Innovative fiber optic imager may soon photograph exoplanets
A new instrument that combines two high-resolution telescope techniques – adaptive optics and interferometry – has for the first time…
First pics from Chinese Moon rover Yutu
The Chinese lunar probe Chang’e-3 has successfully touched down on the Moon in the Sinus Iridum crater (also known as…
Water vapor seen gushing from Europa
The Hubble Space Telescope has discovered water vapor erupting from the south pole of Jupiter’s moon Europa. Astronomers have long…
Curiosity rover finally demystifies radiation hazards on Mars
A manned mission to Mars doesn’t just depend on overcoming technological hurdles. With no magnetic field and only a thin…
Europa report: moon’s ocean currents make life possible
A team of scientists who have been modeling the subsurface ocean on Jupiter’s moon Europa say that the ocean’s deep…
Hubble spots water on distant exoplanets
Peering into the atmospheres of planets many trillions of miles away using the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists have found the…
Comet ISON: ashes to ashes, dust to dust
After several days of continued observations, NASA scientists still don’t know whether the bright spot seen moving away from the…
“I’m back!” Comet ISON hangs on in there
\ When ISON failed to reappear after its close encounter with the Sun on Thanksgiving, NASA scientists thought it had…
Dude, where’s my comet?
Comet ISON, which was due to emerge from behind the Sun today, has failed to appear, indicating that the comet…
Thanksgiving close encounter looms for comet ISON
As the comet ISON heads toward its closest approach to the Sun tomorrow (Nov. 28), scientists have been trying to…
“Freakish” asteroid resembles rotating lawn sprinkler
Using the Hubble space telescope, astronomers have discovered a “weird and freakish object” resembling a rotating lawn sprinkler in the…
Habitable Earth-like planets? New analysis suggests there are billions
Although NASA’s Kepler space telescope is no longer functioning, astronomers examining the data it provided say they now have enough…
New titleholder for most distant galaxy hints at universe’s opaque beginnings
Newly discovered galaxy z8-GND-5296 is providing astronomers with an intriguing glimpse of what the universe was like when it was…
Distant galaxy poses astronomical puzzle
Astronomers have found the most distant gravitational lens yet – a galaxy that (as predicted by Albert Einstein’s general theory…
Water discovered in remnants of destroyed exoplanet
Astrophysicists have found the first evidence of a water-rich rocky planetary body outside our solar system in its shattered remains…
Exoplanet has its clouds mapped
NASA scientists using data from the Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes have created the first cloud map of a planet…
My god, it’s full of stars. Astronomers discover densest galaxy
Alpha Centauri, our closest neighboring star lies about 4 light years distant; now imagine as many as 10,000 stars crammed…
Inflatable antennae give micro-satellites long-range comms
The shoebox-sized satellites known as CubeSats are making space exploration cheaper and more accessible, but their size-restricted antennae have limited…
New Neptunian moon discovered by Hubble
The Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a new moon orbiting the distant blue-green planet Neptune, making a total of 14…
A blue planet where it rains glass
Astronomers making visible-light observations with the Hubble Space Telescope have deduced the actual color of a planet orbiting another star…
“Extreme” astrophysical event likely cause of mysterious radio bursts
Mysterious bursts of radio waves detected on Earth may be coming from magnetars, say the scientists who first detected them.…
Lots more habitable planets out there, thanks to clouds
‘ An intriguing new study that calculates the influence of cloud behavior on climate doubles the number of potentially habitable…
Nearby star may have 3 habitable planets
Astronomers have announced that the star Gliese 667C in the constellation of Scorpius is likely orbited by between five and…
Plastic could work as shield against space radiation hazards
xperiments carried out aboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) indicate that light plastic materials may provide sufficient radiation shielding for…
Comet smash simulations hint at life’s cosmic origins
Life on Earth could have its origins in space, say Lawrence Livermore scientist Nir Goldman and University of Ontario Institute…
Earth’s Milky Way neighborhood gets upsized
Earth resides between two major spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy in what was thought to be a smaller…
Mysterious “anti-glitch” observed in neutron star’s rotation
Astronomers using NASA’s Swift X-ray Telescope have observed a spinning neutron star suddenly slowing down, a never before seen event…
New technique for finding distant planets makes its first discovery
For the first time, astrophysicists from Tel Aviv University and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have discovered an exoplanet using…
Hubble identifies Earth-like debris in white dwarfs’ atmospheres
The Hubble Space Telescope has found the building blocks of Earth-like planets in an unlikely place: the atmospheres of a…
Giant vortex at Saturn’s north pole finally revealed
The Cassini spacecraft has provided scientists with the first close-up views of a massive hurricane-like vortex swirling around Saturn’s north…