Space

Last month, we got treated to three of Jupiter's moons - Europa, Callisto and Io - parading across the giant gas planet's banded face. There are four Galilean satellites - named after the 17th…

The third chapter in the ongoing saga of the "first direct image of gravitational waves through the primordial sky" has been written. The first chapter was in March of last year when the BICEP2 team…

Red galaxies may be 'dying' young because they have prematurely ejected the gas they need to make new stars.  There are two main types of galaxies; 'blue' galaxies that are still actively making…

The Universe began about 13.8 billion years ago and evolved from an extremely hot, dense and uniform state to the rich and complex cosmos of galaxies, stars and planets we see today. The key source…

Apparently, PLANCK says that BICEP2 did not detect gravitational waves.  The signal was mostly intergalactic dust.   That is my reading of a Google translate translation of an official…

To put it briefly, the habitability of a planet depends on it's distance from its star, the composition of its atmosphere, and the type of star its orbiting.  If our own solar system is at all…

What exactly is cometary globule CG4?  That's still a bit of a mystery. Despite the name, it has nothing to do with comets. In 1976, several elongated comet-like objects were discovered in…

The first radar images of asteroid 2004 BL86, which made its closest approach today at 8:19 a.m. PST - a distance of only 745,000 miles (3.1 times the distance from Earth to the moon) - reveal that…

Astronomers have discovered a ring system eclipsing the very young Sun-like star J1407. And it is huge, much larger and heavier than the ring system of Saturn. The ring system, the first of its…

Ten years ago, on Jan. 14, 2005, some orange-y image, showing an alien scenery with lots of pebbles in the horizon, was at the center of ESA scientists’ attention. The snapshot of a distant world’…