Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have gone looking for water vapor in the atmospheres of three planets orbiting stars similar to the sun — and have come up nearly dry. The three planets, known as HD 189733b, HD 209458b, and WASP-12b, are between 60 and 900 light-years away from Earth and were thought to […]
Sea ice in summer looks dramatically different than sea ice in winter, even in the polar Arctic. Summer snowmelt, pools of water on thinning ice and exposed ocean replace vast winter expanses of white snow-covered ice – and this weekend NASA’s high-flying laser altimeter begins a campaign to investigate these features. Icy areas look […]
They may be little, but they pack a big star-forming punch. New observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope show small galaxies, also known as dwarf galaxies, are responsible for forming a large proportion of the universe’s stars. Studying this early epoch of the universe’s history is critical to fully understanding how these stars formed […]
On June 11, 2014, the sun erupted with its third X-class flare in two days. The flare was classified as an X1.0 and it peaked at 5:06 a.m. EDT. Images of the flare were captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. All three flares originated from an active region on the sun that recently rotated into […]
NASA scientists using Earth-based radar have produced sharp views of a recently discovered asteroid as it slid silently past our planet. Captured on June 8, 2014, the new views of the object designated “2014 HQ124” are some of the most detailed radar images of a near-Earth asteroid ever obtained. An animation of the rotating asteroid […]
A newfound asteroid will safely pass Earth on June 8 from a distance of about 777,000 miles (1.25 million kilometers), more than three times farther away than our moon. Designated 2014 HQ124, the asteroid was discovered April 23, 2014, by NASA’s NEOWISE mission, a space telescope adapted for scouting the skies for asteroids and comets. […]
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have captured new images of the dancing auroral lights at Saturn’s north pole. Taken from Hubble’s perspective in orbit around the Earth, these images provide a detailed look at Saturn’s stormy aurorae — revealing previously unseen dynamics in the choreography of the auroral glow. The cause of the […]
Jupiter’s trademark Great Red Spot — a swirling anti-cyclonic storm larger than Earth — has shrunk to its smallest size ever measured. According to Amy Simon of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, recent NASA Hubble Space Telescope observations confirm the Great Red Spot now is approximately 10,250 miles across. Astronomers have followed […]
Last year, a meteorite exploded 23 kilometers (14 miles)above Chelyabinsk, Russia. It was estimated to be 18 meters (60 feet) long with the mass of about 10,000 tons. If it had fallen in a populated area, an entire city could have been devastated. Luckily, the meteorite disintegrated and most of the fragments fell into […]