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Your online destination for news articles on planets, cosmology, NASA, space missions, and more. You’ll also find information on how to observe upcoming visible sky events such as meteor showers, solar and lunar eclipses, key planetary appearances, comets, and asteroids.
 | A new study suggests that the onset of the Little Ice Age was caused by an unusual 50-year-long episode of four massive tropical volcanic eruptions.
By University of Colorado, Boulder
Published: January 31, 2012 |
 | Scientists think that molecular hydrogen plays an important role in the formation and evolution of sunspots.
By National Solar Observatory, Sunspot, New Mexico
Published: January 31, 2012 |
 | Ensemble forecasting will provide a distribution of solar storm arrival times, which will improve the reliability of forecasts.
By NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
Published: January 30, 2012 |
 | Measurements from the spacecraft en route to Mars will give scientists insight about the shielding provided by spacecraft for future manned missions in deep space.
By Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, Texas
Published: January 30, 2012 |
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This past week included new insights into dunes on Mars and Titan, another planetary haul for Kepler, Dawn's low-orbit investigation of the asteroid Vesta, and more.
Published: January 27, 2012 |
 | The NuSTAR mission is unique because it will be the first to focus X-rays in the high-energy range, creating the most detailed images ever taken in this slice of the electromagnetic spectrum.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
Published: January 27, 2012 |
 | Further observations will be required to determine which worlds are rocky like Earth and which have thick gaseous atmospheres like Neptune.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C., NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
Published: January 27, 2012 |
 | Patterns of dune erosion and deposition provide insight into the sedimentary history of the area.
By NASA/JPL
Published: January 26, 2012 |
 | The presence or absence of water ice on Vesta tells scientists something about the tiny world’s formation and evolution, its history of bombardment by comets and other objects, and its interaction with the space environment.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
Published: January 26, 2012 |
 | As it remains stationary during the martian winter, Opportunity will study the Red Planet’s interior, investigate mineral ingredients in the area, and make repeated observations to monitor wind-caused changes to the environment.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
Published: January 25, 2012 |
 | A team of astronomers has found the strongest link so far between the most powerful bursts of star formation in the early universe and the most massive galaxies found today.
By ESO, Garching, Germany
Published: January 25, 2012 |
 | After five weeks of mapping, spacecraft data indicate global-scale variations in Vesta’s elemental composition.
By Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Arizona
Published: January 24, 2012 |
 | Scientists found that cold plasma was altering the structure of electrical fields around the Cluster satellite; once they understood that, they used their field measurements to reveal the presence of once-hidden ions.
By American Geophysical Union, Washington, D.C.
Published: January 24, 2012 |
 | Scientists have discovered that the size of Titan's dunes is controlled by at least two factors: altitude and latitude.
By ESA, Noordwijk, Netherlands
Published: January 23, 2012 |
 | This heater shut-off is a step to save electrical power so that Voyager can continue to collect and transmit data through 2025.
By NASA/JPL
Published: January 23, 2012 |
 | The nebula is a complex object composed of dust, ionized material, and molecular gas arrayed in a beautiful and intricate flower-like pattern.
By ESO, Garching, Germany
Published: January 20, 2012 |
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This past week included new views of two iconic nebulae, images of a Sun-grazing comet, the discovery of the most distant dwarf galaxy, and more.
Published: January 20, 2012 |
 | “Sun-grazer” comets obviously destruct when they get close to the Sun, but the event had never been witnessed.
By NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
Published: January 20, 2012 |
 | The newly found dwarf galaxy is a satellite elliptical galaxy almost 7 billion light-years from Earth.
By W. M. Keck Observatory, Kamuela, Hawaii
Published: January 19, 2012 |
 | Besides having the most concentrated ring of carbon monoxide scientists have ever seen, this star is special because of its strong magnetic field and the fact that it rotates slowly compared to other suns of the same type.
By University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Published: January 19, 2012 |
 | The Event Horizon Telescope is an Earth-sized virtual telescope powerful enough to see all the way to the center of our Milky Way, where a supermassive black hole will allow astrophysicists to put Einstein’s general theory of relativity to the test.
By University of Arizona-Tucson
Published: January 18, 2012 |
 | Two of the European Space Agency’s orbiting observatories have shed new light on the Eagle Nebula.
By ESA, Noordwijk, Netherlands
Published: January 18, 2012 |
 | Planck worked perfectly for 30 months, about twice the span originally required, and completed five full-sky surveys, giving scientists even better data than they expected.
By ESA, Noordwijk, Netherlands
Published: January 17, 2012 |
 | Results indicate that, statistically, every star in the galaxy should have at least one planet, if not more.
By STScl, Baltimore, Maryland
Published: January 17, 2012 |
 | Observations provide new evidence for a process called triggered star formation in which the winds and sizzling radiation from massive stars compress gas and dust, inducing a second generation of stars.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: January 16, 2012 |
 | The results suggest there could be as much as 1 to 2 percent water frost in some permanently shadowed soils on the Moon.
By Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, Texas
Published: January 16, 2012 |
 | The double nucleus is actually an elliptical ring of old reddish stars in orbit around a black hole but more distant than the compact central cluster of blue stars.
By STScl, Baltimore, Maryland
Published: January 13, 2012 |
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This past week included discoveries of the smallest exoplanets, the most massive distant galaxy cluster, the most distant protocluster, and more.
Published: January 13, 2012 |
 | The object at the center of the ring system is either a very low-mass star, a brown dwarf, or a planet.
By University of Rochester, New York
Published: January 13, 2012 |
 | Astronomers once believed that the environment around a pair of stars would be too chaotic for a circumbinary planet to form, but now that scientists have confirmed three such planets, they know that it is possible.
By San Diego State University, California
Published: January 13, 2012 |
 | Since star formation affects the evolution of galaxies, scientists hope that understanding the story of these stars will answer questions about galactic life cycles.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: January 12, 2012 |
 | The new color measurement is helping researchers understand the Milky Way Galaxy’s development and how it is related to other objects astronomers observe.
By University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Published: January 12, 2012 |
 | Such remote supernovae will help astronomers determine whether the exploding stars remain dependable cosmic yardsticks across vast distances of space in an epoch when the cosmos was only one-third its current age of 13.7 billion years.
By STScl, Baltimore, Maryland
Published: January 12, 2012 |
 | Astronomers will be able to compare the behavior of different sources of energies across a wider span of gamma-rays for the first time.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: January 12, 2012 |
 | Finding clusters in the early phases of construction has been challenging because they are rare, dim, and widely scattered across the sky.
By STScl, Baltimore, Maryland
Published: January 11, 2012 |
 | Scientists hope to learn how stars form in such disruptive environments as Cygnus X.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: January 11, 2012 |
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The red dwarf and its three planets are actually more similar to Jupiter and its moons in scale than any other planetary system.
By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: January 11, 2012 |
 | While Hubble has spied these ultra-blue stars before in the Andromeda Galaxy, the new observation covers a broader area, revealing that these stellar misfits are scattered throughout the galaxy’s bustling center.
By STScl, Baltimore, Maryland
Published: January 11, 2012 |
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Scientists can best explain the cause of SNR 0509-67.5 as two tightly orbiting white dwarf stars spiraling closer and closer until they collided and exploded.
By STScl, Baltimore, Maryland
Published: January 11, 2012 |
 | Some of the latest theoretical simulations suggest that minor mergers — in which a large galaxy swallows a smaller galaxy — might hold the key.
By McDonald Observatory at University of Texas, Austin
Published: January 10, 2012 |
 | The collection of telescopes revealed changes in the system’s X-ray and radio emission as the outburst progressed.
By NRAO, Socorro, New Mexico
Published: January 10, 2012 |
 | The hope is that by observing clusters at different stages of merging, astronomers can gain insight into the physics involved.
By University of California - Davis
Published: January 10, 2012 |
 | Nicknamed “El Gordo,” this cluster is the most massive, the hottest, and gives off the most X-rays of any known cluster at such a distance or beyond.
By Chandra X-ray Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Published: January 10, 2012 |
 | Scientists hope that by mapping more dark matter than has been studied before, they are a step closer to understanding this material and its relationship with the galaxies in our universe.
By University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom, University of British Columbia, Canada
Published: January 9, 2012 |
 | To host life, a terrestrial planet orbiting two stars would need to have high levels of greenhouse gases (such as carbon monoxide or methane) in its atmosphere according to the researchers.
By University of Texas, Arlington
Published: January 9, 2012 |
 | First light with next-generation adaptive optics system produces best ground-based images ever using laser guide star technology.
By Gemini Observatory, Hilo, Hawaii
Published: January 6, 2012 |
 | Dust makes it necessary for Opportunity to spend the winter at a Sun-facing site where the rover can tilt its power panels northward.
By Arizona State University, Tempe
Published: January 6, 2012 |
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This past week saw a pair of spacecraft enter orbit around the Moon, the Opportunity rover prepare for winter on Mars, a new adaptive optics system for Gemini South, and more.
Published: January 6, 2012 |
 | The model successfully reproduces what scientists have already seen on Titan, but perhaps what’s most exciting is that it also can predict what scientists should see in the next few years.
By California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Published: January 5, 2012 |
 | The ring's offset from the star HR 4796 A is likely the result of one or more planets orbiting in the gap of the ring tugging at its dust grains.
By Subaru Telescope Facility, Hilo, Hawaii
Published: January 4, 2012 |
 | This nebula ranks as one of the youngest and most active stellar nurseries for massive stars in the Milky Way.
By ESO, Garching, Germany
Published: January 4, 2012 |
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The pair will vastly expand our knowledge of the Moon when science operations begin in March.
By Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: January 3, 2012 |
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