Posted by The devastating tornado that barreled through the Oklahoma City area on Monday has produced some stunning on-the-ground video footage. But cameras aboard weather satellites are also putting a new perspective on the supercell thunderstorm that spawned this monster twister. These “eyes in space” provided key imagery and data of the May 20 storm for weather…
Sky-watchers this week get a chance to go eye to eye with a cosmic scorpion and witness a magnificent meeting of three neighboring worlds in the evening skies.
A boulder-sized meteor slammed into the moon in March, igniting an explosion so bright that anyone looking up at the right moment might have spotted it, NASA announced Friday. NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office is reporting the discovery of the brightest impact seen on the moon in the eight year history of the monitoring program.…
After returning to terra firma after five months aboard the orbiting International Space Station (ISS) with great fanfare, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield says he feels the drag of gravity and like he has aged quite a bit. “It really feels like the day after I played a hard game of rugby or hockey…I am…
The Orion nebula is one of the most favorite spots for stargazers to explore in the heavens, but this week astronomers are releasing a stunning new look to this giant stellar nursery 1300 light years from Earth. A fiery cosmic ribbon glows with orange colors as grains of cold interstellar dust light up like…
The lunar wall comes into view, three planets huddle, and the moon joins the Leo constellation in this week’s best sky events.
The crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS) is preparing for a spacewalk Saturday as it deals with what NASA calls, “a serious leak” of ammonia coolant in a power system. While NASA officials in a news briefing Friday afternoon said that the leak does not pose any danger to the six-person crew or the…
A pair of dead stars sitting in a star cluster about 150 light years from Earth appear to have their atmospheres polluted with debris from asteroids . Astronomers say this suggests that the basic ingredients for making Earth-like planets could be quite common in stellar nurseries across the cosmos. “We have identified chemical evidence…
Straggler meteors, a solar eclipse, and the return of Venus are among the best sky events to watch this week.
Halley’s comet glides across the starry skies back in March 1986, shedding particles that will eventually approach Earth as Eta Aquarid meteors. Credit: NASA Halley’s Comet won’t swing by Earth for another 48 years, but you won’t have to wait that long to watch bits of the iconic comet zip across our skies. That’s…
After nearly four years of glorious service to science, the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory mission has come to the end this week. Running out of helium coolant needed to chill its instruments down to near absolute zero means that it has closed its far-infrared eyes to the Universe for good. After a…
Hubble has taken its first close-up views of the much anticipated and potential ‘comet of the century’. On the night of April 10th, the space telescope snapped an image in visible light of Comet ISON while it was still at a whopping distance of 394 million miles from Earth (386 million miles from the…
In honor of its launch 23 years ago the Hubble Space Telescope snapped a breathtaking, never-before-seen view of one of the most photogenic cosmic vistas in the night sky. Dubbed the Horsehead nebula because of its obvious resemblance to a steed or chess piece in profile, this dark cloud of gas and dust sits 1,500…
Skywatchers this weekend will get treated to some beautiful close encounters when the Moon glides past bright clusters of stars and planet Jupiter. Up first on Saturday, April 13, look towards the high western sky after local sunset for a waxing crescent Moon. Look to its far upper left and you will see a super-bright…
Nearly 42 years after it landed and mysteriously died on the Red Planet, a Russian spacecraft’s final resting place may have been found thanks to the keen-eyes of an online Russian community of Mars fans, according to a NASA statement this week.. Poring over hi-resolution images of the landing region snapped by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance…
Skywatchers should be on alert for possible geomagnetic storms this week that may trigger colorful displays of auroras. Today on April 11th at 7:16 UT (3:16 am ET) a large, Earth- facing group of sunspots hurled a massive cloud of plasma and charged particles into space. Heading towards our planet at high speed, the Coronal…
Over the course of the next few nights this week two cosmic superstars will appear to glide by each other in our Earthly skies. Skywatchers are reporting already seeing comet Pan-STARRS approaching the iconic Andromeda Galaxy (M31). The two objects will appear to be at their closest on the night of April 3rd and 4th…
An amazing astronomy video is making the rounds on the web this week showing comet PanSTARRS joined by a magnificent display of northern lights. Veteran astrophotographer Babak Tafreshi has trained his camera lens on a unique convergence of two cosmic events: the display of the icy visitor nearly 200 million of kilometers distant and the…
It seems that like your favorite latte at the local coffee shop, the most violent star explosions in the universe come in small sizes too. Astronomers this week announced they have found a new miniature version of a supernova they are calling Type Iax. Up until now, supernovae were thought to come in two main…
Skywatchers are still looking up at comet Pan-STARRS, visible in the low western horizon after sunset, but so is NASA’s solar monitoring spacecraft STEREO-B. From its cosmic perch, on the far-side of the Sun, the on-board space telescope snapped hundreds of images of the comet as it rounded the Sun from March 9th to March 16th.…
Looks like astronomers may have new hunting grounds to search for exoplanets , and it’s close– in fact it’s just in our local interstellar neighborhood. A new-found star system at only 6.5 light years away now ranks as the third nearest to our solar system and the closest to be discovered since 1917. The new…
Mars may have a really bad day next year on October 19th. That’s when there is a very slight chance a newly discovered comet may impact our neighboring planet, says NASA. Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) was discovered by Australian Robert H. McNaught, a prolific comet and asteroid hunter just two months ago and NASA’s Near-Earth…
After nearly a half million votes cast by the public, Pluto’s two tiniest moons may have new names—one of which could be named after the home world of famous fictional pointy-eared humanoid Mr. Spock. Astronomer Michael Showalter and his team who discovered these tiny worldlets asked the online community for help in naming the moons, now…
After all the excitement last week Friday when Earth had an encounter with two space rocks, one lies in countless fragments in the frozen Ural Mountains in Russia while the other is heading intact out into interplanetary space. (Related pictures: “Meteorite Hits Russia.”) NASA unveiled a new 72 frame movie using the 230 foot (70…
The spectacular meteor explosion above Russia‘s Ural Mountains this morning was caused by a likely truck-size rock weighing in at about nine tons. (Related pictures: “Meteorite Hits Russia.”) It hit the atmosphere at an estimated 31,000 miles (50,000 kilometers) per hour, and at that high velocity—many times the speed of sound—tremendous air pressure caused the…
