The Sun Is More Than a Blob of Yellow

We've got a lot of eyes on our Sun. No, not yours and mine (you shouldn't be looking directly at the Sun anyway). I mean the artificial eyes on cameras in spacecraft. The newest of those spacecraft is NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which began transmitting images to Earth earlier this week. The...
April 23, 2010 | By Sarah Zielinski

Air Pollution as Seen From the Skies

From Mt. Etna to China to the Sahara, these striking satellite images of air pollution are from both natural and man-made causes
April 20, 2010 | By Sarah Zielinski

Saturn’s Polar Hexagon

This is definitely one of our solar system's weirder features: a hexagon that circles the north pole of Saturn (image credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona). The shape isn't carved into the planet's surface; it's a constant feature in the atmosphere. It has puzzled scientists since it was first sp...
April 09, 2010 | By Sarah Zielinski

Phobos, A Martian Moon

This odd-shaped chunk of rock, as imaged by the Mars Express spacecraft last month, is Phobos, the larger of Mars' two moons. The moon is about 27 by 22 by 19 kilometers in size and despite its solid appearance, is about 25 to 35 percent porous (in the 1950s and 1960s, scientists speculated the tha...
April 02, 2010 | By Sarah Zielinski

Take Flight Over Mars

It will be years, decades, before humans explore Mars. Until then, we'll just have to rely on robots and satellites. And talented 3D-animators.Doug Ellison took advantage of the thousands of images from the HiRISE camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to create the animation above. Ray Vi...
March 18, 2010 | By Sarah Zielinski

Hubble Takes New Pluto Pics

These new images of Pluto from the Hubble Space Telescope's are the most detailed ever made of the dwarf planet. They may be a little blurry, but what do you expect when your camera is more than two and a half billion miles from its subject?NASA aimed the HST at Pluto to get better images of the d...
February 05, 2010 | By Sarah Zielinski

Picture of the Week—Iron in the Sun’s Corona

The sun is a big ball of gas, mostly hydrogen. That hydrogen undergoes fusion, producing both the radiation that keeps us warm and heavier atoms, mostly helium but also oxygen, carbon and other elements. (You can find a good lesson about the sun here.)Our sun has an atmosphere, though you can't see...
January 08, 2010 | By Sarah Zielinski

NASA's New Lunar Rover

The Smithsonian Institution pitches in to help NASA prepare for its next lunar mission with a new "home on wheels"
January 2010 | By Megan Gambino

Visualize More Sunshine

We're past the winter solstice (finally!) and, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, getting a bit more sunlight every day. It's hard to see a difference yet—in Washington, D.C., the days are lengthening by only about half a minute per day this week. (You can chart your local sunrise and sunset time...
December 28, 2009 | By Laura Helmuth

Picture of the Week—The Swirls of Mars

The atmosphere on Mars is very different from Earth's. It is composed primarily of carbon dioxide, which condenses into dry ice at the poles during winter. And it's thin, with only one percent of the pressure of the Earth's atmosphere. But it sure is pretty at times, especially as seen through the ...
December 18, 2009 | By Sarah Zielinski

The Secrets Within Cosmic Dust

Dust captured by a spacecraft from a comet's tail holds clues to the origin of the solar system
December 2009 | By Robert Irion

Saturn’s Massive Newfound Ring

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered a new ring around Saturn.  This ring is very different from those previously known. In some ways, this ring resembles the "accretionary disk" found around some stars more than it resembles the thin, orderly rings that Saturn is famous for.The new ring ...
October 08, 2009 | By Greg Laden

Space Ships to Crash Into the Moon This Friday!

On Friday, October 9, two space ships will crash into the moon, and you will be able to see it happen.All you need to do is find the crater Cabeus, which is near the Moon's south pole. Be watching at 11:30 UT (That's 4:30 a.m. Pacific Time, 6:30 a.m. Central.) Bring your telescope. It should be a ...
October 06, 2009 | By Greg Laden

Fantastic Photos of our Solar System

In the past decade, extraordinary space missions have found water on Mars, magnetic storms on Mercury and volcanoes on the moons of Saturn
October 2009 | By Laura Helmuth

Mars Climate Change Patterns Seen in Ice Caps

Greg Laden is guest-blogging this week while Sarah is on vacation. You can find his regular blog at Scienceblogs.com and Quiche Moraine.You may know that much of the climate change on earth over the last two million years--the coming and going of ice ages--is caused by the "orbital geometry" of the...
September 29, 2009 | By Greg Laden

Jupiter’s Temporary Moons

How many moons does Jupiter have? The answer may not be as simple as it sounds. Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, is so big that it can deflect the paths of comets and other objects, some of which might otherwise hit the Earth. Some of those comets hit the surface of the gas giant. O...
September 14, 2009 | By Sarah Zielinski

Hubble Telescope Gets Back to Work

Yesterday, NASA celebrated the rejuvenation of the Hubble Space Telescope by releasing the first batch of images to come from the satellite since it was upgraded in May. That’s when astronauts installed two new instruments—the Wide Field Camera 3 and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph—and repaired two...
September 10, 2009 | By Sarah Zielinski

Sunspots and Climate

One of the more persistent climate change myths is that any warming we've been experiencing here on Earth is because of sunspots, not increasing amounts of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. Of course, the Sun is an important factor in climate, and changes in solar output are suspected to be behin...
September 01, 2009 | By Sarah Zielinski

Q and A: Astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the Moon

Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, reflects on the Apollo 11 mission
August 2009 | By Joseph Caputo

Galileo's Vision

Four hundred years ago, the Italian scientist looked into space and changed our view of the universe
August 2009 | By David Zax

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