• The most thorough map of the Martian surface to date

    The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has released the most thorough map of the Martian surface to date. The data for the new map was collected by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and

  • Radio-burst discovery deepens astrophysics mystery

    Brief pulse detected by Arecibo telescope appears to come from far beyond our galaxy… The discovery of a split-second burst of radio waves by scientists using the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico provides important new evidence of mysterious pulses that app

  • NASA’s RapidScat to unveil hidden cycles of sea winds

    Ocean waves, the hot sun, sea breezes — the right combination makes a great day at the beach. A different combination makes a killer hurricane. The complex interactions of the ocean and the air above it that can create such different outcomes are not yet fully known. S

  • Astronomers bring the third dimension to a doomed star’s outburst

    In the middle of the 19th century, the massive binary system Eta Carinae underwent an eruption that ejected at least 10 times the sun's mass and made it the second-brightest star in the sky. Now, a team of astronomers has used extensive new observations to create th

  • A summer of supermoons – July, August and September

    The summer of 2014 will be bathed in moonlight as three perigee "supermoons" occur in consecutive months: July, August, September. The first supermoon is on July 12 at 08:28 UTC, the second on August 10 at 17:44 UTC and the third on September 9 at 03:30 UTC.Th

  • A hotspot for powerful cosmic rays

    Physicists a step closer to finding mysterious sources…An observatory run by the University of Utah found a "hotspot" beneath the Big Dipper emitting a disproportionate number of the highest-energy cosmic rays. The discovery moves physics another step

  • Sun sends more ‘tsunami waves’ to Voyager 1

    NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has experienced a new "tsunami wave" from the sun as it sails through interstellar space. Such waves are what led scientists to the conclusion, in the fall of 2013, that Voyager had indeed left our sun's bubble, entering a n

  • Steve Smith: Mars – The Great Desert in 3D – EU2014

    Martian areography tells a story of incredibly violent events. It appears from the many images sent to Earth that it once experienced powerful plasma discharges on a massive scale. Burned and blasted craters, piles of scorched dust covering almost an entire hemisphere,