"Chris Abbas professes to being a bit of a space nut, and his appreciation for extraterrestrial exploration is evident in this video about NASA’s Cassini mission to Saturn. Comprised of images and video from the orbiter, Abbas created this hauntingly beautiful short film which certainly instills a sense of wonder. Watch, gentle reader, and be ( Read more... )

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... )

A cataclysmic explosion of a huge star near the edge of the observable Universe may be the most distant single object yet spied by a telescope.
Scientists believe the blast, which was detected by Nasa's Swift space observatory, occurred a mere 520 million years after the Big Bang.

This means its light has taken a staggering 13. ( Read more... )

Astronomers Doubt Giant Planet 'Tyche' Exists in Our Solar System
Natalie Wolchover, Life's Little Mysteries Staff Writer
Date: 15 February 2011 Time: 03:05 PM ET

A duo of planetary astronomers has grabbed media attention by claiming a planet four times the size of Jupiter may be lurking in the outer solar system. They call the planet Tyche.

Many ( Read more... )

Japanese Space Agency to Use Fishing Nets to Scoop Up Space Junk
In a fascinating use of time-tested technology to address uniquely modern problems, Japanese space agency JAXA is teaming up with Japanese fishing net maker Nitto Seimo to haul in some of the 100,000-plus objects of space junk orbiting the planet. A JAXA satellite will deploy and ( Read more... )

Kepler space telescope spots five Earth-sized planets in our galaxy

2 Feb 2011 -- (CNN) -- Are we alone in the universe? Findings by NASA's Kepler space telescope are making that seem less likely.
NASA scientists have announced Kepler has spotted five planets about the size of Earth, orbiting stars in our galaxy.

These planets are orbiting in what ( Read more... )

Speaking of assumptions, here's a new paper that blows the standard assumptions about the curvature of the universe out of the water.

Almost all work on predicting the actual physical size of the cosmos is based on an assumption about the curvature of the universe--whether it is closed (curvature < 0), flat (curvature = 0), or open (curvature > 0 ( Read more... )

 Solar Sail Stunner

by Dr. Tony Phillips
Science@NASA
Huntsville AL (SPX) Jan 25, 2011

In an unexpected reversal of fortune, NASA's NanoSail-D spacecraft has unfurled a gleaming sheet of space-age fabric 650 km above Earth, becoming the first-ever solar sail to circle our planet.

"We're solar sailing!" says NanoSail-D principal investigator Dean Alhorn ( Read more... )

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/20/two-suns-twin-stars_n_811864.html


( Read more... )

The smallest planet yet spied outside our solar system has been found orbiting a sunlike star about 560 light-years away, astronomers announced today. Known as Kepler-10b, the planet is just 1.4 times Earth's size and 4.6 times its mass.

Click to view

The planet, found using NASA's Kepler spacecraft, is the first of the more than 500 known exoplanets that's ( Read more... )