NASA’s Kepler confirms 100+ exoplanets during its K2 mission The largest haul of confirmed planets obtained since the space observatory transitioned to a different mode of observing includes a planetary…
Category: Astronomy
Al Gore's revamped "Triana" satellite catches the Moon photobombing Earth
From NASA Goddard: NASA Camera Shows Moon Crossing Face of Earth for 2nd Time in a Year For only the second time in a year, a NASA camera aboard the…
Surface composition determines temperature and therefore habitability of a planet
Astronomers from KU Leuven, Belgium, have shown that the interaction between the surface and the atmosphere of an exoplanet has major consequences for the temperature on the planet. This temperature,…
Move over Tatooine – a planet with triple suns has been discovered
A team of astronomers have used the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope to image the first planet ever found in a wide orbit inside a triple-star system.…
A second set of gravitational waves have been detected
Readers may recall when we covered the first detection of gravitational waves from space, heralding a new era in astronomy. It was big news. Now, a second detection has been…
NASA confirms discovery of 'Tatooine' planet
Largest crowdsourced astronomy network helps confirm discovery of ‘Tatooine’ planet. Led by Lehigh University professor Joshua Pepper, team includes nearly 40 members in 10 countries across 4 continents; Measurements by…
Milky Way now hidden from one-third of humanity
From the UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER and the “I blame Edison” department. The Milky Way, the brilliant river of stars that has dominated the night sky and human imaginations since…
The morality of METI – should we broadcast to let aliens know "we're here" ?
Dr. Leif Svalgaard advises us of this paper via email. Apparently some people want to ring the “cosmic dinner bell” by broadcasting powerful radio transmissions to get the attention of possible…
Star with different internal driving force than the sun discovered
From the UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN – NIELS BOHR INSTITUTE A star like the Sun has an internal driving in the form of a magnetic field that can be seen on the…
Are we alone? A new twist on the famous Drake Equation ups the odds that we aren't
From the UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER: Are humans unique and alone in the vast universe? This question– summed up in the famous Drake equation — has for a half-century been one of…
Hubble captures birthday bubble
This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, released to celebrate Hubble’s 26th year in orbit, captures in stunning clarity what looks like a gigantic cosmic soap bubble. The object, known…
Black hole with the mass of 17 billion suns discovered
From NASA Goddard: Behemoth black hole found in an unlikely place Astronomers have uncovered a near-record breaking supermassive black hole, weighing 17 billion suns, in an unlikely place: in the…
NASA data leads to rare discovery: Earth's moon wandered off axis billions of years ago
Ancient lunar ice indicates the moon’s axis slowly shifted by 125 miles, or 6 degrees, over 1 billion years. Earth’s moon now a member of solar system’s exclusive ‘true polar…
Hubble telescope unveils never before seen 'monster stars'
An international team of scientists using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has combined images taken with the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) with the unprecedented ultraviolet spatial resolution of the…
Hubble telescope sees 13.4 billion years into the past
Hubble team breaks cosmic distance record By pushing NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to its limits, an international team of astronomers has shattered the cosmic distance record by measuring the farthest…
A first! Hubble images a distant planet 160 light years away, sees clouds
Last week it was the discovery of gravity waves, this week it’s seeing clouds on a distant planet for the first time. What an exciting time in astronomy! In a…
The detection of gravitational waves – a triumph of science enabled by fossil fuels
Last week, the science world was abuzz with the news that gravitational waves had been discovered thanks to the LIGO project and the team of international scientists that made it…
A triumph of science: first detection of the gravitational wave
Gravitational waves detected 100 years after Einstein’s prediction – video folows American University contributes to noise-reduction technology in LIGO detectors From AMERICAN UNIVERSITY For the first time, scientists have observed…
New insights into the solar magnetic dynamo
From NASA/GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER NASA: Understanding the magnetic sun The surface of the sun writhes and dances. Far from the still, whitish-yellow disk it appears to be from the…
Mysterious radio signals from space are much better test of Einstein's General Relativity
A new way to test one of the basic principles underlying Einstein’s theory of General Relativity using brief blasts of rare radio signals from space called Fast Radio Bursts is…
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