• ESA mulling over an ‘Asteroid deflection mission’, seeks ideas

    The thought of asteroid impact on Earth is intimidating – one that’s connected with catastrophic devastation in past and have always been a hot topic for fictional stories. Though space agencies are continuously watching the sky in search of potential future impact

  • Tour of the Moon

    Although the moon has remained largely unchanged during human history, our understanding of it and how it has evolved over time has evolved dramatically. Thanks to new measurements, we have new and unprecedented views of its surface, along with new insight into how it

  • Sunspot 1654 still dominates the visible solar disk

    Active Region 1654 has traveled half across the Earth facing side of the Sun and now is squarely facing Earth. On January 13, this huge sunspot reached its maximum size measured as more than 193 000 km (120, 000 miles) wide long or 15 Earth diameters) from end to

  • Moon phases & librations in 2013

    This visualization shows the moon’s phase and libration throughout the year 2013, at hourly intervals. Each frame represents one hour. In addition, this visualization also shows other relevant information, including moon orbit position, subearth and subsolar points,

  • Parting Moon shots from NASA’s GRAIL mission

    Three days prior to its planned impact on a lunar mountain, mission controllers activated the camera aboard one of NASA’s GRAIL twins to take some final photos from lunar orbit.Find out more here.Featured image: Artist concept of Ebb and Flow, the two GRAIL

  • NASA’s Kepler telescope finds four planets in ‘habitable zone’

    In a continuing hunt for Earth-like planets, NASA’s Kepler space telescope recently announced the discovery of four potential new planets in their Sun’s “habitable zone” among 461 planet candidates discovered by the telescope. These four potential new planets are

  • Catching Sunlight: Alan Friedman at TEDxBuffalo

    Amateur astro-photographer Alan Friedman captures the sun and other stars with humble equipment, in an unlikely place, in a highly developed field. He discusses why he does it, and why it’s important for everyone to be a bit of a DIY upstart. In the spirit of ideas

  • Timelapse views of Comet C/2012 K5 (LINEAR)

    Mark Behrendt,  Cory Schmitz and Mike Rector created series of time lapses showing the Comet C/2012 K5 (LINEAR) on January 4/5.  The three timelapses were stitched together by Cory Schmitz into the composite video.Comet LINEAR is visible in the sky for the