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Inside NASA's Venus machine
This chamber, currently under construction at NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, will be able to reproduce the temperature, pressure, and chemical conditions on the surface of Venus. Scientists...
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Gomez's Hamburger: A great name for a star
Thanks to a tweet by Ars Technica's John Timmer, I was introduced this morning to Gomez's Hamburger—a delightfully named astronomical feature about 900 lightyears away from Earth. The name is funny....
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Vesta, the planet that might have been
This is Vesta, the second largest asteroid in our solar system's main asteroid belt. Specifically, this is a view of Vesta's south pole, taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft last September. As it turns...
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The practical side of the transit of Venus
The transit of Venus is cool. I think we can all agree on that. On Tuesday, the planet Venus will pass between us and the Sun—a little black dot sliding across the face of a giant, yellow ball....
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What the transit of Venus looked like to Captain Cook
In 1769, Captain James Cook was part of a massive, coordinated effort to document the transit of Venus from multiple spots around the globe. It was all part of calculating the size of the solar...
View ArticleSearching the universe for habitable planets (video)
Filmmaker Matt Checkowski sends word of two cool new documentary shorts he produced for the University of California video series "Onward California." These episodes focus on the work of a UC Santa...
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Goldilocks in space: Interview with Lee Billings about the hunt for aliens...
Are we alone in the Universe? Last year, journalist Lee Billings wrote an excellent series of guest posts for BoingBoing about the quest to answer that question. One of those posts — Incredible...
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NASA finds Cookie Monster on surface of Mercury
Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab/Carnegie Institution of WA "The superposition of younger craters on older craters (in this case two smaller craters upon the rim of an older...
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Apparently, planets don't always orbit stars
Because sometimes nature just likes to mess with you, here's CFBDSIR2149. It's an object in space — a relatively nearby object in space, as evidenced by the fact that this is an actual picture of it —...
View ArticleThe real end of the world
Once again, Earth has not been destroyed in a fiery apocalypse. But, someday, our luck will run out. Be prepared! At The Guardian, Ian Sample and Alok Jha helpfully explain how our universe will one...
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Space probe Voyager 1 reaches outer edges of solar system
Artist concept of NASA's Voyager spacecraft. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech The Voyager 1 space craft, which was launched in 1977 to explore outer planets, has entered a new region on its way out of our...
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Kepler 62, a planetary system like our own
Two of the five planets seen circling a distant star may be capable of supporting life, reports the team operating the Kepler Space Telescope. Relatively close to Earth's size and within their sun's...
View Article"Definitive proof" of Mars water
Mars' landscape was formed by flowing water, and the proof is in the pebbles. [BBC]
View ArticleThe least desirable addresses in the Universe
Can I interest you in a summer home on COROT-7b? Sure, the estimated surface temperature is 4,580 degrees F, the year is only 20 hours long, and it's probably just lousy with volcanoes. But, when it...
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The planets as anthropomorphic characters
Alberta College of Art and Design student Mary, AKA Thoughts Up North, created these fantastical characters based on the planets of our solar system: "The colors are all based off the planets’ true...
View ArticleThe crazy storm on Saturn
Fun fact: Saturn has a storm that's every bit as big as Jupiter's better-known Great Red Spot. It's been spinning over Saturn's north pole for 30 years. And it's shaped like a hexagon.
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eBay forbids woman from selling property on the Sun
Alex Boese has a great article on About Entertainment on the history of people who claimed ownership of stars, moons, and planets and then sold deeds to plots of land on the heavenly bodies. And they...
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Pluto and other known “not-planets” in our solar system mapped in scale image...
[caption id="attachment_405613" align="alignnone" width="840"] Montage by Emily Lakdawalla. [/caption] “Now that I have a reasonable-resolution global color view of Pluto,” writes Emily Lakdawalla, “I...
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NASA Ground team stands by for Pluto fly-by confirmation signal from New...
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is expected to radio home any minute now. We're watching on NASA TV. The moment will end a nearly 22-hour radio blackout as the probe focused on a series of close-up...
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National Geographic's Pluto issue, autographed by NASA's New Horizons team
Susan Goldberg: “How cool is this? The @NASANewHorizons #Pluto team autographed our fab July @NatGeo cover, written by @nadiamdrake.” More: Pluto coverage on Boing Boing.
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