Astrophysics Valentines

You pulled in my heart.

Did you know the brightest star in Earth’s night sky is Sirius?

Black holes have so much gravity, they can bend light itself!

Pulsars appear to pulse because they are spinning – they have a constant beam of light that swings around as the star spins!

Love is in the air and so is the flying telescope SOFIA, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy. It carries a 2.7-meter telescope in a modified Boeing 747-SP aircraft to study the universe with infrared light that does not reach Earth’s surface.

Credit: NASA/SOFIA/Proudfit

Each of the James Webb Space Telescope's 18 beryllium mirrors is coated with a thin layer of gold to better reflect infrared light.

With its longer wavelength coverage and much greater sensitivity than Hubble, the James Webb Space Telescope will be able to study distant planets and the earliest stages of the universe.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will have 18 detectors to Hubble's one, allowing it to see 100 times as much sky.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope's enormous field of view will allow it to see large pieces of the the sky.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will increase our understanding of the nature of the universe.

Planets orbiting distant worlds are one of the targets for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.