Earth is the Most Exotic Place In The Universe
I'm often asked by students in my community education astronomy classes whether any new elements have been found in outer…
Astrophoto: Paint the Sky with Clouds
Here’s a great – and beautiful! – example of what you can do with image stacking. Manoj Kesavan, an avid…
A New Look at the Horsehead Nebula for Hubble’s 23rd Anniversary
Here’s the iconic Horsehead Nebula as we’ve not seen it before. As the Hubble team so poetically puts it, the…
How Micrometeoroid Impacts Pose a Danger for Today’s Spacewalk
Video streaming by Ustream Our very own International Space Station is in the cosmic crosshairs. As cosmonauts are to begin…
Habitable Worlds? New Kepler Planetary Systems in Images
The Kepler mission has discovered two new planetary systems that include three super-Earth-size planets in the "habitable zone," the range…
Bright Blazar’s Emission Defies Explanations
When it comes to sheer wattage, blazars definitely rule. As the brightest of active galactic nuclei, these sources of extreme…
Kepler Team Finds System with Two Potentially Habitable Planets
This might be the most exciting exoplanet news yet. An international team of scientists analyzing data from NASA's Kepler mission…
Astronomers Hint that our Sun won’t Terminate as the Typical Planetary Nebula
Textbooks often cite that planetary nebulae (PNe, plural) represent an endstate for lower-mass single stars. But conversely, recent research suggests…
Incredible Demonstration of Fluid Dynamics in Zero-G
The first thing I want to know is where we can get the cool, compacted NASA washcloths. But this new…
Rise of the PhoneSats
Satellites can now fit in the palm of your hand. Known as Cubesats, several of these tiny but cost-effective payloads…