



A mid-level solar flare, peaking on 3 May, was seen by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. This flare was classified as an M5.7-class flare. M-class flares are the weakest ones. They can cause some space weather effects near Earth…
In the distant reaches of the universe, almost 13 billion light-years from Earth, a strange species of galaxy lay hidden. Cloaked in dust and dimmed by the intervening distance, even the Hubble Space Telescope couldn't spy it. It took the revealing power of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to uncover not one, but four remarkably red galaxies. And while astronomers can describe the members of this new 'species,' they can't explain what makes them so ruddy…
Maybe because it appears as a speck of blood in the sky, the planet Mars was named after the Roman god of war. From the point of view of life as we know it, that's appropriate. The Martian surface is incredibly hostile for life. The Red Planet's thin atmosphere does little to shield the ground against radiation from the Sun and space. Harsh chemicals, like hydrogen peroxide, permeate the soil. Liquid water, a necessity for life, can't exist for very long here - any that does not quickly evaporate in the diffuse air will soon freeze out in subzero temperatures common over much of the planet…
New observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope are expanding astronomers' understanding of the ways in which galaxies continuously recycle immense volumes of hydrogen gas and heavy elements. This process allows galaxies to build successive generations of stars stretching over billions of years…
New images and animated movies from NASA's Cassini spacecraft chronicle the birth and evolution of the colossal storm that ravaged the northern face of Saturn for nearly a year…
In a significant finding in the search for life beyond Earth, scientists from The University of Texas at Austin and elsewhere have discovered what appears to be a body of liquid water the volume of the North American Great Lakes locked inside the icy shell of Jupiter's moon Europa. The paper, 'Active formation of 'chaos terrain' over shallow subsurface water on Europa,' appears as an advance online publication of the journal Nature on 16 November…
A galaxy's core is a busy place, crowded with stars swarming around an enormous black hole. When galaxies collide, it gets even messier as the two black holes spiral toward each other, merging to make an even bigger gravitational monster…
White dwarfs are dead stars that pack a Sun's-worth of matter into an Earth-sized ball. Scientists have just discovered an amazing pair of white dwarfs whirling around each other once every 39 minutes. This is the shortest-period pair of white dwarfs now known. Moreover, in a few million years they will collide and merge to create a single star…
Astronomers have come up with a new way of identifying close, faint stars with NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer satellite. The technique should help in the hunt for planets that lie beyond our solar system, because nearby, hard-to-see stars could very well be home to the easiest-to-see alien planets. The new study was published in the February issue of The Astrophysical Journal and includes co-authors Mike Bessell (Australian National University), Ben Zuckerman (UCLA), and Joel Kastner (Rochester Institute of Technology)…
For the first time, scientists have found convincing evidence for the presence of liquid water in a comet, shattering the current paradigm that comets never get warm enough to melt the ice that makes up the bulk of their material…
Hubble telescope snaps images of a nebula within a cluster
Five years of Mainz technology on Mars