Looking Up by Bob Eklund

Wet & Mild: Caltech Researchers Take the Temperature of Mars’s Past — Researchers at Caltech have directly determined the surface temperature of early Mars for the first time, providing evidence of a warmer and wetter …[READ MORE]

Subtly Shaded Map of Moon Reveals Titanium Treasure Trove — A map of the Moon combining observations in visible and ultraviolet wavelengths shows a treasure trove of areas rich in titanium ore. Not only is …[READ MORE]

Alma Opens Its Eyes — Humanity’s most complex ground-based astronomy observatory, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), has officially opened for astronomers at its 16,500-foot high desert plateau in northern Chile. Thousands of scientists from …[READ MORE]

Huge Sunspots Unleash Solar Flares — A severe “geomagnetic storm” in Earth’s outer atmosphere followed the impact last week of a coronal mass ejection, or stream of charged particles, resulting from a solar flare that …[READ MORE]

Twin Spacecraft Launched to Study Moon from Crust to Core NASA’s twin lunar Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida Saturday, Sept. 10, to study …[READ MORE]

“Star Wars” Planet Discovered Orbiting Two Stars The existence of a world with a double sunset, as portrayed in the film Star Wars more than 30 years ago, is now scientific fact. NASA’s Kepler mission …[READ MORE]

Venerable Mars Rover Begins Study of Brand-New Site The Mars rover Opportunity may be a senior citizen, but it’s still as spry as ever, and as it peers over the rim of the giant impact …[READ MORE]

Jupiter-Bound Space Probe Captures Earth and Moon On its way out to Jupiter, the biggest planet in the Solar System, NASA’s Juno spacecraft took time to capture an image of its home planet and Earth’s …[READ MORE]

Stars as Cool as Your Hand? Scientists using data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) space telescope have discovered the coldest class of star-like bodies, with temperatures as cool as the human body. Astronomers …[READ MORE]

Alien World Is Blacker Than Coal – Astronomers have discovered the darkest known exoplanet—a distant, Jupiter-sized gas giant known as TrES-2b. Their measurements show that TrES-2b reflects less than one percent of the starlight falling …[READ MORE]