Latest images of Ceres show detail of bright spot
New images of the dwarf planet Ceres, taken from 2,700 miles above by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, show the surface of…
Niacin: the vitamin from outer space
Niacin, or vitamin B3, could have been delivered to Earth by carbon-rich meteorites, say NASA researchers, whose findings support a…
Water vapor plumes observed erupting from dwarf planet
The Herschel space observatory has used its far-infrared capabilities to capture a clear spectral signature of water vapor venting from…
“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…
Ancient asteroid caused global firestorm on Earth
A new analysis of conditions after a Manhattan-sized asteroid slammed into Mexico in the dinosaur era indicates the event triggered…
Extinction of dinosaurs a given thanks to fragility of their ecosystem
A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the ecological structure of dinosaur communities…
Double whammy dinosaur extinction theory
Widely credited to have wiped out the dinosaurs, the giant asteroid that smashed into the Yucatán Peninsula 65 million years…
Milky Way’s black hole in asteroid feeding frenzy
The X-ray flares that are observed on a daily basis from the giant black hole at the center of the…
Discovery of asteroid water hints at oceans’ origins
Scientists from the University of Central Florida (UCF) have detected a thin layer of water ice and organic molecules on…
Hayabusa Touchdown!
Since our last update on JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) plan to collect samples from an asteroid and bring them…
New Asteroid Threat Scale Launched
An MIT professor has worked with astronomers to revise the scale used to assess the threat of asteroids and comets…