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Leah Crane is the physics and space reporter at Â鶹´«Ã½

Leah Crane

Physics and space reporter

Bio

Leah Crane is a Senior Reporter at Â鶹´«Ã½, covering topics ranging from private space flight and cosmology to quantum mechanics. She is based in Chicago. Before joining Â鶹´«Ã½ in 2016, her work was published at SpaceNews, Eos, Smithsonian and Symmetry Magazine. She writes Â鶹´«Ã½'s space newsletter, Launchpad.

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More from Leah Crane

Explore the latest news, articles and features

While the purpose of this image was to focus on the bright star at the center for alignment evaluation, Webb's optics and NIRCam are so sensitive that the galaxies and stars seen in the background show up. At this stage of Webb?s mirror alignment, known as ?fine phasing,? each of the primary mirror segments have been adjusted to produce one unified image of the same star using only the NIRCam instrument. This image of the star, which is called 2MASS J17554042+6551277, uses a red filter to optimize visual contrast.

Space

The James Webb Space Telescope has sent back its clearest image yet

News

Artist's impression of a rare kind of stellar merger event between two white dwarf stars.

Space

Astronomers have found two unexpectedly hot stars covered in ash

News

Anna Menon, Scott Poteet, Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis

Space

SpaceX is planning its highest Dragon flight yet, with a private crew

no-section

James Webb Space Telescope just sent back its first image - of itself

Space

James Webb Space Telescope just sent back its first image - of itself

News

An artist?s impression of the white dwarf star WD1054?226 orbited by clouds of planetary debris and a major planet in the habitable zone.

Space

First hints of a planet orbiting in a white dwarf’s habitable zone

News

MOONFALL

Space

Moonfall review: Finally an apocalypse movie that’s fun to watch

Culture

Strongest ever magnetic field fails to make predicted exotic particles

Physics

Strongest ever magnetic field fails to make predicted exotic particles

no-section

Gravitational waves, vibrations in spacetime, 3D illustration; Shutterstock ID 784098298; purchase_order: -; job: -; client: -; other: -

Space

Strange gravitational wave echoes may let us probe dark matter

News

This image shows a new view of the Milky Way from the Murchison Widefield Array, with the lowest frequencies in red, middle frequencies in green, and the highest frequencies in blue. The star icon shows the position of the mysterious repeating transient

Space

A strange object in space is blasting out radio waves every 18 minutes

News

James Webb Space Telescope fired its onboard thrusters for nearly five minutes (297 seconds) to complete the final post launch course correction to Webb?s trajectory. This mid-course correction burn inserted Webb toward its final orbit around the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point, or L2, nearly 1.5 million kilometres away from Earth.

Space

The James Webb Space Telescope has arrived at its final destination

News

This picture is from ESA?s Mars Express. The bright white region of this image shows the icy cap that covers Mars? south pole, composed of frozen water and carbon dioxide. While it looks smooth in this image, at close quarters the cap is a layered mix of peaks, troughs and flat plains, and has been likened in appearance to swiss cheese.

Space

Mars 'lake' may actually be volcanic rocks buried beneath the ice cap

News

Figure 4. Pseudo-color images of all Cepheid-bearing galaxies analyzed in this work.

Space

It’s official – we don’t know how fast the universe is expanding

News

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