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When we look across the Universe, we find that things used to be closer together in the past. So how large do things appear when they’re very far away? “Life is […]

Given all the stars, galaxies and what we know about the laws governing reality, how many planets are there in our observable Universe? “Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as […]

As part of this week’s Festival of the Planets celebration, University College London has made available to the public a selection of historic images from its archive. Included are glimpses of the surface of Venus.

Researchers have confirmed that Tamu Massif, located in the northern Pacific, is a single volcano rather than a composite of different eruption points. At 120,000 square miles in size, it’s about as big as the entire state of New Mexico.

It’s easier than you might think, and we’ve been doing it for over a century. “The doctors realized in retrospect that even though most of these dead had also suffered from […]

The 23-year-old space telescope may be a few years away from retirement, but its eye is still good: The newly discovered 14th moon is only 12 miles in diameter.

How the closest supernova in a generation — soon to be visible to skywatchers almost everywhere — is about to help us better understand the entire Universe. “I saw a star explode and send […]

Galileo must have developed “a new theory of optics as revolutionary as the device itself.” This theory he kept secret. 

More than 400 years after Galileo’s first telescopic observations, we’re more certain than ever that the Earth is moving through space. How do we know? “Nature is relentless and unchangeable, and […]

How the Universe tells us its age, size, and properties, and leads us inescapably to the conclusion that it’s billions, not merely thousands, of years old. Today, we’re lucky enough to […]

The Microbial Academy of Sciences is an academy where microbes would be in a position to study the cosmos. 

The European Space Agency and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope produced this image of two galaxies known as Arp 142 that strongly resembles a penguin guarding an egg.

If stars, planets, and biological processes are so common in the Universe, then where is everyone? “If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens… Where Is Everybody?”–Stephen Webb As egocentric as […]

For the first time, astronauts were able to operate a space vehicle in California from their seats aboard the International Space Station. The feat opens up new possibilities for remote planetary exploration.

Asteroid mining company Planetary Resources has announced a Kickstarter campaign designed to help fund the building and launch of a telescope that the public could use to observe objects in space.

Whether we concede it or not, humanity longs for its cosmic significant other. 

James Webb will grant a peerless gaze at the universe the likes of which we’ve never seen.

If it runs Android, you can install an app, created by designers at the University of California-Berkeley, that will let the phone crunch data during downtime.

most accurate cosmological simulation of the evolution of the large-scale structure of the universe yet 

One closely-debated theory has been that heavy metals were a byproduct of collisions between dense dead stars. Now, an event observed through NASA’s Swift satellite may have provided a literal “smoking gun.”

Next month, an international team of researchers will begin a five-year mission to find out more about these exploding stars and what they reveal about the age and growth of the universe.

When all the galaxies, stars, gas, dust, dark matter and all the other forms of matter and radiation are summed together, its energy still pales in comparison to dark energy. […]

How “super” was your view of the Supermoon?

The video below shows Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo breaking the sound barrier.

The Planetary Society is the only organization now that does optical searches, so we have a telescope that looks, if you will, for laser signals from other civilizations.

Spacewarps.org is the newest project requesting public assistance with finding unusual astronomical objects: in this case, systems containing massive galaxies that bend light around them.

While recent focus has been on finding an Earth-like exoplanet in a system’s “Goldilocks zone,” one astrophysicist suggests that that zone might be made wider by taking other atmospheric conditions, such as greenhouse gas amounts, into account.

As soon as we abandon the first intuitions we have, that we’re the ones in control of everything, then we can start sailing into the inner cosmos and discovering all sorts of new planets and life forms and things like that on the inside of our skulls. 

The Moon has played a significant role in many other historical events, from the fall of Athens to Columbus’s subjugation of the Jamaican natives. 

It’s the closest star system found in almost a century, and will hopefully serve as “an excellent hunting ground for planets” and a possible destination for a future manned mission.