You Can See Mercury at Sunset This Month
NASA has recently discovered a very strange planet. Its days are twice as long as its years. It has a tail like a comet. It is…
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Comet Pan-STARRS Could Become a Naked-Eye Object in March
Far beyond the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, where the sun is a pinprick of light not much brighter than other stars, a vast swarm of…
Read the articleDeep Impact Spacecraft Images Comet ISON
NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft has acquired its first images of comet C/2012 S1 (ISON). The images were taken by the spacecraft’s Medium-Resolution Imager over a 36-hour…
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Why Venus Behaves Like a Comet
ESA’s Venus Express has made unique observations of Venus during a period of reduced solar wind pressure, discovering that the planet’s ionosphere balloons out like a…
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Could Comet ISON Be the Comet of the Century?
Out near the orbit of Jupiter, a faint speck of light is moving through the black of space. At first glance it doesn’t look like much,…
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The Huygens Experience
Eight years ago yesterday, ESA’s Huygens bounced, slid and wobbled its way to rest on the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan, the first time a probe…
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Monster Sunspot AR1654 Is Turning Towards Earth…
One of the biggest sunspots of the current solar cycle is now turning toward Earth. Named AR1654, the active region is crackling with medium-sized (M-class) flares…
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Herschel Images Asteroid Apophis Flyby – No Collision in 2029
ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory captured asteroid Apophis in its field of view during the approach to Earth on 5/6 January 2013. This image shows the asteroid…
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Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) Spots Recent Starbursts in Milky Way’s Center
Researchers using the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) have captured new images of a ring of gas and dust seven light-years in diameter surrounding the…
Read the articleNASA MESSENGER Spaceraft Finds Huge Ice Deposit on Mercury
New data from NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft suggest that there’s enough ice on Mercury to encase the entire US capitol. “The new data indicate the water ice…
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