Looking Up by Bob Eklund

Emerging into a region where no spacecraft has gone before, NASA’s Voyager 1 appears to have left our solar system and entered interstellar space, says a University of Maryland (UMD)-led team of researchers. Carrying Earthly …[READ MORE]

Most of what scientists know of Jupiter’s moon Europa they have gleaned from a dozen or so close flybys from NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1979 and NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in the mid-to-late 1990s. Even …[READ MORE]

The Perseid meteor shower, an annual celestial event beloved by millions of skywatchers around the world, returns to the night sky this week, peaking late-night on Aug. 11-12 and continuing for several days through mid-August. …[READ MORE]

Is 2013 the Year of the Comet? Comet ISON may put on quite a show when it skims through the sun’s atmosphere later this year. Right now, it’s too far away to tell, but we’re …[READ MORE]

We value gold for many reasons: its beauty, its usefulness as jewelry, and its rarity. Gold is rare on Earth in part because it’s also rare in the universe. Unlike elements like carbon or iron, …[READ MORE]

A network has been launched to promote academic research in the UK relating to the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI). The UK SETI Research Network (UKSRN) brings together academics from 11 institutions across the country. …[READ MORE]

Remember our ninth planet, little Pluto, which was kicked out of the Planetary Club not long ago and relegated to “Dwarf Planet” status? It’s been found to have no less than five moons, and the …[READ MORE]

A team of astronomers has combined new observations of the star Gliese 667C with existing data from the European Southern Observatory’s 3.6-meter telescope in Chile to reveal a system with at least six planets. A …[READ MORE]

On July 19, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft will be turned to image Saturn and its entire ring system during a total eclipse of the Sun, as it has done twice before during its 9 years in …[READ MORE]