Orphan planets
Popular Mechanics takes a look at the loneliest planets in the universe – the ones that drift around without a star to orbit: The researchers, […]
astronomy
Science Art: Total Eclipse of the Sun, by E.L. Trouvelot, 1881-1882
Click to embiggen From the description at the New York Public Library Digital Gallery page: Total eclipse of the sun. Observed July 29, 1878, at […]
The stars are louder
The song of the spheres – or, as BBC puts it, the music of the stars – is getting easier for astronomers to hear: Bill […]
I’ll have to unpack my rocket ship.
Wired is bursting a few bubbles by reporting that Gliese 581g – the first habitable planet discovered around another star – may not exist at […]
Black Plants in Twilight Eternal.
Scientific American paints an eldritch picture of what lies at the edges of a distant star… a world of dim, twilit grotesqueries arranged in a […]
Cousin planet.
Astronomers have finally confirmed, NPR reports, the discovery of the very first Earth-like planet somewhere else in space: Astronomers have found hundreds of planets outside […]
Science Art: Illumination of Earth by Sun on the day of winter solstice on northern hemisphere by Przemyslaw “Blueshade” Idzkiewicz
Click to embiggen Image from Wikimedia Commons, showing the winter solstice (for the northern hemisphere) at noon in the Central European time zone. Labeled in […]
Planet of diamonds
Hyperspace professional Michio Kaku, writing in the BigThink blog, is thinking big about the most precious world in the universe: The planet, called WASP-12b was […]
Nemesis returns?
If you’re not up on astronomical conspiracy theory, “Nemesis” is the name for a hypothetical small star/very large planet that, one, we can’t see and, […]
Bubbles in the Milky Way
NASA astronomers have found the equivalent of a lost continent in space – a pair of colossal radioactive bubbles rising from the galaxy: NASA’s Fermi […]
Eyes beneath the ice.
Have I been posting more about Antarctica than usual lately? Doesn’t matter. Check out the astronomical project the Telegraph is looking into deep under the […]
Science Art: Repeating circle with two telescopes, Caroline Hassler, 1820
Click to embiggen Image of Victorian-era coastal survey equipment found in the NOAA Photo Library. The equipment belonged to the artist’s grandfather, a Swiss immigrant […]
Eater of planets.
Not Galactus, but Jupiter, says New Scientist. The king of planets got to be so big because it gorged itself on super-Earths sometime in its […]
Catch the Perseids.
Big show. Shooting stars. Tomorrow night, night after that. Space.com has some details. Go. Watch the skies.
Science Art: The Microwave Sky, Planck Telescope, 2010
Click to embiggen This image – a composite view of, well, everything – was made by the European Space Agency’s Planck Telescope, an orbiting observatory […]