Submit your name here and it will be included in a memory card that will fly aboard Parker Solar Probe spacecraft ( Read more... )

At the moment it is a faint object, visible only in sophisticated telescopes as a point of light moving slowly against the background stars. But Comet Ison could draw millions out into the dark to witness what could be the brightest comet seen in many generations - brighter even than the full Moon.

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By Tariq Malik | SPACE.com

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It’s official - the Milky Way is white. A group of scientists announced their success at determining the exact color of Earth’s home galaxy at the 219th meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Not only is the Milky Way white, but according to BBC News, it is described as a “spring snow at an hour after sunrise or before sunset.” Sounds pretty ( Read more... )

Are you scientifically literate? Take our quiz
You may have an opinion on climate change, evolution education, stem-cell research, and science funding. But do you have the facts to back up your opinion? This quiz will test your basic scientific literacy.

50 multiple choice questions.

Some of these are gimmes. Some of them are more math then ( Read more... )

Cambridge, MA - Astronomers have discovered the darkest known exoplanet - a distant, Jupiter-sized gas giant known as TrES-2b. Their measurements show that TrES-2b reflects less than one percent of the sunlight falling on it, making it blacker than coal or any planet or moon in our solar system ( Read more... )

Enough with the lasts at NASA these days - here’s a first for you. The Dawn spacecraft is about to become the first probe to orbit a main-belt asteroid.

After speeding through the solar system for four years with ion thrusters, Dawn is now poised to enter orbit around Vesta later tonight, where it will circle for a year and study the giant space ( Read more... )

Google is streaming the lunar eclipse live on their YouTube channel from 11 AM to 3 PM PDT  (so it starts in like two minutes!)

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Aussie student finds missing mass

SYDNEY: A 22-year-old Australian university student has solved a problem which has puzzled astrophysicists for decades, discovering part of the so-called "missing mass" of the universe during her summer break.Undergraduate student Amelia Fraser-McKelvie made the breakthrough during a holiday internship with a team ( Read more... )