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Your online destination for news articles on planets, cosmology, NASA, space missions, and more. You’ll also find information on how to observe upcoming visible sky events such as meteor showers, solar and lunar eclipses, key planetary appearances, comets, and asteroids.
 | In space, warm gases do not rise, and molecular diffusion drives flame behavior.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: November 30, 2011 |
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This December 10 event favors those in Asia, Australia, and much of North America.
By Michael E. Bakich
Published: November 30, 2011 |
 | Theories predict that the positron signal should suddenly drop off in cosmic rays beyond a certain energy level, but researchers didn’t see the drop-off, so for now, their result is inconclusive when it comes to pointing the way to dark matter.
By Kavli Foundation, Oxnard, California
Published: November 29, 2011 |
 | By tracing gamma-ray signals throughout the galaxy, Fermi’s Large Area Telescope is helping astronomers understand the sources of cosmic rays and how they’re accelerated to such high speeds.
By NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
Published: November 29, 2011 |
 | New 3-D calculations provide insights into what happens the moment a white dwarf star transitions into a supernova.
By American Institute of Physics, College Park, Maryland
Published: November 28, 2011 |
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During a nearly two-year prime mission after landing in August 2012, the rover will investigate whether the Gale Crater region has ever offered conditions favorable for microbial life.
By NASA/JPL
Published: November 28, 2011 |
 | Observations of the region reveal a bright nebula and dozens of young stars, with at least six massive stars forming at the center.
By NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California
Published: November 23, 2011 |
 | The new image shows a planetary nebula that might be part of NGC 1846.
By STScl, Baltimore, Maryland
Published: November 23, 2011 |
 | Visualizations like these allow scientists to view the surface from different perspectives, providing a powerful tool for interpreting the geologic processes that have shaped our satellite.
By NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
Published: November 22, 2011 |
 | Curiosity will focus on geology and minerals to determine if the environment on Mars had the potential to support life, and MAVEN will try to understand from the top down how the atmosphere evolved over time.
By NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
Published: November 22, 2011 |
 | Scientists used to think that the sand on Mars was relatively immobile, so these new observations are changing their whole perspective.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: November 21, 2011 |
 | The fact that outbursts keep happening on Saturn every 20 to 30 years or so is telling scientists something about deep inside the planet, but they have yet to figure out what it is.
By CICLOPS, Boulder, Colorado, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
Published: November 21, 2011 |
 | Scientists’ have been able to reconstruct the history of Cygnus X-1 from its birth some six million years ago.
By NRAO, Socorro, New Mexico
Published: November 18, 2011 |
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This week's news featured potential liquid water on Europa, a rover ready for Mars, new information on a black hole, and more.
Published: November 18, 2011 |
 | Recycling immense volumes of hydrogen gas and heavy elements allows galaxies to build generations of stars stretching over billions of years.
By STScl, Baltimore, Maryland
Published: November 18, 2011 |
 | Cluster has shown that narrow shocks may be vital to kick-starting the acceleration process in exploding stars, young stars, black holes, and whole galaxies.
By ESA, Noordwijk, Netherlands
Published: November 17, 2011 |
 | This information could bolster arguments that Europa’s global subsurface ocean represents a potential habitat for life elsewhere in our solar system.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: November 17, 2011 |
 | Some researchers argue that galaxies’ magnetic fields guide and direct the condensation of interstellar matter to form denser clouds and facilitate their further collapse.
By Max Planck Institute, Garching, Germany
Published: November 16, 2011 |
 | The APEX telescope provides a new view of star formation in the Craina Nebula, where interactions occur between young stars and their parent molecular clouds.
By ESO, Garching, Germany
Published: November 16, 2011 |
 | Scientists think the volcano emptied its magma chamber during eruptions, and, as the lava ran out onto the surface, the volcano collapsed, forming a large caldera.
By ESA, Noordwijk, Netherlands
Published: November 15, 2011 |
 | The test results exceeded the precision required to detect the enigmatic ripples in the fabric of space and time predicted by Albert Einstein.
By ESA, Noordwijk, Netherlands
Published: November 15, 2011 |
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Astronomy's Out-of-this-world Award recognizes excellence in astronomy outreach. The winning group receives $2,500 to put toward their public programming.
By Bill Andrews
Published: November 14, 2011 |
 | Lutetia seems to have originated not in the main belt of asteroids, where it is now, but much closer to the Sun.
By ESO, Garching, Germany
Published: November 14, 2011 |
 | The 1-ton rover will examine Gale Crater during a nearly two-year mission.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: November 14, 2011 |
 | The first stars were definitely massive, but not to the extreme that scientists previously thought.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
Published: November 11, 2011 |
 | Simulations indicate that Jupiter might have pushed a smaller gas giant planet out of the solar system early in its history.
By Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, Texas
Published: November 11, 2011 |
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This week's news featured dark-matter-dominated dwarf galaxies, a gas giant ejected from the solar system, an asteroid close encounter, and more.
Published: November 11, 2011 |
 | Astronomers believe this rapid star birth represents an important phase in the formation of dwarf galaxies, the most common galaxy type in the cosmos.
By Hubble ESA, Garching, Germany
Published: November 10, 2011 |
 | The gas clouds are too diffuse to form stars and show virtually no signs of containing any metals.
By W. M. Keck Observatory, Kamuela, Hawaii
Published: November 10, 2011 |
 | Recent analyses of Moon rocks, as well as orbital measurements of the magnetization of the lunar crust, suggest that there was a strong, long-lived magnetic field on the Moon early in its history.
By University of California - Santa Cruz
Published: November 9, 2011 |
 | Scientists claim that a component of gravity called the “scalar gravitational field” may be the force behind the release of energy that causes the massive star to finally explode.
By the Science and Technology Facilities Council, United Kingdom
Published: November 9, 2011 |
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The famed November meteors return for their yearly light show, albeit somewhat subdued by the Moon’s glare.
By Bill Andrews
Published: November 8, 2011 |
 | Tracking of the asteroid began at 12:30 p.m. EST November 4, with an additional four hours of tracking planned each day November 6–10.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: November 8, 2011 |
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The aircraft-carrier-sized body will pass slightly closer than the Moon's orbit but will have no effect on our planet.
By NASA/JPL
Published: November 7, 2011 |
 | Astronomers set out looking for dwarf galaxies around Andromeda to help them understand how matter relates to dark matter.
By University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Published: November 7, 2011 |
 | Under the right conditions, dust surrounding certain stars could hold greater potential for life than most of their sibling suns.
By Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York
Published: November 7, 2011 |
 | Scientists suggest future generations of telescopes could look for the change in light from an exoplanet as one half reaches night and employs artificial light.
By Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Published: November 4, 2011 |
 | Using the observations, scientists were able to measure the diameter of the disk and plot how hot it is at different distances from the center.
By Hubble ESA, Garching, Germany
Published: November 4, 2011 |
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This week's news featured a super-energetic millisecond pulsar, a near-Earth asteroid heading for a flyby of our planet, a "3-D" view of Stephan's Quintet, and more.
Published: November 4, 2011 |
 | Its extreme gamma-ray luminosity implies that it is the youngest millisecond pulsar discovered to date and that its magnetic field is much larger than previously predicted by pulsar recycling theories.
By Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, Bonn, Germany, Max Planck Society, Munich, Germany
Published: November 3, 2011 |
 | This finding has implications about whether life existed on Mars and how its atmosphere has changed.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: November 3, 2011 |
 | The new results indicate that some galaxies were already rich in heavy elements less than two billion years after the Big Bang.
By ESO, Garching, Germany
Published: November 2, 2011 |
 | To learn about the star-forming regions in the galaxy group and their structure, observers used an extremely narrow band filter.
By Subaru Telescope Facility, Hilo, Hawaii
Published: November 1, 2011 |
 | The company envisions the first missions carrying astronauts to the International Space Station, possibly as soon as 2015.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: November 1, 2011 |
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