This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Most of us could spend our entire lives looking at the night sky and see very few changes. The moon becomes more or less illuminated, the planets drift placidly through the sky, satellites and the ISS intrude for a few moments at a time, and the bright, momentary streak of a meteor punctuates the occasional evening of stargazing.
If we're really lucky, we get a chance to witness one of the prominent comets: a regular visitor like Halley's Comet, or a once-in-several-millennia comet like Hale-Bopp. A very small number of us might be truly fortunate and witness a distant supernova. But the apparent uneventfulness of the night sky is an illusion, even for those with a typical backyard telescope.
It's the result of a selection bias based on our ability to see only visible light. The reality of the night sky is much different. Calamitous and transient events are nearly continuous, if you have the right eyes to see.
Many astronomical phenomena, like stellar flares and exploding stars, only reveal themselves fully in ultraviolet (UV) light, which is beyond our ability to see without technological help. Soon we'll have a new space telescope that sees exclusively in UV. NASA has announced that UVEX, the UltraViolet EXplorer, will launch in 2031.
The UVEX mission, which will be led by Caltech, will perform an all-sky survey in near- and far-ultraviolet light. "UVEX is a bold leap forward in our exploration of the ultraviolet universe," said Caltech President and professor of astronomy Ray Jayawardhana. Light across all wavelengths, from radio to gamma rays, floods our universe.
We can only really understand what's creating all of the light if we can see all of the light. UVEX will fill a gap in our observations by providing an all-sky survey in UV that will complement surveys by other telescopes like the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, the Vera Rubin Observatory and the ESA's Euclid Space Telescope. When most people think of telescopes and space telescopes, they likely imagine powerful telescopes that can see long distances, bringing exquisite views of distant objects into view.
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