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Researchers working with the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii have made a stunning discovery: they found evidence of water clouds around a brown dwarf. Since its discovery, the brown dwarf known as WISE 0855 has fascinated astronomers. It lies just 7.2 light-years from Earth and it’s the coldest confirmed object outside of our solar system at temperatures ranging […]
Thirsty, anyone?
Life on Titan? It's a good bet.
It's enthralling, but creepy.
This is some scary stuff.
It's one of the strangest experiment ever devised, and it may very well revolutionize science.
A faint, blue galaxy 30 million light years away from Earth could help us understand the conditions from the birth of the Universe. Nicknamed "The Little Lion", the galaxy contains the lowest level of heavy chemical elements ever observed in a system of stars - meaning its make-up is similar to what was happening directly after Big Bang.
Despite its demotion from the planet status, Pluto continues to surprise us. As we receive more and more information from the Deep Horizons mission, we’re understanding more and more what a complex system Pluto really is – just like a planet. The latest example comes in the form of an unexpected interaction with the solar […]
It's a paradigm shift.
NASA released a new set of images of Ceres - and they're a sight to behold.f
NASA astronauts have discovered a lonely planetary-like mass floating on its own, without a solar system. Imagine a galaxy, riddled with countless solar systems. Then zoom in slowly on a solar system – how do you picture it? There’s probably a star at the center, and several planets around it. That’s generally where we feel […]
We don’t give it a lot of through, but things in space are generally round. Not the Red Rectangle though – this nebula is… well, rectangular. According to NASA, this is actually a binary star system. The stars at its center are similar to the Sun, but they are reaching the end of its lifetime […]
A few years ago, the Cassini spacecraft made a surprising discovery: there are geysers erupting on Saturn’s moon Enceladus, spewing water and ice to great heights. However, the process which causes these geysers remained unknown or controversial. Now, scientists at the University of Chicago and Princeton University have pinpointed a mechanism through which Saturn’s tidal forces […]
Astronomers have discovered a new species of galaxies in the cosmic wilderness.
Ceres is the largest body in the asteroid belt – too big to really be an asteroid, but too small to be a planet, it’s trapped in the “minor planet” classification. But Ceres might be much more interesting than other similar bodies, with its mysterious bright spots being a constant source of amazement. We’ve written […]
When the MESSENGER spacecraft found carbon rich material on Mercury, researchers were surprised and couldn't quite explain the source. Now, they believe that the material may be the remnants of a primordial graphite crust, which would also explain why Mercury looks darker than expected.
As NASA’s New Horizons shuttle zoomed past Pluto, it snapped awesome photos not only of the “ex-planet”, but also of its moons. Now researchers are analyzing those pictures and reporting surprising finds – such as an ancient ocean on Charon, Pluto’s moon. Too big for its skin? The side of Pluto’s largest moon viewed by […]
New data provided by the New Horizons mission showed that water ice on Pluto is much more common than we thought.
It may be possible to observe the presence of an advanced alien civilization by the effects produced if that civilization were to self-destruct through nuclear war, biological warfare, nanotechnological annihilation, or stellar pollution. Each case would generate unique detectable signs that could be identified by earth-based telescopes.
The star was observed for the first time in June, but it's still radiating massive amounts of energy, making it shine 570 billion times stronger than our Sun.
You can't be an advanced civilization until you have a planetary defense office - and it sounds incredibly awesome no matter how you look at it.
The New Horizons shuttle has finished its Pluto flyby months ago, but NASA is continuing to receive breathtaking photos from it. The latest additions paint a ‘lava lamp’ surface on Pluto’s surface, likely a sea of nitrogen close to Pluto’s Sputnik Planum. Astronomers knew that Sputnik Planum was an icy plain, irregular and segmented by […]
The Milky Way has been around for at least 13.7 billion years, but it has its younger and older areas.
Fresh discoveries made by the Kepler mission remind us that there's a myriad of potentially habitable planets just waiting to be discovered.
Many ancient civilizations made astronomical notes, but according to researchers, this is the earliest historical document of naked eye observations on a variable star – Algol. Variable stars are stars with a varying brightness (as seen from Earth), and they probably held a special place in Egyptian astronomy – they made careful notes on these […]
It’s the closest Earth-like planet we’ve ever discovered: Wolf 1061c lies in the habitable zone, joining a very elite list of rocky planets that could host life. The planet, reported in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, is one of the three planets found by astronomers around a small red dwarf star called Wolf 1061 in the constellation Ophiuchus. […]
The Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) is probably celebrating right now, as their Akatsuki orbiter reached Venus on December 7. The first time JAXA tried to do this in 2010, they failed because the engine malfunctioned, and the shuttle didn’t enter the Venusian orbit. Aimlessly wandering into space without its main engines, the spacecraft appeared doomed […]
A team of Argentinian astronomers, peering up in the night's sky from the Astronomical Observatory of Córdoba has found a new, young lithium-rich giant star that they designated KIC 9821622. And they can't explain where that lithium comes from.
Astronomers describe that the present-day tilt of the Moon is likely a result of collision-free encounters of the early Moon with small planetary bodies.
NASA released a stunningly colorful new image of the dwarf planet Pluto, the latest in a series of images that steadily trickle down from the New Horizons probe since it left the solar system this July. And it's not only eye candy either; the features this picture reveals has left the smart guys at the agency scratching their heads.
Just like predicted, astronomers observed a flare ejected out of a black hole... but they don't know exactly why.
It's a remarkable landmark for the International Space Station (ISS) - it's been successfully orbiting the Earth for 15 years.
It was exciting at first when Russia announced that six female astronauts would live in a spacecraft in Moscow for eight days, but it went downhill fast.
For the first time, astronomers have detected primordial oxygen gassing out from a comet
True to its name, comet Lovejoy is having a stellar party, releasing large amounts of ethanol, the same type of alcohol found in terrestrial alcoholic beverages.
About 160,000 light-years away, two stars are overlapping in what could be poetically described as an explosive catastrophic kiss.
Where are all the Earth-like planets? Well, they haven't formed yet!
It's likely not aliens, but it could be - and it's really, really strange.
Just as the Moon is causing waters on Earth to go up and down (tides), so too does the Earth affect the Moon. Recently, researchers have found that our planet's gravitational pull is having a deep effect on our satellite, opening new cracks and faults on its surface.
A few days ago, we were telling you about some spectacular features on Ceres, the dwarf planet / largest object in the asteroid belt. NASA's astronomers were puzzled by some white patches on Ceres' surface, which they initially presumed to be ice. Now, they believe those patches are actually salt.
NASA's New Horizons shuttle wasn't only taking mind blowing photos of Pluto, it was also peeking at Pluto's moons, especially Charon - the largest one. The latest set of images analyzed by NASA researchers revealed quite a busy past, filled with violence and geologic activity.
At the European Planetary Science Conference in Nantes, France, NASA presented some spectacular maps and observations about Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt, and the largest of the minor planets within the orbit of Neptune. Astronomers analyzed data coming from the Dawn spacecraft, which entered orbit around Ceres on 6 March 2015.
Two days ago, NASA made a spectacular announcement: they found liquid water on Mars, confirming suspicions and clues from years ago. But while they make a compelling case for the water, it would still be better to examine it on the spot, except there's a slight problem with that: NASA can't immediately investigate the water on-site, using the Curiosity rover or anything else, because it's bound by international treaties.
Although we've yet to discover life forms on any other planet, astronomers are confident that not only we'll be able to discover alien life, but we'll be able to chart its spread through the Universe.
The Cassini shuttle, that has been in Saturn’s orbit since 2004, took some spectacular images of the rather elusive moon, along with geophysical measurements. A crater-riddled, icy landscape covers Saturn’s moon Dione, but that doesn’t take away anything from its charm. Though it’s nowhere near as famous as some of Saturn’s other moons – especially Titan – […]
Mars is now a cold and dry place, but it wasn't always like this - the Red Planet used to have a lot of water on its surface. Now, researchers have discovered one of the very last places where (potentially habitable) liquid water existed on Mars.
In its most recent flyby, NASA’s Cassini space probe discovered some strange red streaks on Tethys – one of Saturn’s 62 known moons. “Like graffiti sprayed by an unknown artist, unexplained arc-shaped, reddish streaks are visible on the surface of Saturn’s icy moon Tethys. As the Saturn system moved into its northern hemisphere summer over the […]
If you do something "once in a blue moon", that's really rare - once every 2 or 3 years, to be more exact. There's no exact pattern for blue moons, sometimes they grace us with their presence sooner, and sometimes it takes more time. It's been about three years since we had the last one, and it will be another three before we have the next one: the blue moon comes on Friday.
Planet Kepler-452b, the first near-Earth-size world to be found in the habitable zone of star that is similar to our Sun. This extremely exciting announcement was made by NASA today; while this doesn't mean that the planet is inhabited, it does mean that it has many of the characteristics that our own Earth-Sun system have, and the odds of it hosting life seem significant.
OK, we all know New Horizons zoomed past Pluto, took some breathtaking pictures and then called back home to tell us everything’s fine. But let’s switch our attention a bit and focus on Charon – Pluto’s Moon that’s just as mysterious as its name implies. Charon is the largest of the five known moons of the […]