SETI Institute

Join us on TODAY, May 28, at 2:30 PM PT for the next episode of , hosted by Dr. Lauren Sgro, featuring special guest Dr. Adam C. Schneider (United States Naval Observatory).

What happens when hundreds of thousands of volunteers team up with NASA to explore the sky? In the case of Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, thousands of new brown dwarfs.

NASA citizen scientists have helped discover more than 3,000 brown dwarfs, effectively doubling the known population of these mysterious objects over the past decade. These discoveries are helping astronomers better understand the boundary between planets and stars, revealing rare ultra-cool worlds, extreme T subdwarfs, and even brown dwarfs that may host aurorae.

Lauren and Adam will discuss how citizen scientists made these discoveries, why brown dwarfs are so difficult to detect, and what this growing catalog is teaching us about our galactic neighborhood.

Bring your questions for the live Q&A: https://www.facebook.com/events/2124577351443751/

: The Impressive Rays of Mercury's Hokusai Crater

This mosaic of images taken on Oct. 6, 2008, by NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft shows an impact crater on Mercury named Hokusai. The crater has an impressive system of rays that extends more than about 1,000 kilometers across the planet. Rays form when something impacts the surface of a celestial body. Material is kicked up from beneath the surface and thrown outward from the crater.

Mercury and other airless planetary bodies are constantly bombarded by micrometeoroids and energetic ions, producing a process known as space weathering. Craters with bright rays are thought to be relatively young because the rays are still visible, indicating they have had less exposure to weathering than craters without rays. Hokusai crater is named for Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849).

Credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Carnegie Science

: Ghostly Cloud Alive with Star Formation

While this eerie NASA Hubble Space Telescope image may look ghostly, it’s actually full of new life! Lupus 3 is a star-forming cloud about 500 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius. Bright T Tauri stars shine at the left, bottom right, and upper center, while other young stellar objects dot the image.

Protostars are considered T Tauri stars when their enveloping cloud of gas and dust dissipates from radiation and stellar winds; they’re usually less than 10 million years old and vary in brightness, both randomly and periodically, due to the environment and nature of a forming star.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and K. Stapelfeldt (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), with image processing credited to Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

NASA volunteers have helped discover more than 3,000 new brown dwarfs, effectively doubling the known population of these elusive objects.

Join us May 28 at 2:30 PM PT for SETI Live as host Lauren Sgro welcomes Adam C. Schneider to discuss how citizen scientists made these discoveries through NASA’s Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project.

Together they’ll explore:

✨ What brown dwarfs are—and why astronomers study them
🔭 How citizen scientists discovered thousands of them
🌌 What these objects reveal about the boundary between planets and stars
🪐 What these findings tell us about our galactic neighborhood

Bring your questions for the live Q&A.

📅 May 28
🕝 2:30 PM PT
https://www.facebook.com/events/2124577351443751/

Every day, remarkable things happen overhead: meteors, satellites, drones, atmospheric events, and sometimes phenomena we cannot yet explain. Too often, they are captured as blurry videos with missing context — or not captured at all.

SkyMapper Inc. is launching SkySphere, an AI-powered all-sky observatory designed to continuously monitor and analyze the sky in real time. Built for citizen scientists, educators, researchers, observatories, and skywatchers, SkySphere combines wide-sky imaging, edge AI, scientific metadata, and cryptographically secured records, enabling events to be detected, documented, and studied with confidence.

The SETI Institute is supporting this effort because better sky observations mean better data — for science, education, and discovery. SkySphere is more than a camera. It is a step toward a citizen-powered global network of trusted sky monitoring.

Help bring SkySphere to Life on Kickstarter:

SkySphere: Building an Intelligent All-Sky Camera Network Real-time sky monitoring powered by intelligent cameras and continuous, trusted observational data.

: Martian South Pole

This is the highest-resolution view of the water ice-rich south polar cap of Mars captured by NASA’s Psyche mission after it made its close approach with the planet for a gravity assist. The image scale is around 1.14 kilometers per pixel. The cap itself extends across more than 700 kilometers. The image was acquired with Imager A on May 15, 2026, at about 1:53 p.m. PDT.

With Mars in the rearview mirror, the spacecraft will soon resume use of its solar-electric propulsion system to make a beeline to the main asteroid belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. When it arrives in August 2029, it will insert itself into orbit around the asteroid Psyche, which is thought to be the partial core of a planetesimal, a building block of an early planet.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

An unforgettable night of sci-fi, mystery, and big questions awaits. ✨

Experience with the SETI Institute on June 12 at Cinemark Century 16 in Mountain View, California. Enjoy a private screening, popcorn and drink combo, and a post-film Q&A conversation with a SETI Institute scientist after the credits roll.

Tickets available at https://disclosureday.eventbrite.com

This is an in-person event, and a ticket purchase is required. Seating is limited.

: Crystal Ball Nebula

NGC 1514, nicknamed the Crystal Ball Nebula, is showcased in this enchanting image captured by Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on the Gemini North telescope, located on Maunakea in Hawai‘i. Gemini North is one half of the International Gemini Observatory, partly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and operated by NSF NOIRLab.

German–British astronomer William Herschel discovered the Crystal Ball Nebula in 1790. It’s located in the constellation Ta**us, near the border of Perseus. While, culturally, crystal balls are known for divining the future, the Crystal Ball Nebula provides us with a snapshot of the final stages of a star’s life from long ago. It sits around 1500 light-years from Earth. This means the light captured in this image left its source around 1500 years ago, traveling across the Universe before finally reaching Gemini North.

Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA; Processing: J. Miller & M. Rodriguez (International Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab), T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF NOIRLab), D. de Martin & M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab)

If you missed the 2026 — or just want to relive it — the recording is now available. Dr. Lori Marino on cetacean cognition, the next generation of SETI scientists, the Great Recognition, and an evening that reminded us why this work matters.

Watch here: https://youtu.be/Hc-cy8fjWvA

: A Lyrid From Orbit

The Expedition 74 crew on the International Space Station turned into meteor chasers as Earth passed through a cloud of dust and small debris left behind by comet Thatcher in 1861.

ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot set up a camera to automatically record thousands of images in the hope of catching a shooting star, an elusive event that often lasts only a fraction of a second.

“In scientific terms, a shooting star is actually a meteor: a tiny fragment of rock or dust from space that disintegrates as it enters Earth’s atmosphere, after traveling astronomical distances. For those with their heads full of dreams, seeing a shooting star often feels like the perfect moment to make a wish… just in case!” says Sophie.

Credit: NASA/ESA – S. Adenot

This month’s newsletter explores evolving ideas of life across art, astrobiology, and speculative futures. We are excited to announce the six nominees for the inaugural Speculative Life BioArt residency, a new initiative examining questions surrounding genetics, identity, bioengineering, and the infrastructures that sustain life itself. These themes also resonate in Xin Liu’s newly unveiled work at the 61st Venice Biennale, where dissolving sculptural forms made from woven post-consumer plastics imagine speculative ecologies shaped by microbial transformation. Across exhibitions, workshops, and publications, SETI AIR artists continue to challenge how we define life and our relationship to planetary systems.

Clear skies,
Bettina

Read more: https://www.seti.org/news/seti-air-newsletter-may-2026/

SETI AIR Newsletter - May 2026 This month’s newsletter explores evolving ideas of life across art, astrobiology, and speculative futures. We are excited to announce the six nominees for the inaugural Speculative Life BioArt residency, a new initiative examining questions surrounding genetics, identity, bioengineering, and the i...