Robotic laser astronomy on the rise
The world's first robotic laser adaptive optics system, developed by a team led by University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa astronomer Christoph Baranec, will soon find a new home at the venerable 2.1-meter...
View ArticleHow dung beetles navigate
Researchers got right into the brains of dung beetles to find out how they use celestial cues such as the sun, the moon and the polarisation pattern of skylight to navigate their dung balls along...
View ArticleWho owns space? US asteroid-mining act is dangerous and potentially illegal
An event of cosmic proportions occurred on November 18 when the US congress passed the Space Act of 2015 into law. The legislation will give US space firms the rights to own and sell natural resources...
View ArticleWhat to look for when buying a telescope
I'm often asked what inspired me to become an astronomer, and I explain that a pivotal moment for me was stargazing through my grandfather's telescope.
View ArticleFrom microchips to moon rocks—how the world depends on counting atoms
What do ancient artefacts, fragments from celestial bodies, microchips and gunshot residue have in common? Their innermost secrets can all be unveiled with the same method. Rutherford backscattering...
View ArticleNASA's Stardust sample return was 10 years ago last week
It was less than an hour into the new day of January 15, 2006 (EST), when tens of thousands of miles above our planet, two cable cutters and two retention bolts fired, releasing a spring which pushed a...
View ArticleWhat makes a planet, a planet?
A ninth planet? Astronomer Rob Cockcroft has heard it all before.
View ArticleFixing the faults in our stars
The number 2016 divided by 4 equals 504, exactly – with no remainder, which makes the year 2016, like the upcoming years 2020, 2024 and 2028 (and beyond), a leap year. We will get an "extra" day,...
View ArticleWhen dung beetles dance, they photograph the firmament
The discovery that dung beetles use the light of the Milky Way to navigate in the world has received much praise. Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have now taken a new step in understanding the...
View ArticleDecoding light for clues about dark matter
An international team of researchers is developing an instrument that will decode the light of the night sky to understand the nature of dark matter.
View ArticleSaturn at opposition 2016
They're back. After a wintertime largely devoid of evening worlds, the planets are once again in the evening sky. First Jupiter, then Mars have crossed opposition over the past few months, and now...
View ArticleClose encounter between Mars and Earth
Mars and Earth got unusually cozy Monday night, drawing closer to each other than they have in more than a decade.
View ArticleScientists detect most distant signs of oxygen in the universe
Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) detected a clear signal from oxygen in a galaxy located 13.1 billion light-years away from us. This is the most distant oxygen...
View ArticleAstronaut John Glenn's historic flight plan sold for $67K
In-flight instructions used by astronaut John Glenn during his historic 1962 Mercury spaceflight have been sold at auction.
View ArticleScientists model destruction of an Earth-bound asteroid
Researchers at Tomsk State University (Russia) and colleagues are developing measures to protect the Earth from potentially dangerous celestial bodies. With the help of the supercomputer SKIF Cyberia,...
View ArticleEurope's comet chaser gets final commands to end its mission
Europe's comet-chasing space probe Rosetta has received its last commands putting it on course to crash-land on the icy surface of the alien world it's been following for more than a decade.
View ArticleCan you buy land on the moon?
Have you ever heard that it's possible to buy property on the moon? Perhaps someone has told you that, thanks to certain loopholes in the legal code, it is possible to purchase your very own parcel of...
View ArticleDetour via gravitational lens makes distant galaxy visible
Never before have astrophysicists measured light of such high energy from a celestial object so far away. Around 7 billion years ago, a huge explosion occurred at the black hole in the center of a...
View ArticleVirtual Milky Way
ESA's Gaia is surveying stars in our Galaxy and local galactic neighbourhood in order to build the most precise 3D map of the Milky Way and answer questions about its structure, origin and evolution.
View ArticleImage: False-colour view of galaxy M81
An important part of studying celestial objects is understanding and removing the background noise.
View ArticlePresumed young star turns out to be a galactic senior citizen
49 Lib, a relatively bright star in the southern sky, is 12 billion years old rather than just 2.3 billion. For many decades, researchers were stumped by conflicting data pertaining to this celestial...
View ArticleMinor planet named Bernard
A minor planet in the solar system will officially be known as Bernardbowen from today after Australian citizen science project theSkyNet won a competition to name the celestial body.
View ArticleWith Astronomy Rewind, citizen scientists bring zombie astrophotos back to life
A new citizen-science project will rescue tens of thousands of potentially valuable cosmic images that are mostly dead to science and bring them fully back to life. Called Astronomy Rewind, the effort,...
View ArticleImage: Gaia satellite sky scan
This may look like a brightly decorated Easter egg wrapping, but it actually represents how ESA's Gaia satellite scanned the sky during its first 14 months of science operations, between July 2014 and...
View ArticleJupiter and the theory of relativity blamed for course changes of celestial...
In the case of solar system bodies passing close to the sun, there are two important effects playing a crucial role in the orbital evolution. One of the effects is from the general relativity and the...
View ArticleImage: X-ray sources in XMM-Newton's second slew catalogue
This colourful, seemingly abstract artwork is actually a map of our Galaxy, depicting all the celestial objects that were detected in the XMM-Newton slew survey between August 2001 and December 2014.
View ArticleTelescope design promises to revolutionize amateur astronomy
The SETI Institute and French startup Unistellar announced a partnership today to commercialize a new telescope that promises to deliver an unparalleled view of the cosmos to amateur astronomers, and...
View ArticleTurbulence in planetary cores excited by tides
Veritable shields against high-energy particles, planets' magnetic fields are produced by iron moving in their liquid core. Yet the dominant model for explaining this system does not fit the smallest...
View ArticleNew Hubble Gallery features objects from popular not-a-comet Messier catalog
In a nod to the global amateur astronomy community, as well as to any space enthusiast who enjoys the beauty of the cosmos, the Hubble Space Telescope mission is releasing its version of the popular...
View ArticleBronze Age artifacts used meteoric iron
You may already be surprised to hear there are iron objects dating back to the Bronze Age, but their meteorite origin is even more astonishing. Though meteorites had already been recognized as one...
View Article