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Astronomy & Space

Martian Rivers and Lakes

Martian Rivers and Lakes

Giant cracks that crisscross to form polygons have been imaged on the floors of hundreds of Martian impact craters by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Scientists have been aware of them for years, but assumed they resulted from the expansion and ...

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Hubble Captures Rare Jupiter Collision

Hubble Captures Rare Jupiter Collision

Recently, the world’s largest telescopes have been aimed towards Jupiter. The reason: observing a new, unexplained expanding spot on the giant planet, caused by the impact of a comet or an asteroid. The spot, which is changing from day to ...

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Unraveling Saturn Rings

Unraveling Saturn Rings

In this simulated image of Saturn’s rings, color is used to represent information about ring particle sizes in different regions based on the measured effects of three radio signals. Three simultaneous radio signals of 0.94, 3.6 and 13 centimeter wavelength ...

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How Saturn’s Moon Got Its Stripes

How Saturn’s Moon Got Its Stripes

Researchers from the University of Melbourne have revealed the origins of tiger stripes and a subsurface ocean on Enceladus, one of Saturn’s many moons. In addition to explaining these geological features, the study sheds light on the evolution of planets ...

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Mars In Your Window

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope snapped this picture of Mars within a day of its closest approach to Earth. A large regional dust storm appears as the brighter, redder cloudy region in the middle of the planet’s disk. This storm, which ...

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New Method for Discovering Extrasolar Planets

New Method for Discovering Extrasolar Planets

Researchers at the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias in Tenerife have captured spectroscopic information from light passing through the Earth’s atmosphere during a lunar eclipse that could greatly enhance our ability to discover extrasolar planets. This so-called “transmission spectrum analysis” ...

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Herschel Delivers Its First Images

Herschel Delivers Its First Images

The European Space Agency (ESA) has launched the Herschel Telescope about a month ago; recently, it started delivering its first images. The pictures taken are of higher quality than most space images, allowing astronomers to improve their study of nearby ...

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Tunguska Mystery Solved

Tunguska Mystery Solved

Researchers from Cornell University have confirmed that the mysterious Tunguska explosion was caused by a comet. In 1908, this explosion levelled 830 square miles of the Siberian forest. Now the new findings have been validated, strangely enough by the exhaust ...

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Ulysses’ Farewell

Ulysses’ Farewell

The European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA have shut down Ulysses, one of the longest serving solar orbiters in history. Ulysses was the pioneer spacecraft to chart the space area above and below the poles of the Sun. Clocking in ...

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Milky Way’s Particle Accelerators

Milky Way’s Particle Accelerators

Researchers from the Astronomical Institute at Utrecht University have been observing the Milky Way’s particle accelerators. Using data from NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory and European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope, the researchers have determined that cosmic rays from our ...

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