Space
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Planetary Science
Tiny scope spies distant planet
Using a telescope not much bigger than Galileo's, astronomers have discovered a planet orbiting a star 500 light-years from Earth.
- Astronomy
Sky Lights: Picture might show an extrasolar planet
A faint point of red light may be the first picture ever taken of a planet outside the solar system.
- Astronomy
Crashing Genesis
Scientists are trying to salvage the fragile samples of the solar wind collected by the Genesis spacecraft, which crashed to Earth on Sept. 8 after its parachutes failed to open.
- Astronomy
Beryllium data confirm stars’ age
Measuring trace amounts of beryllium in two elderly stars, astronomers have found additional evidence that the first stars in the universe formed less than 200 million years after the Big Bang.
- Planetary Science
Exploring Mars
Here’s your chance to help NASA explore the surface of Mars. At its Marsoweb site, the agency provides detailed maps, engineering data, and interactive tools for studying the Red Planet’s alien terrain. Visitors are invited to look for and report important geologic features that haven’t yet been catalogued or even viewed by researchers. Go to: […]
- Planetary Science
A really cool map
A new infrared image of Saturn's rings provides the most detailed temperature map ever taken of these icy particles.
- Astronomy
Rocky Road: Planet hunting gets closer to Earth
Astronomers have discovered the three lightest planets known outside the solar system, moving researchers closer to the goal of finding extrasolar planets that resemble Earth.
- Astronomy
Super Portrait: X-ray telescope eyes supernova remnant
Trained on Cassiopeia A for 11.5 days, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has taken the most detailed portrait ever recorded of any supernova remnant.
- Planetary Science
Martian ice could be sculpting surface patterns
Images taken by the Mars Global Surveyor suggest that most areas with geological features known as patterned ground appear at high latitudes.
- Planetary Science
Saturn Watch: Cassini finds two new moons and lightning
The Cassini spacecraft has detected two moons that may be the smallest ever found around Saturn as well as changes in the character of lightning first detected in Saturn's atmosphere in the early 1980s.
- Astronomy
Cosmic Melody
An astronomer has converted fluctuations in the density of the early universe—the seeds of the first galaxies and stars—into audible sound.
- Planetary Science
Finding a lunar meteorite’s home
Scientists have for the first time pinpointed the source of a meteorite that came from the moon.
