April hosts two meteor showers, but only one major. The first – Virginid meteor shower – will reach its maximum rate of activity on April 12. The Moon will be 5 days old and will present minimal interference. The maximum rate of meteors expected to be visible from a…
Two astronomers have captured images of a small comet or asteroid as it impacted Jupiter at 00:18 UTC on March 17, 2016. The videos of the same event were captured from Austria and Ireland. The object is probably in the tens-of-meters wide range, according to Phil…
An international team of astronomers, led by the University of Cambridge, used data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and obtained the most detailed ‘fingerprint’ of a rocky planet outside our solar system to date. They found a planet of two…
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has lost communication with their flagship spacecraft, X-Ray Astronomy Satellite “Hitomi" (ASTRO-H), on March 26, 2016. The 2 700-kg satellite, developed in conjunction with NASA, was launched on February 17…
Astronomers were watching comet Pan-STARRS (P/2016 BA14) on March 22 as it made the third closest-ever comet flyby of Earth in recorded history. At the time of its closest approach, the comet was about 3.6 million km (2.2 million miles) away from the surface of our…
Planetary scientist Matt Siegler at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, and colleagues discovered that Earth's moon slowly moved from its original axis roughly 3 billion years ago. The move would be as if Earth's axis relocated from Antarctica to…
After two failed attempts, Meteor mission was successfully launched at 03:05 UTC on March 23, 2016. Instruments needed for the mission, along with more than 3 ½ tons of supplies were packed inside an Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft and launched via the United…
Observers located in the extreme eastern Asia, eastern Australia, the Pacific Ocean and the west coast of North America including Alaska will get to see a penumbral lunar eclipse on March 23, 2016, the first of three lunar eclipses in 2016. The eclipse will reach…
A very large fireball illuminated the sky over London, UK for 4 seconds at 03:16 UTC on March 17, 2016. The event was observed from the UK, the Netherlands, France and Belgium and recorded by 5 stations and 7 cameras operated by the United Kingdom Meteor Observation…
A new map of Mars' gravity was released this month, providing a glimpse into the hidden interior of the planet. The map, most detailed to date, was derived using Doppler and range tracking data collected by NASA's Deep Space Network from three NASA…
