New research published in the planetary science journal Icarus, shows the moon may have been formed by a glancing collision with an “impactor” in the violent days of the early solar system.
Contrary to…
Time to shine, Venus: the 2004 transit as seen from Hong Kong.
Wikimedia Commons
As you’re reading this, people all over the world are gearing up to witness this century’s final transit of Venus. Over a period of around six hours and 40 minutes tomorrow, from early morning until the…
The Apollo missions yielded more than just great views of our home planet.
NASA
By the time the Apollo Program ended in 1972 it had cost NASA roughly US$170 billion dollars (in today’s terms). It was seen as a waste of money by some, but almost 40 years since the launch of Apollo…
What’s so special about the latest big discovery by NASA’s Kepler?
NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
On Monday, to much fanfare, astronomers working with the Kepler space observatory (which was launched in March 2009) announced their first discovery of a planet orbiting within the “habitable zone” of…
Stars are immense, but the space between them is truly phenomenal.
chefranden
“Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”
Douglas Adams…
A would-be Jedi waits for Kepler in a galaxy far, far away.
It’s one of the most famous and evocative images in cinematic history – Luke Skywalker gazing out at the twin suns of Tatooine as they set, in the original Star Wars movie, A New Hope.
Such a view would…
Science follows certain procedures, but does the media get the signal?
CSIRO
Recently my colleagues and I announced the discovery of a remarkable planet orbiting a special kind of star known as a pulsar.
Based on the planet’s density, and the likely history of its system, we concluded…
Stars shine, for sure, but PSR J1719-1438 is sporting some serious bling.
Robyn Beck/AFP
A planet has been found in our Milky Way galaxy that may be made entirely of diamond.
As reported in Science today, an international astronomy team led by Swinburne University’s Matthew Bailes, has discovered…
Warning: you may struggle to believe what you’re about to read.
Bluedharma
Just how big are the stars?
Earth feels quite big, what with it taking an entire day to fly between Sydney and London, and clearly the sun and moon are quite large in the sky.
But with virtually everything…
Is your stress from Venus, your pressure from Mars? Not likely.
Today, and for the next month, four major planets are aligned above us: Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter.
Are we interested? Of course we are.
From the very beginning of human history we’ve been obsessed…
There’s something happening, but it’s way above your head.
bluedharma/Flickr
Four planets – Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Venus – will be aligned at dawn tomorrow. What does this mean? Should we be running for the hills?
You’d be forgiven for thinking so. A search on Google or YouTube…
