This year is shaping up to be another exciting one for space after a bonanza of discoveries and celestial events in 2015.
Welcome to 2016! The early morning sky is where the action is this first week of the year. We were out early this Monday morning as skies cleared over Central Florida on our yearly vigil for the Quadrantid meteors. Though ...
Virtually every planet in the solar system has moons. Earth has the moon, Mars has Phobos and Deimos, and Jupiter and Saturn have 67 and 62 officially named moons, respectively. Heck, even the recently-demoted dwarf planet ...
Gravity is a fundamental force of physics, one which we Earthlings tend to take for granted. You can't really blame us. Having evolved over the course of billions of years in Earth's environment, we are used to living with ...
Here it is… our year end look at upcoming events in a sky near you. This is not a top 10 listicle, and not a full-fledged almanac, but hopefully, something special and unique in between. And as always, some of the events ...
Witnessing an aurora first-hand is a truly awe-inspiring experience. The natural beauty of the northern or southern lights captures the public imagination unlike any other aspect of space weather. But auroras aren't unique ...
ESA's Mars Express has shed new light on the Red Planet's rare ultraviolet aurora by combining for the first time remote observations with in situ measurements of electrons hitting the atmosphere.
Astronomers have used many different methods to discover planets beyond the solar system, but the most successful by far is transit photometry, which measures changes in a star's brightness caused by a mini-eclipse. When ...
Using a new process in planetary formation modeling, where planets grow from tiny bodies called "pebbles," Southwest Research Institute scientists can explain why Mars is so much smaller than Earth. This same process also ...
Lori Fenton, Senior Research Scientist and Vice-Chair of the Planetary Exploration Research Thrust at the SETI Institute
