Astronomy

Astronomy

Moon plume breaks the record

The Galileo spacecraft has found the tallest plume seen so far on Jupiter's moon Io, the only volcanically active moon known in the solar system.

Astronomy

New alcohol added to space-stuff catalog

Researchers have discovered the molecule vinyl alcohol in space.

Astronomy

Distant spiral galaxy poses for Gemini

The newly operating Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph instrument on the Gemini North Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, took a high-resolution composite photograph of a galaxy 30 million light-years away.

Astronomy

A Cosmic Crisis?

Astronomers appear to have a heavenly crisis on their hands, and it concerns material they can't even detect.

Astronomy

Faint body may be galaxy building block

Using a cosmic zoom lens, astronomers may have found one of the first building blocks of a galaxy in the universe.

Astronomy

Probe’s comet encounter yields close-ups

A crippled NASA probe successfully navigated close enough to Comet Borrelly to capture and beam home black-and-white and infared images of its nucleus and new data about ions and other particles that radiate from it.

Astronomy

After a failure, a new craft to sail

Despite the July 20 failure of its mission to test the unfurling of a solar sail in a suborbital trajectory, the Planetary Society announced plans in late August to conduct a second test of a sail-propelled craft.

Astronomy

A meteorite’s pristine origins

A rare, carbon-rich meteorite that fell into a frozen Canadian lake last year ranks as the most pristine of such specimens ever found.

Astronomy

Gravity’s lens: Finding a sextet of images

Astronomers have for the first time found a gravitational lens in which the image of a distant galaxy has been split into six distinct images.

Astronomy

Gravity’s lens: Finding a dim cluster

Relying solely on a gravitational mirage rather than visible images, astronomers have discovered a previously unknown cluster of galaxies and measured its distance from Earth.

Astronomy

When Branes Collide

A controversial new theory proposes that our universe existed as a cold, featureless void for eons, until a parallel universe floating through a hidden fifth dimension crashed into it, igniting the Big Bang.

Astronomy

X rays trace fierce stellar winds

A high-resolution X-ray view of the Rosette nebula, a nearby star-forming region, has revealed for the first time that the stellar winds from massive stars heat surrounding gas to a scorching 6 million kelvins.