Astronomy

Astronomers find five planets packed into a ridiculously tight orbit around the same star

Scientists at the Kepler Space Observatory have discovered a “super-compact solar system” in which five planets are orbiting around their parent star at a distance at least 12 times closer than the Earth’s distance to the sun. They’re calling it the most crowded planetary system yet discovered. As reported in Space, the star in question…

io9 George Dvorsky

New evidence that the Moon’s explosive birth was weirder than we thought

Scientists have long believed that Earth’s moon was born with a bang, in a colossal planetary collision commonly dubbed “The Big Splat.” A study published in the latest issue of Nature all but confirms this violent hypothesis — but two additional studies published today in Science make the story of the Moon’s origins far weirder…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

Scientists discover a planet in Alpha Centauri, the star system nearest Earth

This is huge. We’ve discovered a lot of exoplanets, including rocky Earth-like ones, in far-away star systems. But the European Southern Observatory (ESO) announced this afternoon that our solar system’s nearest neighbor, a brilliant trinary star system called Alpha Centauri, has a planet that’s roughly the mass of Earth. That’s right — just 4.3 light…

io9 Annalee Newitz

NASA spots Cookie Monster on Mercury

Clusters of craters can resemble all kinds of everyday objects. On the surface of giant asteroid Vesta, for example, three craters positioned in a line give rise to a terrestrial formation commonly known as “Snowman”. In the photo featured up top, three craters in “superposition” bear a striking resemblance to one cookie-crazed muppet. Says NASA:…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

NASA sheds some light on Jupiter’s mysterious companion asteroids

Jupiter is not alone out there. Aside from its 62 moons, the massive gas giant is joined by two clumps of asteroids that orbit around the sun in the same orbit — what are called the Jovian Trojans. Not much is known about these ancient objects, but new data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer…

io9 George Dvorsky

Did you know that the cover to Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures is from an astronomy encyclopedia?

The cover to Joy Division’s 1979 album Unknown Pleasures is incredibly iconic, inspiring everything from tattoos to t-shirts sold at Disneyland. But what you may not know is that this image is actually a diagram from the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy. Graphic artist Peter Saville — who also designed the infamously expensive single sleeve for…

io9 Cyriaque Lamar

Unprecedented: Amateur astronomers discover a planet with four suns

Two volunteer astronomers have confirmed the existence of a Neptune-like planet that has four suns, making it the first quadruple star system ever discovered. The planet, which is 5,000 light years away from Earth, closely orbits one pair of stars, which in turn forms a unit that revolves around a second pair at a distance…

io9 George Dvorsky

Probe data reveals a surface on Titan that’s soft, sandy, and fragile

Even though the Huygens probe landed on Titan back in 2005 and transmitted data for only about 90 minutes after touchdown, scientists have still been able to eke out information about Titan from the mission, squeezing all they can from the data. The latest information comes from reconstructing the way the probe landed — and…

io9 Nancy Atkinson - Universe Today

NASA on Mercury’s Craters: “Anyone Else Think This Looks Like the Cookie Monster?”

The Messenger spacecraft has photographed some neat craters on Mercury’s surface and NASA thinks they look like the cookie monster. What kind of magic cookies are you eating, NASA? Hmmm, wait. I think they are right. Anyone Else Think This Looks Like the Cookie Monster? Ok, so maybe it’s just me. But the superposition of…

Tech News Jesus Diaz

NASA releases four jaw-dropping images of planetary nebulae

NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory just wrapped up its first systematic survey of planetary nebulae within our solar neighborhood, and the results are absolutely beautiful. In an article published in the August 2012 issue of The Astronomical Journal, researchers led by Joel Kastner and Rodolfo Montez Jr used Chandra to observe 21 planetary nebulae, all of…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

One of the first exoplanets ever discovered could actually be made of diamond

Remember 55 Cancri e? Sure you do — and if you don’t, you should. After all, it may be the first diamond planet ever discovered that orbits a Sun-like star. At least we think it is; if there’s one thing 55 Cancri e is good at, it’s fooling astronomers into thinking it’s something that it’s…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

Is This the Last Thing the Human Race Will Ever See?

Astronomers at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observatory have observed something very surprising for the very first time: a weird tridimensional spiral structure inside of a dying star, one that is just like our very own Sun. Is this the last thing that the human race will ever see (if we manage to survive…

Space & Spaceflight Jesus Diaz

SpaceX has completed its first commercial cargo delivery to the ISS

Early this morning, SpaceX’s supply-hauling Dragon capsule was successfully captured by astronauts aboard the International Space Station, in the first-ever commercial cargo delivery to the manned space outpost. With 11 resupply missions remaining in the SpaceX/NASA contract, it seems the private company’s billion-dollar delivery deal with The Agency is off to a good start. “Looks…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

The “anomaly” that almost destroyed SpaceX’s rocket launch

Last night, SpaceX kicked off its brand new cargo-hauling contract with NASA by launching a supply-laden Dragon capsule on a trip to the International Space Station; and while all signs indicate that Dragon is doing fine, video footage reveals that the Falcon 9 rocket used to lift the capsule had some… technical difficulties during launch.…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

Is Earth’s closest black hole hiding inside this nebula?

This beautiful photo from the Hubble Legacy Archive offers a striking look at the Trapezium, four closely packed stars found inside the Orion nebula, some 1,500 light-years away. Lurking inside that image might be our nearest black hole neighbor. The question of which black hole is the closest to Earth is surprisingly tricky to answer.…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Watch what happens when two supermassive black holes collide

This animation, created with supercomputers at the University of Colorado, Boulder, show for the first time what happens to the magnetized gas clouds that surround supermassive black holes when two of them collide. The simulation shows the magnetic fields intensifying as they contort and twist turbulently, at one point forming a towering vortex that extends…

io9 Jason Major - Universe Today

Astronomers Discover Huge Comet Hurtling Towards Us

The Mayan Apocalypse nutcases will pass out when they learn that two Russian astronomers have discovered a new and gigantic comet coming in our direction—a huge two-mile wide ball of ice and rock that “may [become] one of the brightest in history.” The comet is now passing by Saturn, gaining speed and becoming brighter by…

Space & Spaceflight Jesus Diaz

This galaxy is a jumbled cosmic mishmash

Collisions between galaxies are relatively commonplace — such collisions are thought to be crucial to the eventual creation of supermassive black holes, and our own Milky Way is scheduled to merge with nearby Andromeda Galaxy in about four billion years. But because galactic collisions take place over such an unfathomably long period of time, it’s…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Why Is the Sky Dark at Night?

The answer to that question seems easy: Because it’s night, duh. But on second thought, you’ll remember the sky is actually littered with stars, and even though our sun is pretty close, it seems like a few hundred thousand (Hundred million? Hundred trillion?!) other stars should at least put out a better glow. There is,…

Space & Spaceflight Eric Limer

For the Weekend: A Vintage Visualization of the Sun, Circa 1971

The sun’s disc and solar corona as observed by ultraviolet-sensing equipment aboard NASA’s Orbiting Solar Observatory-7, launched from Cape Kennedy in September 1971. Regions of intense solar activity have been visualized upon columns of data. Vintage datavis for the win. [Click here for hi-res] [The Best of Creative Computing, Volume 1 via Eric Fischer via…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

Astronomers find five planets packed into a ridiculously tight orbit around the same star

New evidence that the Moon’s explosive birth was weirder than we thought

Scientists discover a planet in Alpha Centauri, the star system nearest Earth

NASA spots Cookie Monster on Mercury

NASA sheds some light on Jupiter’s mysterious companion asteroids

Did you know that the cover to Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures is from an astronomy encyclopedia?

Unprecedented: Amateur astronomers discover a planet with four suns

Probe data reveals a surface on Titan that’s soft, sandy, and fragile

NASA on Mercury’s Craters: “Anyone Else Think This Looks Like the Cookie Monster?”

NASA releases four jaw-dropping images of planetary nebulae

One of the first exoplanets ever discovered could actually be made of diamond

Is This the Last Thing the Human Race Will Ever See?

SpaceX has completed its first commercial cargo delivery to the ISS

The “anomaly” that almost destroyed SpaceX’s rocket launch

Is Earth’s closest black hole hiding inside this nebula?

Watch what happens when two supermassive black holes collide

Astronomers Discover Huge Comet Hurtling Towards Us

This galaxy is a jumbled cosmic mishmash

Why Is the Sky Dark at Night?

For the Weekend: A Vintage Visualization of the Sun, Circa 1971

Sonos Roam 2 Speaker Turns the Amazon Spring Sale into a Black Friday Moment, Now at Its Lowest Price

What Do You Mean Glen Powell Is Fox McCloud in the ‘Super Mario Galaxy’ Movie

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The Ikea Varmblixt Smart Lamp Fills a Donut Hole in My Life

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Nintendo’s Talking Flower Is Annoying as Hell. I Love It

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