Scientists using archived NASA data have discovered a strange new kind of galactic beast in the cosmic wilderness. Dubbed "super spirals," these unprecedented galaxies dwarf our own spiral galaxy, the Milky Way, and compete in size and brightness with the…
Two Jupiter-family comets – 252P/LINEAR and P/2016 BA14 (PANSTARRS) – will safely fly past Earth on March 21 and 22, 2016 at a distance of 5.2 million km (3.3 million miles) and 3.5 million km (2.2 million miles), respectively. The two comets have intriguingly…
Newly discovered asteroid 2016 EF195 made a very close approach to Earth on March 11 and flew by us at 0.08 lunar distances. The closest approach occurred at 04:35 UTC at about 31 565 km (0.000211 AU / 0.08 LD / 19 613 miles) from the surface of our planet. This…
Jason-3, a US – European oceanography satellite launched just over a month ago, has produced its first complete science map of global sea surface height, capturing the current signal of the 2015/16 El Niño. The map was generated from the first 10 days of data…
A very large fireball was observed over London, UK at 03:16 UTC on March 17, 2016. The event was first observed by UKMON's Church Crookham station, northeast Hampshire, England. According to the United Kingdom Meteor Observation Network (UKMON), the fireball…
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…
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…
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…
When comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) made its historic encounter with planet Mars in October 2014, passing roughly 140 000 km (87 00 miles) from its surface, it wreaked havoc on the magnetic environment around Mars. The effect, temporary but profound, was measured…
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…
