Outer Space

Watch Earth's Atmosphere Brilliantly Light Up From Space

The glow isn't from an aurora, it's a phenomena called airglow

Chandra image of the Antenna Galaxy.

Life in the Cosmos: Special Report

Exploring the mysteries of the universe

The 1917 photographic plate spectrum of van Maanen's star from the Carnegie Observatories’ archive.

Scientists Discovered Exoplanets More Than 70 Years Earlier Than Thought

A 1917 glass plate discovered in an observatory archive records the first evidence of exoplanets

Artist's rendering of the Alpha Centauri system

Stephen Hawking and Billionaire Announce Project to Send Tiny Probes to Nearest Star System

Yuri Milner is investing 100 million dollars in research to develop a swarm of tiny probes for a mission to Alpha Centauri

The Planet-Hunting Kepler Telescope Entered Emergency Mode

The probe suddenly went into a safe mode for unknown reasons last week

The remnants of a supernova.

Radioactive Isotopes in The Oceans May Be Remnants of Ancient Supernovae

Cosmic dust may have altered life on Earth as we know it

Lot 62, Willamette Meteorite Slice: The 15.6 ton Willamette Meteorite is probably the largest meteor ever found the continental United States. Discovered in Oregon in 1902 and exhibited at the 1905 World’s Fair in Portland, it eventually ended up in the American Museum of Natural History in New York. In 1990, Oregon and a coalition of Native Americans sued to get the meteor back. They lost, but the museum agreed to never cut the meteor again, making this 1.15 pound slice incredibly rare

Sneak a Peek at the Multi-Million Dollar Meteorites Soon up for Sale

Christie's is auctioning off dozens of rare and important meteorites, including pieces of the rock that exploded over Russia in 2013

NASA Scientists Are Trying to Make Medicine Onboard the ISS

Scientists are sending fungi to the space station to see what pharmaceuticals astronauts can brew

Pluto’s ‘heart’ is a giant crater that may be slowly moving across the dwarf planet’s surface, scientists say.

Pluto May Have a Wandering Heart

The enormous impact basin may be slowly traveling across the dwarf planet’s surface

Features like the Marius Hills pit could be skylights in lava tubes that could one day house underground moon bases.

Future Moon Bases Might Be Built in Underground Lava Tubes

Caverns carved out by ancient lava could shelter astronauts from the hazards of moon life

Volcanic activity in the moon billions of years ago may have caused its poles to shift.

Ancient Volcanoes May Have Shifted the Moon’s Poles

Ice deposits point to the moon’s old poles

liquid gravity, 2013. A cosmonaut seems to levitate in an industrial environment but the view of Earth through a porthole “dislocates the viewer’s perspective,” Najjar writes in an email. The image comes from Najjar’s experience in the hydrolab, a huge tank of water, at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center.

An Artist Imagines the Future of Humans in Space

Through manipulated photographs and video, Michael Najjar tackles the meaning of space travel

The bright spots of Occator Crater are shown in enhanced color in this view from NASA's Dawn spacecraft.

New NASA Images Shed Light on Ceres’ Bright Spots

Yet the dwarf planet serves up fresh mysteries

Astrophysicist Kip Thorne dared to dream of a machine to find gravitational waves.

The Detection of Gravitational Waves Was a Scientific Breakthrough, but What’s Next?

Scientists are sitting on top of the world after this monumental discovery and are eager to keep exploring the universe

NASA Spies a Supernova’s First Shockwave

Astronomers spot the first flash of a distant supernova in visible light

The green object is the comet 252P/LINEAR as it passed by the Larger Megellanic Cloud.

A Pair of Comets Are Making a Record-Breaking Pass by Earth

This is the closest a comet has come in 246 years

Five New Things We Learned About Pluto This Week

A new set of studies paints Pluto as a weirder planet than scientists once thought

Aluminized suits are used to reflect heat at the Armed Forces Firefighting School. Chanute Field, Illinois, in 1977.

NASA’s Starting a Fire in Space

How will flames react in microgravity?

An artist's rendering of the ESA's Trace Gas Orbiter

Mission to Find Life on Mars Blasts Off

The European Space Agency kicks off its ExoMars project to look for methane and other signs of life in the Martian atmosphere

An illustration of galaxy superclusters and cosmic voids, similar to the structure of the BOSS Great Wall

Meet the BOSS, the Largest Structure in the Universe (So Far)

Astronomers recently discovered a wall of galaxies 1 billion light years across, larger than anything else yet identified in the cosmos

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