The demise of the dinosaurs is the world’s ultimate whodunit. Was it a comet or asteroid impact? Volcanic eruptions? Climate change? In an attempt to resolve the issue, scientists at the Berkeley Geochronology Center (BGC), the University of California, Berkeley, and universities in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have now determined the most precise […]
Beyond a fertile field of satellite communication antennas at Kennedy Space Center, an Atlas V rocket streaks into orbit in this long exposure photograph. In the thoughtfully composed image recorded on the evening of Jan. 30, the antennas in the foreground bring to mind the rocket’s payload, a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite. This TDRS-K […]
Like many people, sometimes when I’m bored, I like to download some pics from the Curiosity mission and look them over. First thing I want to say is that I’m not one of those people that finds something in every picture I look at. I’ve looked over hundreds of pictures from Mars and in 98 […]
Deep Space Industries, Inc, announced plans to send a fleet of asteroid-prospecting to target asteroids in 2015 The first step in mining asteroids is to learn more about them. DSI aims to launch a fleet of FireFlies in 2015 to prospect promising near-Earth asteroids, determining properties such as their composition and spin rate. When Planetary […]
[FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, CLICK ON IMAGE / Hubble Legacy Archive A gorgeous spiral galaxy some 100 million light-years distant, NGC 1309 lies on the banks of the constellation of the River (Eridanus). NGC 1309 spans about 30,000 light-years, making it about one third the size of our larger Milky Way galaxy. Bluish clusters of young […]
It’s 27 October 1954. A reserve game between Fiorentina and nearby rivals Pistoiese is under way at the Stadio Artemio Franchi. A crowd of around 10,000 has gathered to watch. Among them is Gigi Boni (second left in the aboave picture) a lifelong Fiorentina fan who in later years would become the co-ordinator of the […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION / Marco Lorenzi] How do clusters of galaxies form and evolve? To help find out, astronomers continue to study the second closest cluster of galaxies to Earth: the Fornax cluster, named for the southern constellation toward which most of its galaxies can be found. Although almost 20 times more […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION / Martin Pugh] AE Aurigae is called the flaming star. The surrounding nebula IC 405 is named the Flaming Star Nebula and the region seems to harbor smoke, but there is no fire. … The bright star AE Aurigae, visible near the nebula center, is so hot it is […]
As the gift-giving season comes to an end, maybe now you’ve got a shiny new telescope to call your own. Congratulations — you’re on your way to discovering many amazing things in the night sky. Be it a long, sleek tube or a compact marvel of computerized wizardry, every new telescope surely has an owner […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION / NASA, JPL-Caltech, MSSS, MAHLI] What’s in this smooth soil on Mars? In late October, NASA’s robotic Curiosity rover stopped near a place dubbed Rocknest as it continues to explore Gale Crater on Mars. Rocknest is the group of stones seen near the top left of the above image […]
