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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 two probes are currently in the heliosheath — the outer ring of our solar system that features a magnetic froth no spacecraft has ever encountered before.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
Published: April 29, 2011 |
 | This is the first time scientists have been able to catch an asteroid fragment just weeks after the smash-up, long before the evidence fades away.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: April 28, 2011 |
 | The first generations of massive stars in the universe are already dead, but their chemical imprints still exist in the oldest stars in our galaxy.
By Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics, Potsdam, Germany
Published: April 28, 2011 |
 | The latest Chandra results support that a white dwarf pulls material from a “normal,” or Sun-like, companion star until a thermonuclear explosion occurs.
By Chandra X-ray Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Published: April 27, 2011 |
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Debris from Halley’s Comet gives birth to an impressive sky show during May’s first week.
By Richard Talcott
Published: April 26, 2011 |
 | The crew will deliver a particle physics detector to the station, which will help researchers study the formation of the universe.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: April 26, 2011 |
 | Massive stars in small galaxies undergo more-powerful explosions than stars of a similar heft in larger galaxies because low-mass galaxies tend to have fewer heavy atoms than their larger counterparts.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
Published: April 25, 2011 |
 | As the tilt of the Red Planet’s axis increases, frozen carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere and swells its mass.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: April 22, 2011 |
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Outbursts are often considered to be an important part of the process by which a young star acquires its final mass.
By McDonald Observatory at University of Texas, Austin
Published: April 22, 2011 |
 | The data collected improves scientists’ understanding of the interaction between the planet and its moons.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: April 21, 2011 |
 | Researchers found that the difference in temperature between a rapidly spinning star’s equator and poles is much less than the old theory predicts.
By University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Published: April 21, 2011 |
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A gravitational tug-of-war has warped the spiral shape of NGC 3169 and fragmented the dust lanes in its companion, NGC 3166.
By ESO, Garching, Germany
Published: April 21, 2011 |
 | Scientists uncover data showing the stripping of a more massive galaxy, leaving a smaller remnant behind.
By Royal Astronomical Society, United Kingdom
Published: April 20, 2011 |
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The newly released image shows a large spiral galaxy with a disk that is distorted into a rose-like shape by the gravitational tidal pull of the companion galaxy below it.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: April 20, 2011 |
 | Scientists found that the active region that flared contained five newly emerged sunspots.
By Royal Astronomical Society, United Kingdom
Published: April 20, 2011 |
 | Scientists for the first time have been able to compare the evolution of the coronal mass ejection structure as it races toward Earth.
By Royal Astronomical Society, United Kingdom
Published: April 19, 2011 |
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The solar satellites’ cameras have already uncovered 122 new eclipsing binaries.
By Royal Astronomical Society, United Kingdom
Published: April 19, 2011 |
 | The results also indicate Pluto’s atmosphere reaches a height of 2,000 miles (3,000 kilometers).
By Royal Astronomical Society, United Kingdom
Published: April 19, 2011 |
 | There is now tantalizing new evidence that a magnetosphere exists around WASP-12b.
By Royal Astronomical Society, United Kingdom
Published: April 18, 2011 |
 | Conventional simulations of the evolution of the universe predict that the most massive galaxies should have at least tripled in size over the past 9 billion years.
By Royal Astronomical Society, United Kingdom
Published: April 18, 2011 |
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Scientists predict radio telescopes could detect an aurora from a Jupiter-like world orbiting at large distances from its star.
By Royal Astronomical Society, United Kingdom
Published: April 18, 2011 |
 | Amateur astronomers captured asteroid 2011 GP59 when it was 2,100,000 miles (3,400,000 km) distant.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
Published: April 15, 2011 |
 | The connection between filaments and star formation was once unclear, but now scientists can actually see stars forming like beads on strings.
By ESA, Noordwijk, Netherlands
Published: April 14, 2011 |
 | These conceptual tools have allowed researchers to solve the mystery behind the gravitational kick of a merged black hole at the center of a galaxy.
By California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Published: April 14, 2011 |
 | Scientists find that new stars within the stellar nursery NGC 3582 produce the fiery display, not the dying stars.
By ESO, Garching, Germany
Published: April 13, 2011 |
 | Decisions of locations made with American public in mind.
Published: April 13, 2011 |
 | Most near-Earth asteroids have eccentric orbits, but this new object is different.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
Published: April 12, 2011 |
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Even with a gibbous Moon in the sky, patient observers should catch some of 2011’s Lyrid meteor shower.
By Michael E. Bakich
Published: April 12, 2011 |
 | The newly discovered galaxy indicates that these star cities were forming about 200 million years after the Big Bang.
By Hubble ESA, Garching, Germany
Published: April 12, 2011 |
 | Recent studies of Titan's interior conducted by geophysicists and gravity experts weaken the possibility of volcanoes on Titan.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
Published: April 11, 2011 |
 | Finding a merged black hole would allow theorists to explore a new regime of Einstein's general theory of relativity.
By Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Published: April 11, 2011 |
 | The merger of neutron stars actually produces an ultra-strong magnetic field structured like the jets needed for a gamma-ray burst.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: April 8, 2011 |
 | Astronomers believe the unusual blast likely arose when a star wandered too close to its galaxy's central black hole.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: April 8, 2011 |
 | By Iowa State University, Ames
Published: April 7, 2011 |
 | A pair of white dwarfs is on a collision path, and they will merge to create a single, new star.
By Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Published: April 7, 2011 |
 | The discovery of low-temperature sulfide minerals is important for our understanding of how comets formed — which in turn tells us about the origin of the solar system.
By University of Arizona-Tucson
Published: April 6, 2011 |
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Scientists believe some kind of communication is going on between the two jets to cause the delay, likely carried by sound waves.
Published: April 5, 2011 |
 | The Square Kilometer Array will be capable of answering some of the most fundamental questions about the universe, understanding dark energy, general relativity in extreme conditions, and how the universe came to look the way it does now.
By the Science and Technology Facilities Council, United Kingdom
Published: April 4, 2011 |
 | Subtle oscillation patterns allow scientists to classify red giants by age, so they will be able to compare the fraction of stars that are at the different stages of evolution in a way they couldn't before.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: April 4, 2011 |
 | Space missions have traced telltale ripples in the rings of Saturn and Jupiter back to collisions with cometary fragments.
By Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
Published: April 1, 2011 |
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