• Rare natural phenomenon possible cause for the FlyDubai FZ981 crash

    Evgeny Tishkovets, a leading specialist from the Fobos weather monitoring center, said a rare natural phenomenon might have been the cause of FlyDubai FZ981 crash on March 19, 2016, that killed all 62 people on board. "In the vicinity of the landing field,…

  • Bright spots of Ceres reveal unexpected changes

    New observations of the dwarf planet Ceres, made by the HARPS spectrograph at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile show its bright spots become brighter during the day and show other variations, not only those changes related to planet's rotation. The results…

  • The 2015/16 El Niño continues its steady decline

    The 2015–16 El Niño continues its slow and steady decline, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) reports in their latest ENSO Wrap-Up. The tropical Pacific Ocean has cooled further over the past fortnight, and trade winds are near normal….

  • “Light pillars’ observed over south Wales, UK

    A very rare atmospheric optical phenomenon called 'light pillars' was observed in the night sky above south Wales about 21:50 UTC on Friday, March 11, 2016, the same day a CME impact sparked surprising G2 – Moderate geomagnetic storm with auroras seen as far…

  • ESA and Roscosmos launch ExoMars mission

    In a joint space exploration effort, ESA and Roscosmos have successfully launched their ExoMars 2016 mission to planet Mars. The spacecraft was launched aboard Russian Proton-M rocket from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 09:31 UTC on March 14, 2016. It will…

  • 10 years of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

    NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) arrived at Mars on March 10, 2006. During the next six months, MRO used hundreds of dips into the top of the Martian atmosphere to gradually adjust the size of the orbit and stabilize at nearly circular orbit at 250 to…

  • Active volcanoes in the world: March 2 – 8, 2016

    New activity was reported for 9 volcanoes between March 2 and 8, 2016. Ongoing activity was observed at 18 volcanoes. New activity/unrest: Aira, Kyushu (Japan) | Alaid, Kuril Islands (Russia) | Asosan, Kyushu (Japan) | Lokon-Empung, Sulawesi (Indonesia) |…

  • Total solar eclipse of March 9, 2016 – best totality videos

    Total solar eclipse of March 9, 2016, is now long over. If you missed the show, here is a collection of the best totality videos available today. Be sure not to miss the Alaska Airlines flight 870 video. The Exploratorium and NASA went to Woleai, a tiny atoll in the…