Space

AR2192: Giant Sunspot Returns, Bigger And Badder Than Ever

10 Earths could be laid across the diameter of the gigantic sunspot in AR2191 during its previous rotation, captured on October 23, 2014. NASA’s Solar Dynamic Observatory By Paul Cally, Monash University The largest sunspot seen in 24 years is rotating ba ...

Article - The Conversation - Nov 11 2014 - 4:41pm

Extreme Storms Of Uranus

Uranus is generally boring but it recently got interesting. It has become so stormy, with enormous cloud systems so bright, that for the first time ever amateur astronomers are able to see details in the planet's hazy blue-green atmosphere. ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 13 2014 - 8:00am

A Picture More Awe-Inspiring Than The One Of The Surface Of Comet Gerasimenko

This one is definitely too juicy to ignore- I need to join the crowd of bystanders-in-awe. As you may have heard, ESA's ROSETTA spacecraft successfully landed yesterday on the solid nucleus of comet 67/P, Churyumov-Gerasimenko- a 2.5 mile long conglo ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Nov 13 2014 - 7:23am

New Study Throws Cold Water On Idea Of A Tropical Martian Paradise

It is known that at some point Mars was warm enough to have liquid water flowing on its surface. The evidence of ancient rivers, streams, and lakes remains. But it was not a long-term tropical vacation paradise. Instead, warmth and water flow on ancient M ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 17 2014 - 12:05pm

Cosmic Alignment Of Quasars Across Billions Of Light Years

There are cosmic alignments over the largest structures ever discovered in the Universe- the rotation axes of the central supermassive black holes in quasars billions of light years apart are parallel to each other. Quasars are galaxies with very active s ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 19 2014 - 6:00am

How Do Massive Stars Form? Almost The Same Way as Other Stars.

T he formation of stars of mass greater than 8 times that of the Sun occurs in distant and very obscured areas of the sky. To form a massive star requires a massive and dense interstellar cloud. To see what is going on there requires more than an optica ...

Blog Post - Hontas Farmer - Nov 18 2014 - 6:22am

Lightning Strikes In England: The Sun Did It

The Earth has a magnetic field that functions as an in-built force-field against galactic cosmic rays, particles from space which prompt a chain-reaction of events in thunderclouds that trigger lightning bolts. The only thing more powerful than our magne ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 19 2014 - 9:14pm

Still No Contact with NASA's Sun-watching Probe