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Your online destination for news articles on planets, cosmology, NASA, space missions, and more. You’ll also find information on how to observe upcoming visible sky events such as meteor showers, solar and lunar eclipses, key planetary appearances, comets, and asteroids.
 | The Virus-W spectrograph will help astronomers understand how stars and gas move, which in turn will help them better understand how stars form.
By McDonald Observatory at University of Texas, Austin, Max Planck Institute, Garching, Germany
Published: January 28, 2011 |
 | GeMS, the next-generation adaptive optics system, allows relatively wide-field imaging at extremely high resolution over an exceptionally large portion of the sky.
By Gemini Observatory, Hilo, Hawaii
Published: January 27, 2011 |
 | By piecing together signatures of the gases and dark debris produced by impact shock waves, a team of scientists was able to deduce that the object was more likely a rocky asteroid than an icy comet that hit Jupiter.
By NASA/JPL
Published: January 27, 2011 |
 | The study pushed the limits of Hubble’s capabilities and revealed evidence of a rapid build-up of early galaxies.
By University of California - Santa Cruz
Published: January 26, 2011 |
 | A new 3-D imaging technique reveals the velocity field of a youthful feature in an old star close to death.
By Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, Bonn, Germany
Published: January 26, 2011 |
 | Infrared images from WISE are important for shedding new light on Zeta Ophiuchi.
By NASA/JPL
Published: January 25, 2011 |
 | The spacecraft’s data revealed 11 new moons and two new rings around the icy planet.
By NASA/JPL
Published: January 24, 2011 |
 | NASA will refrain from sending commands from Earth to the Opportunity during the upcoming solar conjunction, which can disrupt radio transmissions.
By NASA/JPL
Published: January 21, 2011 |
 | Glory will help scientists understand the influence of aerosols on the energy balance of our planet.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: January 21, 2011 |
 | Data from the mission will provide important new information on how Jupiter-family comets evolved and formed.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: January 20, 2011 |
 | Scientists show that black hole growth is mostly connected to the formation of the galaxy bulge and not to dark matter.
By Max Planck Institute, Garching, Germany
Published: January 20, 2011 |
 | Despite its familiarity and closeness, there is still much to learn about this stellar nursery.
By ESO, Garching, Germany
Published: January 19, 2011 |
 | Scientists reported the discovery of an excess of the left-handed form of a common Earth amino acid in samples of meteorites that came from carbon-rich asteroids.
By NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
Published: January 19, 2011 |
 | Scientists will use the data to deduce how often tiny meteorids bombard the saturnian moon’s surface, among other things.
By NASA/JPL
Published: January 18, 2011 |
 | Improved accuracies in the long-term total solar energy record mean improved estimates of the Sun's influence on Earth's climate.
By American Geophysical Union, Washington, D.C.
Published: January 18, 2011 |
 | The new findings provide important observational indicators for testing different theoretical models of how the orbits of planetary systems have evolved.
By Subaru Telescope Facility, Hilo, Hawaii
Published: January 17, 2011 |
 | Probing a galaxy's dust structure serves as an important diagnostic tool for astronomers, providing invaluable information on how gas and dust collapse to form stars.
By STScl, Baltimore, Maryland
Published: January 17, 2011 |
 | What's unique about the WISE view of M81 and M82 is that we can see both galaxies in one shot, and we can really see their differences.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
Published: January 14, 2011 |
 | M82 is a starburst galaxy where stars are forming at rates that are tens or even hundreds of times higher than in a normal galaxy.
By Chandra X-ray Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Published: January 14, 2011 |
 | Supernovae currently offer the best way to measure dark energy because they are visible across intergalactic space.
By Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Published: January 13, 2011 |
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Once thought to be the steadiest high-energy source in the sky, the nebula has experienced an intensity decline in X-ray emission of about 7 percent over 2 years.
By Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
Published: January 13, 2011 |
 | COSMOS-AzTEC3, the most distant massive proto-cluster known, is also one of the youngest.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: January 13, 2011 |
 | The enormous mass of M87, 6.6 billion Suns, is the largest ever measured for a black hole using a direct technique.
By McDonald Observatory at University of Texas, Austin
Published: January 13, 2011 |
 | The findings will help astronomers make more precise measurements of the size, age, and expansion rate of our universe.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
Published: January 13, 2011 |
 | These black-hole pairs provide astronomers a glimpse into how these behemoths and their host galaxies merge.
By California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Published: January 12, 2011 |
 | The airborne infrared observatory shows detailed structures in the clouds of star construction.
By NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California
Published: January 12, 2011 |
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Although cosmology results won’t be ready for another 2 years, initial results include observations of specific objects in our Milky Way, as well as more distant galaxies.
By NASA/JPL
Published: January 12, 2011 |
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The space telescope has uncovered star birth in a region of Hanny’s Voorwerp that faces the spiral galaxy IC 2497.
By STScl, Baltimore, Maryland
Published: January 11, 2011 |
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Red dwarfs can unleash powerful eruptions that may release the energy of more than 100 million atomic bombs.
By STScl, Baltimore, Maryland
Published: January 11, 2011 |
 | This image will provide many opportunities for new scientific discoveries in the years to come.
By Sloan Digital Sky Survey Press Office in Baltimore, Maryland
Published: January 11, 2011 |
 | Scientists think the antimatter particles formed in a terrestrial gamma-ray flash, a brief burst produced inside thunderstorms and associated with lightning.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: January 11, 2011 |
 | A black hole a million times more massive than the Sun in a star-forming dwarf galaxy is a strong indication that supermassive black holes formed before the buildup of galaxies.
By NRAO, Socorro, New Mexico
Published: January 10, 2011 |
 | Gas expulsion from the center of a galaxy could be one of many mechanisms that help gas-rich star-forming galaxies evolve into the gas-poor “red and dead” galaxies.
By University of California, Berkeley
Published: January 10, 2011 |
| Scientists believe the flares were caused by supercharged electrons of up to 10 trillion electron volts.
By SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Meno Park, California
Published: January 10, 2011 |
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Measuring 1.4 times the size of Earth, Kepler-10b is the smallest planet ever discovered outside our solar system.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: January 10, 2011 |
 | Research indicates that the Moon’s core contains a small percentage of light elements such as sulfur, echoing new seismology research on Earth that suggests the presence of light elements – such as sulfur and oxygen — in a layer around our own core.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C., Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
Published: January 7, 2011 |
 | Scientists believe that given the large number of atmospheric jets on the Sun, and the amount of material in the jets, if even some of that hot plasma stays aloft, it would make a contribution to coronal heating.
By NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
Published: January 7, 2011 |
 | Scientists discover a cosmic chunk in space that originated from deep inside the third-largest asteroid.
By Max Planck Institute, Garching, Germany
Published: January 6, 2011 |
 | Two observatories combine forces to show the Andromeda Galaxy in a new light.
By ESA, Noordwijk, Netherlands
Published: January 6, 2011 |
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Kathryn Aurora Gray spotted the supernova January 2 from an image taken on New Year’s Eve by a telescope belonging to family friend.
By Royal Astronomical Society of Canada
Published: January 6, 2011 |
 | Astronomers are using VISTA’s telescope to scour the Milky Way's central regions for variable objects and to map its structure in greater detail than ever before.
By ESO, Garching, Germany
Published: January 5, 2011 |
 | Other phenomena such as instabilities within galaxies, collisions of molecular clouds, or tidal disruption by other galaxies flying by must be to blame.
By Hubble ESA, Garching, Germany
Published: January 5, 2011 |
 | The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly instrument on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory shows magnetic structures and dynamics that scientists have never seen before on the Sun.
By Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Published: January 4, 2011 |
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The two inner planets shine brightly before dawn as they reach their peaks during January’s first half.
By Richard Talcott
Published: January 3, 2011 |
 | Image scans of all 108 of the external tank’s support beams revealed four small cracks on three beams on the side opposite the shuttle.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: January 3, 2011 |
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