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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.
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In the past seven days, the space community lost the first man to walk on the Moon, Curiosity began its trek to its first Mars destination, Cassini captured Saturn's changing colors, and more.
Published: August 31, 2012 |
 | Now that winter is encroaching on the planet's southern hemisphere and summer on the north, the color scheme is reversing — blue is tinting the southern atmosphere and is fading from the north.
By NASA/JPL
Published: August 31, 2012 |
 | For the first time, data of the N44 region in the Large Magellanic Cloud have allowed astronomers to distinguish between different X-ray sources produced by superbubbles.
By Chandra X-ray Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Published: August 31, 2012 |
 | The space telescope identified these actively feeding supermassive singularities across the whole sky and up to 10 billion light-years away.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: August 30, 2012 |
 | The rover is heading toward a location where three types of martian terrain intersect to find its first rock target for drilling and analysis.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: August 30, 2012 |
 | This discovery proves that more than one planet can form and persist in the stressful realm of a binary star.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: August 29, 2012 |
 | Astronomers have spotted sugar molecules in the gas surrounding a young Sun-like star.
By ESO, Garching, Germany
Published: August 29, 2012 |
 | Scientists first detected ripples in the fabric of space-time by using radio signals, but now a team of astronomers has detected the same effect at optical wavelengths.
By Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Published: August 28, 2012 |
 | The images show a scene of eroded knobs and gulches on a mountainside.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C., Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
Published: August 28, 2012 |
 | The first man to walk on the Moon during the 1969 Apollo 11 mission passed away August 25 following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: August 27, 2012 |
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In the past seven days, Curiosity began collecting data from its laser and took its first test drive on Mars, scientists find that at least some type Ia supernovae come from a recurrent nova, astronomers discovered the first evidence of a planet’s destruction by its aging star, and more.
Published: August 24, 2012 |
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The rover sent back to Earth strong, clear data from a "scour" area on the martian surface.
By Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico
Published: August 24, 2012 |
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The conclusion that there are multiple ways to make a type Ia supernova could have implications for understanding the differences seen in these “standard candles” that were used to reveal the presence of dark energy.
By University of California, Santa Barbara
Published: August 24, 2012 |
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On August 22, the rover made its first move to confirm the health of its mobility system and left its first wheel tracks on Mars.
By NASA/JPL
Published: August 23, 2012 |
 | The high-velocity winds may blow gas right out of massive galaxies.
By University of California, San Diego
Published: August 22, 2012 |
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Debris from Halley’s Comet gives birth to one of 2012’s best meteor showers.
By Michael E. Bakich
Published: August 22, 2012 |
 | The rover has begun testing the Red Planet’s weather and topsoil.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: August 22, 2012 |
 | Detailed knowledge of the interior of the Red Planet that InSight will provide will help scientists understand better how terrestrial planets form and evolve.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: August 21, 2012 |
 | The evidence indicates that the missing planet was devoured as the star began expanding into a red giant.
By Penn State University, University Park
Published: August 21, 2012 |
 | The energy from the laser excites atoms in the rock into an ionized, glowing plasma, and then Curiosity’s ChemCam analyzes it for element information.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
Published: August 20, 2012 |
 | In the past seven days, Curiosity sent color images from Gale Crater, STEREO observed one of the fastest coronal mass ejections, and the LRO spectrometer detected helium in Moon’s atmosphere, and more.
Published: August 17, 2012 |
 | Scientists say that because the Sun doesn’t have a solid surface, it should be slightly flattened.
By University of Hawaii at Manoa's Institute for Astronomy, Honolulu
Published: August 17, 2012 |
 | The telescope’s evidence for the impending merger comes from seeing an elongated structure in one of the clusters and from measuring a different age between the two.
By Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado
Published: August 17, 2012 |
 | Because helium also resides in the interplanetary background, several techniques were used to remove signal contributions from the background helium to determine the amount of helium native to the Moon.
By NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
Published: August 16, 2012 |
 | The galaxy cluster also is the most powerful producer of X-rays of any known cluster and among the most massive.
By Chandra X-ray Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
Published: August 16, 2012 |
 | Barnard 59 forms the mouthpiece of the Pipe Nebula and is the subject of this new image.
By ESO, Garching, Germany
Published: August 15, 2012 |
 | Scientists have invented a new computational approach that can accurately follow the birth and evolution of thousands of galaxies over billions of years.
By Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Published: August 15, 2012 |
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Late August nights will be the best time to see and photograph the most distant planet.
By Bill Andrews
Published: August 14, 2012 |
 | This unusually strong bout of space weather gives scientists an opportunity to observe how these events affect the space around the Sun, as well as to improve their understanding of what causes them.
By NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
Published: August 14, 2012 |
 | The images show a landscape closely resembling portions of the southwestern United States.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: August 13, 2012 |
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In the past seven days, NASA's Curiosity rover safely landed on Mars and began sending home images and data, scientists released a 3-D map of massive galaxies and distant black holes, Sir Bernard Lovell passed away, and more.
Published: August 10, 2012 |
 | This discovery may give researchers a glimpse of how the early Earth may have looked and may help them understand how plate tectonics began on Earth.
By University of California - Los Angeles
Published: August 10, 2012 |
 | The spacecraft are designed to fly and operate in the heart of the most hazardous regions of near-Earth space to collect crucial data.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: August 10, 2012 |
 | The first panoramic view is of the rover’s new home in Gale Crater.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: August 9, 2012 |
 | Scientists have found hints of a new dark matter component in our Milky Way Galaxy.
By Royal Astronomical Society, United Kingdom
Published: August 9, 2012 |
 | The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured the Curiosity rover and the components that helped it survive its landing.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: August 8, 2012 |
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With such a map, scientists can retrace the history of the universe over the past 7 billion years to get better estimates for how much of the universe is made up of these two mysterious entities.
By New York University
Published: August 8, 2012 |
 | The spacecraft’s 4.9-billion-mile cruise has included 15 trips around the Sun, a flyby of Earth, two flybys of Venus, and three flybys of Mercury.
By Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, Laurel, Maryland
Published: August 8, 2012 |
 | A group of astronomers believe these ultramassive stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud were created from the merger of lighter stars in tight binary systems.
By Royal Astronomical Society, United Kingdom
Published: August 7, 2012 |
 | Sir Bernard was the founder and first director of the University of Manchester’s Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, England.
By University of Manchester, United Kingdom
Published: August 7, 2012 |
 | Research supports a clumpy 3-D scenario of supernova explosions rather than the widely accepted bipolar explosion scenario.
By Subaru Telescope Facility, Hilo, Hawaii
Published: August 7, 2012 |
 | Scientists expect that lower-energy particles will drop close to zero when Voyager 1 finally crosses into interstellar space.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
Published: August 6, 2012 |
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Curiosity successfully touched down on Mars at 5h32m UT August 6 to end a 36-week flight and begin a two-year investigation of the Red Planet.
By NASA/JPL
Published: August 6, 2012 |
 | This mission transitions the science emphasis from the planet's water history to its potential for past or present life.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
Published: August 3, 2012 |
 | Researchers have identified a distinctive X-ray signal that comes from matter on the verge of falling into a black hole.
Published: August 3, 2012 |
 | You can expect to see up to 80 “shooting stars” per hour when 2012’s best shower peaks Saturday night, August 11/12.
By Richard Talcott
Published: August 3, 2012 |
 | This region of the Red Planet shows significant signs of ancient lakes and rivers.
By ESA, Noordwijk, Netherlands
Published: August 2, 2012 |
 | Falling from great heights, the ice reaches high speeds on Iapetus and then something odd happens — it begins to flow rather than tumble.
By Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri
Published: August 2, 2012 |
 | Descent from the top of Mars’ atmosphere to the surface will employ bold techniques enabling use of a smaller target area and heavier landed payload than were possible for any previous Mars mission.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: August 1, 2012 |
 | The seemingly tranquil galaxy NGC 1187 in Eridanus has hosted two violent events in the past 30 years.
By ESO, Garching, Germany
Published: August 1, 2012 |
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