Looking Up by Bob Eklund

NASA research indicates that blocks of frozen carbon dioxide—dry ice—may glide down some Martian sand dunes on cushions of gas similar to miniature hovercraft, plowing furrows as they go. Researchers deduced this process could explain …[READ MORE]

Plato, the Greek philosopher and mathematician, described music and astronomy as “sister sciences” that both encompass harmonious motions, whether of instrument strings or celestial objects. This philosophy of a “Music of the Spheres” was symbolic. …[READ MORE]

The Ring Nebula’s distinctive shape makes it a popular illustration for astronomy books. But new observations by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope of this glowing gas shroud around an old, dying, Sun-like star reveal a new …[READ MORE]

Look low in the west-northwest after sunset in late May, and you can watch Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury pirouetting through the tightest gathering of three naked-eye planets that the world will see until 2026. “Here’s …[READ MORE]

The team operating NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars has selected a second target rock for drilling and sampling. The rover will set course to the drilling location in coming days. This second drilling target, called …[READ MORE]

NASA and the UK Space Agency are jointly developing a spacecraft, named Sunjammer (after Arthur C. Clarke’s 1963 short story by that name), which will use a 13,000-square-foot solar sail (see photo) to propel itself …[READ MORE]

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has provided scientists the first close-up, visible-light views of a behemoth hurricane swirling around Saturn’s north pole. In high-resolution pictures and video, scientists could see that the hurricane’s eye is about 1,250 …[READ MORE]

Scientists eagerly await the arrival of a recently discovered, highly active comet that will skim 730,000 miles above the Sun’s surface on Nov. 28 and has the potential to be readily visible from Earth. The …[READ MORE]

This intriguing new picture from European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) shows the glowing green planetary nebula IC 1295 surrounding a dim and dying star located about 3,300 light-years away in the constellation of …[READ MORE]

Early in 2012, someone in Southern Morocco picked up 35 greenish stones. Purchased by a dealer in Erfoud, Morocco, one of them was then resold to Stefan Ralew, a meteorite collector from Berlin. The dealer …[READ MORE]