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…
A newly discovered asteroid named 2016 DV1 is expected to make a very close flyby of Earth on March 3, 2016. 2016 DV1 is an Apollo class asteroid discovered on February 28, 2016. Its estimated size is between 28 and 62 meters (92 to 203 feet), which is about twice…
2013 TX68, the small asteroid that flew by our planet two years ago is now coming back again for another flyby on March 5, 2016. This time, the asteroid might make a much closer pass though still at a safe distance. Two years ago, 2013 TX68 flew by Earth at a…
NASA's program for detecting and tracking near-Earth objects (NEOs) has now been formally established and named the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO). Its responsibility will be supervising projects oriented towards finding and characterizing…
The year 2015 seems to have another festive surprise in store for astronomy lovers across the globe. After the Halloween asteroid's close flyby in October, another object will pass by our planet on Christmas Eve. Asteroid 2003 SD220 will fly by Earth at a safe…
The discovery of hundreds of giant comets in the outer planetary system over the last two decades means that these objects pose a much greater hazard to life than asteroids, a team of astronomers from Armagh Observatory and the University of Buckingham report. The…
There is a region of space filled with comets beyond the gas giant Neptune known as the Kuiper Belt. This expanse holds trillions of objects – remnants of the early Solar System – and NASA's New Horizons spacecraft recently took the closest images of one of…
A small asteroid discovered on November 14, 2015, made a close flyby to Earth only a couple of hours after it was observed. The asteroid named 2015 VY105 came as close to our planet as an average geostationary satellite. However, good news is that 2015 VY105 was so…
The 'spooky' 2015 TB145 asteroid has made a safe pass trough Earth's neigborhood on October 31, 2015, and scientist were able to obtain new high resolution radar images of its surface, quite distinct to the first images provided by the Arecibo radar on…
Researchers led by Andre Bieler from the University of Michigan have found a large amount of molecular oxygen (O2) is being released by the Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Pure molecular oxygen is extremely rare in the universe and this discovery has…
