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On August 19th, 2015, the HTV-5 spacecraft was launched aboard an H-IIB rocket from the Tanegashima Space Center. It is carrying 4.5 tons of supplies, experiment hardware and spare parts  for use on the International Space Station. (Read the Full Story) Credit: JAXA/NASA To source

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft obtained this view of Pluto at a distance of about 280,000 miles (450,000 kilometers) on July 14, 2015.Credit: NASA NEW YORK — The first-ever flyby of Pluto left scientists and the public wide-eyed, and the surprises will likely keep on coming. NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft zoomed through the Pluto system on […]

Diagram of the Lagrange points associated with the sun-Earth system. Credit: NASA / WMAP Science Team A Lagrange point is a location in space where the combined gravitational forces of two large bodies, such as Earth and the sun or Earth and the moon, equal the centrifugal force felt by a much smaller third body. The […]

An illustration depicts NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft in orbit above the moon.Credit: NASA Ames/Dana Berry The moon doesn’t have any gaudy casinos or buzzing diner signs, but it does have neon. NASA’s LADEE spacecraft has made the first-ever detection of neon in the wispy lunar atmosphere, which is properly known […]

If the fictional USS Enterprise raced the ship from “Battlestar Galactica” to the nearest star system, which would get there first? A new graphic from Travelmath.com seeks to answer that question, which sounds like a typical opening argument over beers. The graphic shows fictional travel times across the universe for spaceships from several sci-fi franchises […]

NASA photo ISS044-E-45576 showing storms over southern Mexico on Aug. 10, 2015.Credit: NASA Editor’s note: Updated to include a second photo of another sprite captured moments later by the same camera (added at bottom of article). This gorgeous photo, captured from the International Space Station on the night of Aug. 10, 2015, shows an orbital view of thunderstorms over the […]

From his backyard in Östersund, Sweden, professional photographer and astrophotographer Göran Strand took a look at the sun using his portable solar telescope “to see if something interesting was going on.” And sure enough, there was something VERY interesting going on . Something was towering over the solar disk — something that looked like… the Eiffel Tower? Of course, […]

This stunning image of an aurora was taken was taken in Norstead, a Viking village replica. The Norstead Viking Village in L’anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland is the only confirmed Viking site in North America. Astrophotographer Adam Woodworth took the image on June 22 while visiting the area. “The aurora was coming from all directions it […]

The image that accompanied the “Mars Spectacular” email of 2003, which sparked the recurring Mars Hoax.Credit: Origin Unknown Here we go again. The infamous Mars Hoax that has circulated widely through the Internet since its first appearance in 2003, when it originated in the form of an email message titled “Mars Spectacular,” has reared its ugly […]

On Jan. 7, 2014, the sun unleashed a major solar flare and coronal mass ejection (the bright spot at center right), but the Earth’s magnetic field channeled the worst of the solar storm away from the planet, scientists say.Credit: Möstl et al., Nature Communications This article was originally published on The Conversation . The publication […]

As matter is pulled toward a rotating black hole, it reaches an area where all must spin in roughly the same direction. NASA astrophysicist Jeremy Schnittman has discovered certain orbits where a form of dark matter called Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPS) is mostly likely to collide, creating a burst of gamma rays, and thus […]

Artist’s concept of the Thirty Meter Telescope atop the volcanic peak of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The construction phase of the TMT project officially kicked off in October 2014; the telescope should achieve “first light” in 2022, if all goes according to plan.Credit: Courtesy TMT International Observatory The group building a huge telescope on Hawaii’s […]

Early summer is an “in-between” time in the skies. The realm of the galaxies has moved off to the west, but the summer Milky Way has not yet arrived. This is the best time of year to observe globular clusters and double stars. The centerpiece of the early summer constellations is Boötes, the herdsman, with […]