Latest science news in Astronomy & Space
Monster Black Hole Spins at Half the Speed of Light
For the first time, astronomers have directly measured how fast a black hole spins, clocking its rotation at nearly half the speed of light.
Curiosity rover captures spectacular Martian mountain snapshot
Like any good tourist, NASA's rover Curiosity apparently couldn't resist the photobug urge from a gorgeous Martian mountain scene she happened by recently and decided to pull over and enjoy...
Wow! The Most Amazing Images in Science This Week
Egyptian mysteries, Google and polar bears and springtime wonders are just a few of our favorite images this week.
Storms Bringing Needed Rains to California Seen From Space
New images from space reveal the storms that are bringing much needed rains to California. Though the storms will help, they won't make much of a dent in the historic...
Northern lights visit southern UK
Rare sightings of aurora borealis as far south as Essex and Jersey, with grand displays in Scotland and north-east England• Did you spot the northern lights? Send us your images• The northern...
Fat or flat: Getting galaxies into shape
Astronomers have discovered what makes some spiral galaxies fat and bulging while others are flat discs — and it’s all about how fast they spin. The researchers found that fast-rotating...
When A Black Hole Shreds A Star, A Bright Flare Tells The Tale
How accurately can you simulate the universe's most violent events? Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz wanted to find out, so when the first detailed observations of a star being ripped apart by a black...
Name a Red Planet crater for $5
Naming landmarks on the red planet isn't for scientists anymore
Boeing unveils self-destructing smartphone
Boeing unveils a smartphone that appears to come straight from a James Bond spy movie
8 Science Fiction Movies to Watch in 2014
From a murderous alien to a rip in spacetime, 2014 is jam-packed with movies for space geeks of all kinds. Here are eight space movies to check out during your...
Star cluster hurtles through space with tremendous speed
A compact ball of hundreds of thousands of stars has just shot out of the galaxy M87 at millions of kilometers per hour, astronomers report. It is the first hypervelocity...
Spacewatch: Planet hunting with Plato
The European Space Agency's Cosmic Vision programme for future scientific space missions was extended last week with the announcement that the Plato planet-finding probe is to be built and targeted for launch in...
Distant asteroid revealed to be a complex mini geological world
After 8 years of observations, scientists from the SETI Institute have found an exotic orbit for the largest Trojan asteroid, (624) Hektor—the only one known to possess a moon. The...
Newly discovered galaxy mirrors conditions after the Big Bang
Using one of the world's premier telescopes, University of Minnesota astrophysicists Evan Skillman and Kristen McQuinn have discovered a priceless relic of the Big Bang in the Milky Way's back...
NASA Could've Prevented The Near-Drowning Of An Astronaut
Luca Parmitano NASA During a routine spacewalk outside the International Space Station in July of last year, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano's helmet began filling with water. "[T]he water covers my nose--a really awful...
Researchers look beyond basketball stats to analyze team movement in getting shots
Defensive role swaps prove predictive of 3-point success Everyone knows […]
Global solar radiation map
A new service is making high-resolution data of direct sunlight publicly available for users such as planners of large solar power systems
Smartphone cameras step closer to DSLR cameras
(AP)—Expect sharper, clearer selfies this year. Samsung Electronics Co. has beefed up the camera in its Galaxy S5 smartphone due for April release and added smarter camera software, following Sony...
What is a Satellite?
Artificial satellites from Earth have only populated space since 1957, but there are now hundreds of thousands of objects from our planet in orbit.
NuSTAR Helps Untangle How Stars Explode
For the first time, an international team of astrophysicists, including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists, have unraveled how stars blow up in supernova explosions. Using NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR)...
RXTE Reveals The Cloudy Cores Of Active Galaxies
Picture a single cloud large enough to span the solar system from the sun to beyond Pluto's orbit. Now imagine many such clouds orbiting in a vast ring at the...
From Kepler Data, Astronomers Find Galaxy Filled With More but Smaller Worlds
Scientists announced on Wednesday that they have verified the existence of 715 more planets orbiting other stars, bringing the total of exoplanets, as they are known, to about 1,700.
'Super-Earths' may be dead worlds
In the last 20 years the search for Earth-like planets around other stars has accelerated, with the launch of missions like the Kepler space telescope. Using these and observatories on...
Lights Out for North Korea: Space Photo Reveals Country's Isolation
A recent image from the International Space Station (ISS) shows in stark detail the utter lack of development in North Korea — widely considered to be a "rogue" state —...
Four GOES-R instruments ready for integration
Four of the six instruments that will fly on the first Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite R-Series (GOES-R) were delivered to Lockheed Martin in Denver for integration onto the spacecraft bus...
Hansen's Climate Science and Advocacy Project Under Way
Fundraising, outreach ongoing for policy-shaping effort led by former NASA scientist
NASA unveils exoplanet haul
Findings from the now-disabled Kepler probe have been validated, quadrupling its booty of extrasolar worlds.Nature News doi: 10.1038/nature.2014.14779
Hundreds of New Exoplanets Validated by Kepler Telescope Team
A trove of 719 planets—all members of multiworld systems—joins the list of Kepler's finds -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com