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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.
 | Astronomers are keen to understand the secret of the youthful appearance of certain stars in globular clusters.
By ESO, Garching, Germany
Published: October 31, 2012 |
 | The scientists now know that the dust is mineralogically similar to basaltic material, with significant amounts of feldspar, pyroxene, and olivine.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: October 31, 2012 |
 | New simulations show that the Large Magellanic Cloud is stealing stars from the Small Magellanic Cloud.
By Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Published: October 30, 2012 |
 | The parents of type Ia could be a binary star made up of a white dwarf and an M dwarf.
By McDonald Observatory at University of Texas, Austin
Published: October 30, 2012 |
 | The giant planet puts on its best appearance of 2012 around December 2.
By Liz Kruesi
Published: October 29, 2012 |
 | The study suggests that Fomalhaut b is a rare and possibly unique object that is completely shrouded by dust.
By NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
Published: October 29, 2012 |
 | These stars are thought to have once belonged to galaxies before violent mergers stripped them away.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: October 29, 2012 |
 | The ability to return frozen samples is a first for this flight and will be tremendously beneficial to the station's research community.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: October 29, 2012 |
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This celestial visitor is suddenly bright enough for amateur astronomers to spot.
By Michael E. Bakich
Published: October 26, 2012 |
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In the past seven days, VISTA scientists released the largest-ever catalog of the Milky Way's central stars, NASA's NuSTAR captured its first X-ray view of the Milky Way's black hole during the middle of a flare-up, astronomers uncovered a surprising trend in galaxy evolution,
and
more.
Published: October 26, 2012 |
 | The storm’s discharge sent the temperature of Saturn’s stratosphere soaring and coincided with a huge increase of ethylene gas.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: October 26, 2012 |
 | Astronomers have found an elliptical galaxy that may have been puffed up by the actions of one or more black holes in its core.
By STScl, Baltimore, Maryland
Published: October 26, 2012 |
 | What surprised the researchers is how completely the dust is shrouding starlight within the galaxy — none of the starlight seems to be leaking out from around the quasar.
By NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
Published: October 25, 2012 |
 | The host galaxy is of a type not expected to harbor a supermassive black hole, suggesting that this black hole, while related to its supermassive cousins, may have a different origin.
By Chandra X-ray Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
Published: October 25, 2012 |
 | This gigantic data set is a major step forward for understanding our home galaxy.
By ESO, Garching, Germany
Published: October 24, 2012 |
 | These data will help scientists better understand why our black hole sometimes flares up for a period of time.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: October 24, 2012 |
 | Centaurus A is the first elliptical galaxy to be found hiding a gassy spiral in its center.
By Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Published: October 23, 2012 |
 | A supercomputer simulation suggests that some of the cloud G2 will survive the event, although its surviving mass will be torn apart, leaving it with a different shape and questionable fate.
By Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California
Published: October 23, 2012 |
 | Scientists thought disk galaxies in the nearby universe had settled into their present form by about 8 billion years ago, but they have found that the galaxies were steadily changing over this time period.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C., NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
Published: October 22, 2012 |
 | The Mars rover is analyzing its first dirt sample to determine what minerals it contains.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
Published: October 22, 2012 |
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In the past seven days, scientists found a planet in the star system nearest to Earth, analysis from a martian rock touched by Curiosity showed that it resembles some unusual rocks from Earth's interior, astronomers were able to study a dark matter filament in 3-D for the first time,
and
more.
Published: October 19, 2012 |
 | Thanks to observations by INTEGRAL, high-energy X-rays from radioactive titanium-44 in supernova remnant 1987A have been detected for the first time.
By ESA, Noordwijk, Netherlands
Published: October 19, 2012 |
 | Such galaxies display a ring of stars, dust, and gas extending tens of thousands of light-years along an orbit nearly perpendicular to the main disk, although scientists are unsure of their formation.
By Gemini Observatory, Hilo, Hawaii
Published: October 19, 2012 |
 | In the giant impact scenario, the Moon forms from debris ejected into an Earth-orbiting disk by the collision of a smaller protoplanet with the early Earth.
By Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, Texas
Published: October 18, 2012 |
 | Wide belts of the atmosphere are changing color, hotspots are vanishing and reappearing, and clouds are gathering over one part of Jupiter while dissipating over another.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
Published: October 18, 2012 |
 | If the mass of the studied filament is representative of those throughout the universe, then these structures may contain more than half of all the mass in the cosmos.
By Hubble ESA, Garching, Germany
Published: October 17, 2012 |
 | The observations extended over more than four years using the HARPS instrument and have revealed a tiny signal from a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B every 3.2 days.
By ESO, Garching, Germany
Published: October 17, 2012 |
 | Images from the Cassini spacecraft reveal new features that resemble a giant hot cross bun and shorelines of ancient seas.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
Published: October 17, 2012 |
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Astronomy's Out-of-this-world Award recognizes excellence in astronomy outreach. The winning group receives $2,500 to put toward their public programming.
By Michael E. Bakich
Published: October 16, 2012 |
 | The planet was first identified by citizen scientists participating in Planet Hunters, a Yale-led program that enlists the public to review astronomical data from NASA's Kepler spacecraft for signs of planets.
By Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
Published: October 16, 2012 |
 | WISE has shown that the two packs of Trojans are strikingly similar and do not harbor any interlopers from other parts of the solar system.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
Published: October 16, 2012 |
 | Two space telescopes have observed the resultant winds of a binary system crashing together to create a “Rosetta Stone” for such events.
By ESA, Noordwijk, Netherlands
Published: October 15, 2012 |
 | The rock resembles some unusual rocks from Earth's interior. By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: October 15, 2012 |
 | New research shows that water-related hydroxyl is widespread in lunar materials and mostly came from the solar wind implantation of protons.
By University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Published: October 15, 2012 |
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In the past seven days, SpaceX began its first cargo supply mission with the International Space Station, astronomers discovered an unexpected spiral structure in the material around a red giant star, NASA's Swift satellite spotted a rare bright X-ray nova,
and
more.
Published: October 12, 2012 |
 | The resulting X-ray images of these dying stars are shedding light on binary star astrophysics and stellar wind interactions.
By Rochester Institute of Technology, New York
Published: October 11, 2012 |
 | Investigation of a small, bright object thought to have come from the rover may resume between the first and second scoop.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
Published: October 11, 2012 |
 | The SpaceX Dragon cargo ship marks a milestone for the first commercial resupply mission to reach the International Space Station.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: October 10, 2012 |
 | Astronomers for the first time have discovered an unexpected spiral structure in the material around a red giant star.
By ESO, Garching, Germany
Published: October 10, 2012 |
 | New Herschel observations of a cold prestellar core in the constellation Taurus are the first detection of water vapor in a molecular cloud on the verge of star formation.
By ESA, Noordwijk, Netherlands
Published: October 9, 2012 |
 | Bright X-ray novae, which indicate the presence of a black hole, are so rare that they’re a once-a-mission event, and this is the first one Swift has seen.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C., NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
Published: October 8, 2012 |
 | SpaceX will fly at least 12 cargo missions to the space station through 2016.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: October 8, 2012 |
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In the past seven days, astronomers discovered two stellar-mass black holes in globular cluster M22, researchers spied a surprisingly cold region high in the Venus' atmosphere, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope narrowed down the rate of the universe's expansion,
and
more.
Published: October 5, 2012 |
 | The finding could help scientists prove Albert Einstein’s theory of how black holes warp space and time.
By University of California - Los Angeles
Published: October 5, 2012 |
 | Mineral analysis can reveal past environmental conditions while chemical analysis can check for ingredients necessary for life.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: October 5, 2012 |
 | The Spitzer Space Telescope data brings down the uncertainty of the expansion rate to just 3 percent.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: October 4, 2012 |
 | For the first time, researchers have determined the composition of the dust in the cold outskirts of the Beta Pictoris system.
By ESA, Noordwijk, Netherlands
Published: October 4, 2012 |
 | In order to improve the orbital models for the martian moon, researchers have developed a new technique that compares images taken by Mars Express.
By ESA, Noordwijk, Netherlands
Published: October 3, 2012 |
 | The scientists didn’t find the intermediate-mass black hole they were looking for, but instead found something very surprising — two smaller black holes in the cluster.
By NRAO, Socorro, New Mexico
Published: October 3, 2012 |
 | The region high in the planet’s atmosphere is frostier than any part of Earth’s, despite Venus being much closer to the Sun.
By ESA, Noordwijk, Netherlands
Published: October 2, 2012 |
 | Scientists know that many quasars have structures of fast-moving gas caught up in quasar winds, and now they know that those structures can regularly disappear from view.
By Sloan Digital Sky Survey Press Office in Baltimore, Maryland
Published: October 2, 2012 |
 | Opportunity has begun investigating the site’s concentration of small spherical objects reminiscent of, but different from, the iron-rich spheres nicknamed “blueberries” at the rover’s landing site.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
Published: October 1, 2012 |
 | The nature and diversity of the progenitor star or progenitor system of core-collapse supernovae is an important and open question in the field of astrophysics.
By University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Japan
Published: October 1, 2012 |
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