gear Push settings
Astronomers usually classify stellar objects by a spectra going from hotter to cooler, using the letters O, B, A, F, G, K, and M. As observational technology progressed and a myriad of new astronomical findings were made, in the last 15 years alone two new classes L and T emerged designed to describe ultracool brown […]
It’s one of the most emotional and disturbing space stories I have ever read; the Soviet cosmonaut is on the phone with Alexsei Kosygin, one of the highest officials, and he is crying because he knows he will die. Kosygin is crying to, because he too knows there is no hope. As Vladimir Komarov is […]
Romantics and astronomy aficionados alike (much of the same aren’t they?) will rejoice as this Saturday a rare spectacle of the moon will occur when it will come around closest its been to the Earth in 18 years! Much like planetary movement, Earth natural satellite movement is an ellipse, meaning it has points where its […]
As reported earlier on Thursday morning, the Messenger NASA spacecraft was scheduled for an evening jump into Mercury’s orbit through a tricky maneuver which involved a “burn” – essentially “riding its brakes” by firing its main thruster – to slow the spacecraft enough to be captured by Mercury’s gravity. At 8:45 p.m. ET, the procedure […]
On Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, precipitations under the form of methane has scientists staggered. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, through the use of its infrared camera, detected signs of heavy spring rain of the highly flammable liquefied natural gas sprinkling across vast fields of dunes near Titan’s equator. “They see for the very first time evidence of […]
After a six year journey in which it traveled over 6 billion miles, the Messenger spacecraft is finally anticipated to enter Mercury’s orbit in a tricky maneuver which is scheduled today, which should mark the first man-made object to orbit the tiny planet. The goal of the mission is to provide scientists with data on […]
A lot of critics are raving towards the end of the space exploration age, as aerospace budgets get ever thinner, shuttle programs get retired or the fact that the lunar surface has remained unscratched by human hand for years and years. Where governments might fail, however, one can always put faith in the ever much […]
Junk is not only limited to our planet, we have a problem with space pollution as well. In 1978, a brilliant NASA researcher named Donald Kessler predicted that a collision between two pieces of space junk could trigger a cascade of further impacts, which would create a significant quantity of debris which would then cause […]
The process of starbirth is a beautiful yet violent one; newborn stars spew material into the surrounding gas, creating surreal photos, often with glowing bulbs, arcs or streaks. This kind of picture is always spectacular, and ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) managed to catch quite a few of them on camera, delighting astronomers and the […]
Amidst all the stuff that’s going on for NASA right now, they can still find the resources to strike a $753 million deal with Russia for 12 round trips to the International Space Station, paying about $63 million a seat. “It’s an 8.5 percent annual increase,” NASA spokesman Josh Bluck told Space.com, referring to the […]
As a consequence of last Friday’s devastating earthquake near the coast of Japan, the nation’s most powerful recorded earthquake to date actually since it began archiving results in the late 1800, scientists have assessed that the Earth axis has tilted by a few inches and that the chronological day has been shortened by a millionth […]
The Opportunity Rover is one brave little guy – he managed to defeat even the most optimistic of predictions, functioning several years after its primary objective was fulfilled. But now, he is little more than a bluish speck on this picture of the Santa Maria crater on the surface of Mars, taken by the Mars […]
It’s been quite a while since we published anything about the Cassini mission, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been active. The information it keeps sending back to Earth is priceless, and at some points, totally surprising. This was also the case of the Saturn Moon Enceladus, which appears to give out much more heat […]
The joint exploration by NASA and ESA, encompassing joint efforts from the American and European space agency seemed like a dream come true for astronomers from both sides. Especially after the European side designed and started building the Mars Rover, everything appeared to go in the right direction. But the issues NASA is facing at […]
They came from Mars; they invaded our planet billions of years ago. But they were small, and came with rocks instead of spaceships. At least that’s what Christopher Carr from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) thinks. He claims that sheltered within meteorite rocks, microbial Martians could have survived the cold dark space, and make […]
As I told you yesterday, the Discovery shuttle is preparing for a well deserved retirement, after 365 days spent in space, during which it traveled more than 150 million miles. All systems are go for landing at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, thus concluding its 13th and final mission. The shuttle left the International Space Station […]
When launched in 1984, Discovery was top notch; it was the best available around, and only the third operational orbiter; now, after 3 flights, over five thousand orbits and no less than 365 days spent in space, during which it traveled 150 million miles Discovery left the International Space Station (ISS) for the last time; […]
In case you have no idea who Carl Sagan is… well, you should, basically. Carl Sagan is one of those men who brought science to the people, making numerous fields such as astronomy, astrophysics, exobiology, and many, many more accessible for the masses. He published more than six hundred research papers and popular science works, […]
Two days ago, the whole world was teeming with excitement, after some NASA researchers reported finding traces of alien life in meteorites; now, even their employer distances itself from them, and the whole scientific world seems to frown upon this work. However, in what is a very unusual move, NASA has denied any involvement with […]
NASA is going through a whole lot during period: discussions about budget cuts, problems with launches, even with Hubble, and many, many more smaller or bigger problems are denting one of the finest organizations in the world. But a pair of costly satellite crashes mean dealt an even more severe blow to the space agency, […]
Whenever Boeing and NASA team up, you can bet your sweet lasers something wicked is going to happen; actually, the first logical thing that would come to mind is a space plane – and this is what they did. The US X-37B is now in orbit, after a successful launch that took place without any […]
Wherever it’s possible, life finds a way; the old saying seems to be more and more actual these days, with NASA and other space agencies reporting interesting discoveries that point towards life existing in many more other places other than our own planet. After rewriting the biology books with the arsenic eating microbe, NASA researchers […]
Yes, you’ve read that right. There are over 50 billion planets in our galaxy alone, according to the Kepler telescope, scientists now estimate that not only there are over 500 bilion planets in the galaxy, but that there are over 500 million life-cable planets out there as well. These numbers obviously come from Nasa’s own […]
As we were telling you recently, the biggest solar flare in the last 4 years is upon us, and while this doesn’t pose any direct danger for us, but the flare is making an impact throughout the world. Radio communications were disrupted, especially in China, but concern was generated everywhere throughout the world. However, experts […]
On Monday the sun fired up an X class solar flare, the most powerful of its kind, the effects of which are expected to be felt by us today (Thursday) and tomorrow (Friday), and are expected to last somewhere between 24 and 48 hours. This may lead to disruptions in radio communications, interfere with satellites […]
First of all, there’s no need to panic; solar blasts can cause geomagnetic perturbances, but they pose no direct danger for humans or any other inhabitants of our planet in a direct manner. The biggest such flare in the past four years erupted on Monday, and it’s sending jets of charged particles that will reach […]
After six years of loneliness, this Valentine’s day was the charm for one of the veteran comet-chasing spacecrafts. As Stardust briefly met with the comet nicknamed Tempel 1, the spacecraft took dozens of pictures of the comet’s icy surface; but this was no random encounter – the purpose of it was to see how a […]
After months of anticipation, three death defying astronauts set foot on Mars; well, actually, in a dark sand-filled room designed specifically to simulate walking on Mars. The explorers make up half of the team behind the Mars500 mission, a project started with the goal of showcasing the psychological effects a walk on the red planet […]
Earlier today Obama’s administration budget plan for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was proposed to $18.7 billion, at the same amount as in 2010, and puts predominance towards science research, exploration and commercial flight development. The $18.7 billion funding layout is $300 million less than the draft budget approved for 2011 in the NASA […]
The nebula you are looking at is known as the North American nebula, and the pictures were taken with the Spitzer telescope, using an infrared vision; researchers still have some unanswered questions about the group of massive stars thought to be dominating the nebula. The lower left of this first image shows the “baby” stars […]
In 2004, NASA researchers identified the Apophis asteroid and after some quick calculations they states there is a chance the asteroid will hit our homey planet in 2029. A few observations and some other calculations later, they explained that that chance is extremely small for 2029, as well as other years to come. However, reports […]
Forget the Moon – for the first time ever we have a full view of the star in our solar system, as can be seen from images recently released by NASA. The pictures of the Sun were taken with the STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory). The goal of the project is to monitor movements of […]
The Goldilocks area is one of the most interesting for astronomers throughout the known Universe, as it has great hope for finding planets similar to our Earth. The Kepler 10b planet is not the most hospitable one you could think of: located some 560 million light years away from our planet, and with a surface […]
There’s been a whole lot of fuss lately, and you guys have also been writing a lot of emails about Betelgeuse turning supernova. I wrote about Betelgeuse and the odds of it going supernova, as well as the damage it would do a while ago, but there’s no harm in doing it again. We are […]
I’m gonna be honest with you – I didn’t see ‘2012’; honestly, I tried to. I started watching it two times, but it was just too stupid – and not the kind of funny stupid, the kind that just takes all the pleasure of watching (if you have a slight idea about what they’re saying […]
The strangest meteor shower one can observe every year is almost upon us. Geminids is the only meteor shower that isn’t caused by a passing comet, but rather by an asteroid; the meteors are slow moving and pretty bright, making them a perfect target not only for astronomy afficionados, but for everybody who want’s to […]
As I was telling you before, NASA got everybody hyped when they announced a big conference on the topic of finding alien life; of course everybody’s mind started flying to aliens and ET and all that, but more realistic people realized that something like this is extremely unlikely. However, pretty much everybody was shocked when […]
A new study suggests that a blunder of cosmic proportions has been made when estimating the total number of stars in the universe; the research points out that a specific kind of galaxy has 10 times more red dwarf stars than previously estimated. This would not only triple the number of stars throughout the universe, […]
NASA has excited pretty much everybody’s mind when they announced a press conference for today on the topic of extraterrestrial life and their recent findings in the field. “NASA will hold a news conference at 11 a.m. PST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of […]
Despite the obvious differences, Venus has a lot in common with our Mother Earth, and we can learn a lot from our neighboring planet that can be really useful in the future; such is the case with the high-altitude layer of sulphur dioxide discovered by ESA’s Venus Express. This was a mystery that caused quite […]
It’s not hard to think what the purpose of the ‘Eavesdropper’ is; this mammoth of the US National Reconnaissance Office (portraied below) has launched what is officially the biggest satellite ever sent into uter space. It has a military purpose, but there really are no surprises here. The spacecraft was put into orbit on a […]
As any traveler surely knows, it’s always cheaper if you travel one way; especially if you go to Mars. Recently, two renowned scientists made a proposal that startled the whole scientific community: one way trips to Mars. The whole purpose would be to colonize the planet faster and more economically, pretty much in the way […]
JAXA, the Japanese space agency is becoming more and more active these days, as Japanese researchers are getting involved in more and more ambitious projects. Recently, a probe they sent out returned home with grains of dust gathered from an asteroid, a feat without precedent in history. The finding could provide valuable insight into the […]
That’s right people, all the life on this beautiful planet (yep, that includes you) could descend from alien zombies. Well, this is indeed a slight imagination leap, but what I’m talking about are viruses; dead viruses, to be more exact. Dead viruses who contained information, enough information to pave the way for lifeforms to appear. […]
Researchers have confirmed the presence of a previously undiscovered structure located in the center of the Milky Way, a discovery likened with the discovery of a new continent on Earth, in terms of scale. Doug Finkbeiner, an astronomer at Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who discovered the structure using NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray […]
An asteroid threat to Earth seems like something we are going to have to face, sooner or later – and people are starting to aknowledge this fact; take Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart for example. He is among a group of people that are championing the need to be prepared in case of such an […]
Tuesday at 6:51 a.m. EDT (1051 GMT) a small asteroid dubbed TD54 passed the Earth dangerously close, above a section of Southeast Asia by Singapore, being at its closest 28,000 miles from our blue planet. The asteroid, 2010 TD54 was first discovered on October 9th, by scientists in Arizona at a NASA-sponsored lab. A few […]
One of the most intense Cold War fronts, and probably the only one to actually provide mankind a monumental legacy, was the so called space race. Each of the behemoth nations battled each other for space supremacy for decades raising hopes for millions of people as to someday the stars may belong to man and […]
When early galaxies formed, there was a surprisingly high rate of new stars being formed, which was explained by major galactic collisions; however, recent evidence suggests that in fact the answer is much simpler, and not nearly as violent. Astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile have observed three ancient galaxies […]
After an exciting discovery of a habitable earth-like planet, skepticism settles back in as a second team of scientists casts some doubt on the claim. Nicknamed Gliese 581 g, the planet in case stirred up the scientific world, promising to be the holy graal of exoplanets after it was discovered by Steven Vogt of the […]
