully launches Falcon 9 rocket carrying 25 Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base after three weather delays. Booster B1063 achieved its 31st flight, landing safely on the OCISLY droneship. Artemis II March Launch Target - NASA confirms March 6 as the target launch date for Artemis II after successful wet dress rehearsal test. Astronauts entered quarantine following extensive fueling operations and countdown demonstrations.
Episode Transcript
Ghost Galaxy Discovery Today
Let's start with that ghost galaxy we teased. Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have confirmed the discovery of what might be one of the darkest galaxies ever found. It's called CDG-2, and it's located about 300 million light-years away in the Perseus galaxy cluster. Here's where it gets really interesting: this galaxy is almost entirely made of dark matter. We're talking 99 percent of its total mass is this invisible stuff we can't even see. To find it, researchers had to get creative. Instead of looking for starlight like they normally would, they searched for tight clusters of stars called globular clusters. Think of them like cosmic breadcrumbs leading to a hidden galaxy. The team found four of these clusters bunched together, and sure enough, there was something faint glowing around them. Using Hubble's high-resolution imaging along with the Euclid space observatory and the ground-based Subaru telescope, they confirmed they'd found something extraordinary. While CDG-2 only shines with the light of about six million suns, its globular clusters alone make up sixteen percent of all the visible light in the entire galaxy. That means the rest of it is just... dark. Scientists think gravitational interactions with other galaxies in this crowded cluster stripped away most of the normal matter that would have formed stars. This discovery opens new doors for finding other failed galaxies out there.
Uranus Atmosphere Mapped by Webb
Speaking of ground-breaking observations, the James Webb Space Telescope has just given us our first-ever three-dimensional view of Uranus's upper atmosphere. Researchers led by Paola Tiranti from Northumbria University spent about fifteen hours observing Uranus, measuring temperatures and charged particles up to five thousand kilometers above the clouds. What they found was fascinating. Webb detected two bright auroral bands near the planet's magnetic poles, separated by an area with much fewer ions. This dark region appears to be shaped by Uranus's wildly tilted magnetic field, which is one of the strangest in our entire solar system. The planet's magnetic axis doesn't line up with its rotation axis at all, so auroras there behave in unusual ways. The team also confirmed something scientists have suspected for decades: Uranus is cooling. The average temperature in the upper atmosphere is about 426 Kelvin, which is lower than readings from earlier spacecraft and ground-based observatories. This new three-dimensional mapping gives us insights into how ice giant planets manage energy in their upper layers, which could help us understand giant planets around other stars.
SpaceX Starlink Launch Success
Switching gears to something closer to home, SpaceX had a successful Saturday morning. A Falcon 9 rocket launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California early this morning, carrying twenty-five Starlink satellites into orbit. The mission had been delayed three times due to severe weather, but SpaceX was ready to go at just after one in the morning Pacific time. This particular booster, B1063, is becoming something of a workhorse. Today marked its thirty-first flight, which makes it the joint-second most flown booster in the SpaceX fleet. It's previously launched batches of Starlink and Starshield satellites, plus various government and scientific missions. After dropping off the payload, the booster executed a textbook landing on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You, out in the Pacific Ocean.
Artemis II March Launch Target
And finally, NASA's getting closer to sending astronauts to the moon. The space agency confirmed today that March 6th is their target launch date for Artemis II, the first crewed mission to fly around the moon in over fifty years. This comes after a successful wet dress rehearsal test on Thursday, where NASA loaded more than 700,000 gallons of liquid propellant into the Space Launch System rocket and practiced the launch countdown. The test went well enough that the Artemis II crew officially entered quarantine this afternoon in Houston. That's a roughly two-week quarantine period to keep the crew healthy before launch. Of course, NASA emphasized that this is still a test flight, and they want to make sure everything is absolutely right before sending four astronauts on this historic mission around the moon.
Subscribe to edition specific feeds:
- Space news
* Apple Podcast English
* Spotify English
* RSS English Spanish French
- Top news
* Apple Podcast English Spanish French
* Spotify English Spanish French
* RSS English Spanish French
- Tech news
* Apple Podcast English Spanish French
* Spotify English Spanish Spanish
* RSS English Spanish French
- Hacker news
* Apple Podcast English Spanish French
* Spotify English Spanish French
* RSS English Spanish French
- AI news
* Apple Podcast English Spanish French
* Spotify English Spanish French
* RSS English Spanish French
Visit our website at https://theautomateddaily.com/
Send feedback to [email protected]
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