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The Universe Is Not Expanding Uniformly
A few weeks ago, researchers announced the discovery of a "dark flow" of invisible matter tugging at distant galaxy clusters at the edge of the universe. Now comes more evidence of unseen and unknown forces in the cosmos, but this time its closer to home. A group of researchers have discovered that [...] Más »|

Frozen Mars North Pole Ice Patterns Observed by HiRISE
As the Phoenix Mars lander will agree, it's cold near Mars' North Pole. Phoenix is currently seeing the winter frost encroach on its location, bright patches of ice appearing on the rocks surrounding it. Another sure sign of winter at this high latitude is the loss of light; soon day will turn to night, forcing [...] Más »|

The Vixen ED100SF Refractor - Superb Optical Quality
So here we go. There's a knock on the door and a big box arrives. It's either a coffin for a short, skinny person or I've got another telescope on my hands. I wrestled it up on my dining room table, carefully cut the packing tape and revealed the shiny aluminum case [...] Más »|

Why is Venus Express Looking for Life on Earth?
If you are an astronomer looking for a habitable exoplanet orbiting a far-off star, what do you look for? We know from personal experience that we need oxygen and water to live on Earth, so this is a good place to start; look for exoplanets with the spectroscopic signature of O2 and H2O. But this [...] Más »|

Dust Could Point Out Earth-like Exoplanets
The current exoplanet count — the number of planets astronomers have found orbiting other stars –stands at 312. That's a lot of planets. But not a single one of them can be classified as Earth-like. We just don't have the ability to detect planets that small yet. But it might help [...] Más »|

Mars Science Laboratory: Still Alive, For Now
The Mars Science Laboratory, the next generation of Mars rovers slated to head to Mars in 2009, is still alive, for the time being. The car-sized rover designed to look for life on Mars is over budget and behind schedule due to technical problems, and NASA officials met today to discuss their options. Potentially, [...] Más »|

Carnival of Space #74
This week the Carnival of Space moves to Kentucky Space. This week we've got naked singularities, a tour of the Orion Spur, and images of Saturn's moon Phoebe. Click here to read the Carnival of Space #74 And if you're interested in looking back, here's an archive to all the past carnivals of space. If you've got [...] Más »|

Podcast: Alignment with the Galactic Plane, Destruction from Venus, and the Death of the Solar System
Another week, another roundup of your questions. This week listeners asked: are we all going to die in 2012 when the solar system passes through the galactic plane? Did Venus make the Moon? And what will extraterrestrials see when the Sun is dead and gone? And there's even more. If you've got a question for [...] Más »|

Podcast: The Life of Other Stars
Last week we looked at the complete life of the Sun, birth to death. But stars can be smaller, and stars can get much much larger. And with a change in mass, their lives change too. Let's start the clock again, and see what happens to the smallest stars in the Universe; and what happens [...] Más »|

Weekend SkyWatcher's Forecast - October 10-12, 2008
Greetings, fellow Skywatchers! It's Friiiiday! Are you ready for the weekend? Sure, it's going to be a rather moony affair, but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy. Why not take the time to hunt down Neptune, or check out a cool crater like Letronne? We can always shoot for a [...] Más »|

365 Days of Astronomy Podcast
Hopefully you've heard about the International Year of Astronomy – a year long celebration in 2009 of the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first look through the telescope. One part of that celebration is the 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast. There will be one podcast per day, every day, for all 365 days of [...] Más »|

ExoFly: Future Space Exploration Super Hero?
This is perhaps the coolest thing I've ever seen. Ray Villard, the news director for the Hubble Space Telescope, also writes a blog for Discovery called Cosmic Ray (love that name!) He recently wrote about a dragonfly-like robotic device being developed by the Technical University Delft, Wageningen University in the Netherlands. It's [...] Más »|

Energizer-Bunny Odyssey Spacecraft Will Keep Going
Seems like everyone at Mars is getting an extended mission these days – every spacecraft, that is. The Mars Odyssey orbiting spacecraft, the longest-serving of six spacecraft now studying Mars, has gotten another two-year extension of its mission. And mission extensions are great opportunities to try something new, so Odyssey is altering its [...] Más »|

NASA Does Space-Age Archaeology, Uncovering Apollo Heatshields to Help with Orion
NASA scientists currently working on the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle had the rare opportunity to unpack a little piece of history. A visit to Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum led them to uncover crates containing the heat shields used during the development of the Apollo Program, some 35 years ago. The shielding has [...] Más »|

Is the Impossible "Emdrive" Possible?
A controversial concept called the electromagnetic drive, or Emdrive for short has been called impossible. But one company believes the concept is viable and has worked for several years on building demonstration models. The Emdrive is a reactionless propulsion system that supposedly generates thrust by converting electrical energy via microwaves. If it [...] Más »|

Mission's End Approaching for Phoenix Lander
The days are getting shorter for the Phoenix Mars Lander, and as fall approaches on Mars’ northern plains, the scientists and engineers for the mission are quickly trying get as much done before power levels on the lander drop too low for any more scientific activities. In the image here, blue-ish white frost appears [...] Más »|

Messages From Earth Beamed to Alien World
The powerful opening scene of the movie "Contact" portrays radio and television signals from Earth heading out into space. Then later in the film, shockingly, one of those signals — a televised speech by Adolf Hitler — is beamed back as a reply. Could that really happen? Could an alien civilization "find" us [...] Más »|

This Week's "Where In the Universe?" Challenge
Have you seen this image before? You know you have. It's probably right on the tip of your tongue. This is the image for this week's "Where In The Universe?" challenge. The goal of this challenge is to test your skills and visual knowledge of our universe. Guess the name of [...] Más »|

Cassini To Buzz Enceladus Oct. 9
The Cassini spacecraft will make two close passes of Saturn's geyser-spewing moon Enceladus this month. The first one on October 9 is the closest flyby yet of any moon of Saturn, at a white-knuckle distance of only 25 kilometers (16 miles) from the surface. The not-quite-as-scary Halloween flyby on Oct. 31 will be farther [...] Más »|

'Cosmic Eye' Helps Focus on Distant Galaxy's Formation
Using gravitational lensing, astronomers have been able to see a young star-forming galaxy in the distant universe as it appeared only two billion years after the Big Bang. Appropriately enough, the galaxy used as a zoom lens was the "Cosmic Eye" galaxy, named so because through the effect of gravitational lensing, it looks like [...] Más »|

Of Overhead Projectors and Planetarium Foolishness
We don't normally publish political articles here on Universe Today, but I'm going to make an exception here after watching last night's presidential debate because a.) John McCain mentioned something about a planetarium, which is an area of interest for UT readers, and b.) McCain obviously had no idea what he was talking about. [...] Más »|

NASA Will Not Use Russian Progress Vehicle Despite Waiver
This may come as a surprise, but then again, it might not. Despite the recently signed US Congressional waiver of the Iran-North Korea-Syria Nonproliferation Act, allowing NASA to use the Russian Progress vehicle to send US supplies to the International Space Station (ISS) after Shuttle decommissioning in 2010, NASA has said that they will seek [...] Más »|

Will the Mars Science Laboratory Be Cut?
The Mars Science Laboratory, a souped-up Mars rover scheduled to launch next year might be delayed, scaled down or canceled due to technical problems and cost overruns. The nuclear powered rover designed to search for microbial life on the Red Planet, has already cost $1.5 billion and if it reaches a 30-percent cost overrun, [...] Más »|

Watch Out! Galactic Collisions Could Snuff Out Star Formation
It's a violent universe out there! Yesterday we ran an article about galaxies colliding and forming fireballs. Today, there's more evidence for galactic collisions, and it's not good news for potential stars. While this image is stunning, such collisions could spell doom for future star formation. A deep new [...] Más »|

Ozone Hole Bigger Again
Is the ozone hole was recovering? Maybe not. The protective atmospheric layer of ozone around our planet has been thinning over Antarctica for many years. New satellite data indicates the 2008 ozone hole is larger both in size and ozone loss than 2007 but is not as large as the record year [...] Más »|