NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has revealed unexpected details on the surface of the giant asteroid Vesta. New images and data highlight the diversity of Vesta’s surface and reveal unusual geologic features, some of which were never previously seen on asteroids. These results were discussed today at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference at The Woodlands, Texas.…

… Well, everything is in space, but I mean outer space! Observations by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have come up with a new class of planet, a waterworld enshrouded by a thick, steamy atmosphere. It’s smaller than Uranus but larger than Earth. Zachory Berta of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and colleagues made the…

From Science Insider, there is a possible explanation for the recently observed “faster than light” neutrinos. The Neutrinos were clocked at faster-than-light speeds on their way form CRN in Switzerland to a detectors site in Italy. I had originally proposed that the neutrinos were merely very hungry but unwilling to eat Swiss food, and since…

PASADENA, Calif. — Astronomers using data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope have, for the first time, discovered buckyballs in a solid form in space. Prior to this discovery, the microscopic carbon spheres had been found only in gas form in the cosmos. Formally named buckministerfullerene, buckyballs are named after their resemblance to the late architect…

Kepler has discovered 11 new “solar systems” with 26 confirmed planets among them. They: Range from 1.5 Earths in radius to bigger than Jupiter 15 are between Earth and Neptune in size They have years ranging from 6 to 143 days. Their rockiness or gaseousness remains unassessed to date. This artist’s concept shows an overhead…

It is called NuStar, for “Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array,” and NASA will be launching this giant thing that looks like a dumpster on March 14th. NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, mission is seen here being lowered into its shipping container at Orbital Sciences Corporation in Dulles, Va. The spacecraft is headed to Vandenberg…

There is a story going around that there is evidence of life on Venus. The evidence would be very convincing if some descriptions of it were true: Scorpion or crab like creatures walking around on the surface sounds a lot like life to me! And, the research is published in a peer reviewed journal put…

According to one study, yes. Using a technique called gravitational microlensing, an international team found a handful of exoplanets that imply the existence of billions more. The findings were released at the 219th American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting, alongside reports of the smallest “exoplanets” ever discovered. Gravitational microlensing is a method that uses the gravity…

… outside our solar system. Kepler has discoverd theree planets around the star KOI-961, and they are a mere 0.78, 0.73 and 0.57 times the radius of Earth, rocky like the earth, but alas, they are too close to the star so there can’t be any liquid water on them. But still, there are hardly…

The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, which will neither be recovering gravity or being inside the moon but “GRAIL” apparently sounds good, is coming into Lunar Orbit as I write this. As you know from watching Apollo 13 the travel distance to or back from the moon is a matter of several days … Apollo…

This image, one of the first obtained by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft in its low altitude mapping orbit, shows an area within the Rheasilvia basin in the south polar area of the giant asteroid Vesta. Image credit: NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ UCLA/ MPS/ DLR/ IDA NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has sent back the first images of the giant asteroid…

First, there were big-giant planets discovered orbiting other stars. Then, more recently, a planet in the star’s Goldilocks Zone … where water would be at least sometimes liquid, were it present. But that was a big planet that may or may not have been truly “class M” in having a surface, atmosphere, etc. Now, NASA…

I’m not sure exactly what this means, but … A respected scientist from the Cern particle physics laboratory has told the BBC he expects to see “the first glimpse” of the Higgs boson next week. …Next Tuesday, two separate teams will each reveal the outcome of trawling through their latest data from LHC collisions. A…

… and probably has been there for months, but new research is confirming the nature of this very interesting phenomenon. It is the outer edge of our solar system, where fast moving stuff heading away from the sun has slowed down because it’s movement is stifled by gravity, but some extra-energetic particles are still leaking…

Maybe. Well, not really. But it could be …. NASA’s Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the “habitable zone,” the region around a star where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Kepler also has discovered more than 1,000 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously known count. Ten of these candidates…

This space ship will go and investigate life on mars.

Learn more about the asteroid here.

YU55 is in the vicinity now, and will pass within the Moon’s orbit tomorrow. NASA sent me a pretty crappy image but I fixed it up for you: The image was taken on Nov. 7 at 11:45 a.m. PST (2:45 p.m. EST/1945 UTC), when the asteroid was approximately 860,000 miles (1.38 million kilometers) away from…

PASADENA, Calif. — A new NASA study suggests if life ever existed on Mars, the longest lasting habitats were most likely below the Red Planet’s surface. A new interpretation of years of mineral-mapping data, from more than 350 sites on Mars examined by European and NASA orbiters, suggests Martian environments with abundant liquid water on…

We’ve discussed this before. Now, you can watch the film!

It is called Comet Elenin.

A mystery that began nearly 2,000 years ago, when Chinese astronomers witnessed what would turn out to be an exploding star in the sky, has been solved. New infrared observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, reveal how the first supernova ever recorded occurred and how its shattered remains…