Space

  1. Astronomy

    A puny way to make planets

    Brown dwarfs are failures in the star-making business, but new observations reveal that they may still succeed in growing planets.

    By Ron Cowen
  2. Astronomy

    Cosmic Expansion: Supernovas shed light on dark energy

    A new study of light from supernovas provides additional hints that dark energy, the mysterious entity revving up the expansion of the universe, might be distributed uniformly throughout space and time.

    By Ron Cowen
  3. Astronomy

    Dark shadows

    New radio telescope images of the center of the Milky Way make an even more compelling case that a supermassive black hole resides there.

    By Ron Cowen
  4. Planetary Science

    Red Planet Express: Mars spacecraft traces a watery tale

    A Mars-orbiting spacecraft has provided new details about when and where liquid water existed on the planet.

    By Ron Cowen
  5. Planetary Science

    Martian dust storm

    In late October, a day after Mars and Earth were at their closest approach until 2018, the Hubble Space Telescope captured an image of a large dust storm on the Red Planet.

    By Ron Cowen
  6. Astronomy

    Ring around the galaxy

    The Hubble Space Telescope has captured the largest number ever of elliptical galaxies with Einstein rings, a marker of gravitational lensing.

    By Katie Greene
  7. Planetary Science

    Found and lost

    Astronomers who previously announced that they had identified the likely remains of the Mars Polar Lander in images taken by an orbiting spacecraft now say that they were fooled by electronic noise in those images.

    By Ron Cowen
  8. Astronomy

    Images of a fiery youth

    A faint, infrared glow captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope might be light from the universe's first stars.

    By Ron Cowen
  9. Planetary Science

    Mars or Bust!

    Scientists are working to overcome the biomedical challenges that would hinder a human voyage to Mars.

    By Katie Greene
  10. Astronomy

    Infrared telescope spies mountains of star creation

    Viewing a star-making region in the infrared, the Spitzer Space Telescope has captured mountains of gas and dust being eroded by winds and radiation from a massive star, triggering waves of star birth.

    By Ron Cowen
  11. Planetary Science

    Cassini snaps icy moon Dione

    Saturn's small moon Dione has a heavily-cratered, fractured surface.

    By Ron Cowen
  12. Planetary Science

    Groovy Science

    The Cassini spacecraft is shedding new light on Saturn's icy rings.

    By Ron Cowen