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When you think about our Solar System, with its lone, luminous star dominating both the mass and light of our local corner of the Milky Way, you might think that this is what 'typical' looks like. In some ways, this is true, but a Solar System with multiple stars -- binaries, trinaries or more -- might be even more common. At interstellar distances, many of these binaries are too close together to resolve even with the most powerful of telescopes. Instead, it's only the variations in their light, where the stars more relative to one another, periodically eclipse (passing in...

Starting January 7th and going through February 6th, 2017, all of the major planets will be moving direct (forward). Ancients saw this as a time of great fortune and a very opportune time. Stephanie “Wave” Forest is the first known astrologer first to publish articles, teach online courses and present slide show lectures on both the occurrence and potential of All Planets in Direct Motion (APDM). Wave states: “Now, here in this moment, from our geo-centric view, our entire solar system, moving together, in the same direction, like a flowing cosmic river, all traveling towards this one direction. From the...

Seeing Comet C/2016 U1 NEOWISE fly by would be a rare opportunity for skygazers because the celestial body won't likely pass by Earth for the next thousands of years. Unlike short period comets such as Halley's, a comet which passes by our planet every 75 to 80 years, it would take C/2016 U1 NEOWISE far longer time before it gets to visit this region of the solar system again. ... Paul Chodas, from NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object (NEO) Studies, said that there is a good chance that the object will be visible from Earth using a good pair of...

Among the many eye-catching astronomical shows coming up, 2017 may be best remembered for the much anticipated total eclipse of the sun that will cross the continental United States in August. In addition to that spectacular sight, sky-watchers will have a plethora of treats to look forward to in the coming months. To kick things off, an icy comet will swing by Earth in February, hopefully offering picturesque views. Elusive Mercury and giant Jupiter will both put their best faces forward as they appear their biggest and brightest early in the year. And in December, the annual Geminid meteor shower...

Who doesn't love a good mystery story? What happens when that story is 5 milliseconds long and comes from a place millions of light-years away? This episode of _Conversations with an Astrophysicist_ Dr. +Katie Mack and +Scott Lewis dig into the mysterious *Fast Radio Bursts* that have been observed over the past few years. Astronomers are still seeking out the source of what these seemingly random blasts of radio light, but Katie & Scott are on the case to discuss what we know, and hopefully narrow it down a bit.

ABOUT 4.6bn years ago, a spinning disc of gas and dust began to coalesce into balls of matter. The largest sphere, at the disc’s centre, collapsed under its own gravity to form the sun. Other clumps of dust, scattered around its periphery, became planets and asteroids. In planets this dust has long since metamorphosed into rock. But in many asteroids it is still more or less intact. As a consequence, when asteroids collide, some of it is liberated—and a small fraction of that material eventually falls to Earth as micrometeorites. This micrometeoritic dust arrives at a rate of around six...

Home/News/Stony meteorites reveal the timing of Jupiter’s migration 941 Stony meteorites reveal the timing of Jupiter’s migration The gas giant caused iron-vaporizing collisions in the asteroid belt 5 million years ago. By K.N. Smith | Published: Tuesday, December 13, 2016 JUPITER_proccessed_image An artist's rendering of Jupiter WikiMedia Commons/ Ukstillalive The youngest stony meteorites in the solar system may reveal when Jupiter migrated through the asteroid belt. These meteors contain grains of metal that can only be the remnant of high-velocity collisions driven by Jupiter’s gravitational influence. New evidence comes from a rare group of meteorites called CB chondrites. Formed around...

Before they turn to cannibalism, massive galaxies spend their infancy gobbling up recycled gas from earlier generations of star formation. The Spiderweb Galaxy is actually more of a galaxy-in-progress. One day, it will be an enormous elliptical galaxy at the heart of a galactic cluster, but at the moment – technically, at a moment ten billion years away whose light is only just reaching us on Earth – it’s a group of about a dozen small proto-galaxies, slowly falling together and merging amid a vast halo of cold gas. At the center of that spiderweb of gas and merging galaxies...

Record Supermoon and 9 More Can't-Miss Sky Events in November The coming month brings the roaring lion of meteor displays, dazzling planets, and plenty more reasons to look up at the night sky. You’ll even have the chance to catch the most impressive supermoon in nearly seven decades.So dust off those binoculars and mark your November calendar!Moon and Saturn—November 2 About an hour after local sunset, catch the razor-thin crescent moon hanging over Saturn. The cosmic pair will appear less than three degrees apart, or less than the width of your three middle fingers held at arm’s length. Adding to...

In 1963, an astronomy student named Gail Smith working at an observatory in the Netherlands discovered something odd-a massive cloud of gas orbiting the Milky Way galaxy. Smith's cloud contained enough gas to make 2 million stars the size of our sun, and it was moving through space at 700,000 mph. For the next 40+ years the cloud remained a curiosity, one of a growing number of so-called high velocity clouds circling the Milky Way--interesting but not sensational. Then something changed. In the mid-2000s, radio astronomer Jay Lockman and colleagues took a closer look at Smith's Cloud using the Green...

Nasa is expected to make an announcement about 'surprising activity' on Jupiter's moon, Europa, on Monday. Many speculated that Nasa could finally be announcing evidence of life beyond Earth. The space agency, however, has poured cold water over these claims, tweeting that the much anticipated announcement will not be related to aliens.

Explanation: Follow the handle of the Big Dipper away from the dipper's bowl, until you get to the handle's last bright star. Then, just slide your telescope a little south and west and you might find this stunning pair of interacting galaxies, the 51st entry in Charles Messier's famous catalog. Perhaps the original spiral nebula, the large galaxy with well defined spiral structure is also cataloged as NGC 5194. Its spiral arms and dust lanes clearly sweep in front of its companion galaxy (left), NGC 5195. The pair are about 31 million light-years distant and officially lie within the angular...

In her 1968 poem, “Planetarium,” the poet Adrienne Rich wrestles with the crisis of female identity through the lens of astronomy. Rich wrote the poem after learning about the case of Caroline Herschel, a 19th-century, German-born astronomer who discovered eight comets and three nebulae, and drew praise from the King of Prussia and London’s Royal Astronomical Society. Yet Caroline remained obscure compared with her brother, William, who discovered the planet Uranus.

Remember Tabby’s Star? It’s the star that astronomer Tabetha Boyajian – who reported its strangeness in a Ted Talk in February, 2016 – famously called “the most mysterious star in the galaxy.” It’s mysterious because astronomers have never seen another star do what this star does. One explanation for the strange dimming of its light is that the star has an alien-built megastructure – a Dyson sphere – around it. Does it? Will we ever know for sure? Those are unanswered questions, but, while you’re pondering it, here’s the latest on this wonderful star. On August 3, 2016, two astronomers...

2K 6 Forbidden planets: Understanding alien worlds once thought impossible By Daniel CleryJul. 28, 2016 , 2:00 PM When astronomers discovered the first exoplanet around a normal star 2 decades ago, there was joy—and bewilderment. The planet, 51 Pegasi b, was half as massive as Jupiter, but its 4-day orbit was impossibly close to the star, far smaller than the 88-day orbit of Mercury. Theorists who study planet formation could see no way for a planet that big to grow in such tight confines around a newborn star. It could have been a freak, but soon, more “hot Jupiters” turned...

Quasar Found 420 Trillion Times Brighter Than Our SunAn international team of astronomers have discovered a huge quasar 420 trillion times brighter than our sun around 12.8 billion light years away from Earth, placing its formation around 875 million years after the big bang. The ancient object is powered by a massive black hole and contains a staggering 12 billion solar masses, surprising scientists who had not expected such a huge bright quasar so close to the dawn of time. The quasar was found using telescopes located in China, Hawaii, Arizona, and Chile, and as Xue-Bing Wu, of Peking...

The incident caused speculation online - and is not the first time NASA have been accused of tampering with the feed. Trending Theresa May Pokemon GO Dallas police shooting Weather Angela Eagle Alton Sterling Technology Money Travel Fashion Mums Home News Weird News UFOs NASA shuts down live International Space Station feed as 'mysterious UFO enters Earth's atmosphere' 22:16, 12 Jul 2016 Updated 13:17, 13 Jul 2016 By Elle Griffiths The incident caused speculation online - and is not the first time NASA have been accused of tampering with the feed 2602 shares 227 comments Play 1:31 / 1:31 Fullscreen...

Explanation: Bright noctilucent or night shining clouds are not familiar sights from northern France. But these electric-blue waves coursed through skies over the small town of Wancourt in Pas-de-Calais on July 6, just before the dawn. From the edge of space, about 80 kilometers above Earth's surface, the icy clouds still reflect sunlight even though the Sun itself is below the horizon as seen from the ground. Usually spotted at high latitudes in summer months the diaphanous apparitions are also known as polar mesospheric clouds. The seasonal clouds are understood to form as water vapor driven into the cold upper...

Explanation: At the core of the Crab Nebula lies a city-sized, magnetized neutron star spinning 30 times a second. Known as the Crab Pulsar, it's actually the rightmost of two bright stars, just below a central swirl in this stunning Hubble snapshot of the nebula's core. Some three light-years across, the spectacular picture frames the glowing gas, cavities and swirling filaments bathed in an eerie blue light. The blue glow is visible radiation given off by electrons spiraling in a strong magnetic field at nearly the speed of light. Like a cosmic dynamo the pulsar powers the emission from the...

Explanation: The Milky Way is massively bright on this cold, clear, altiplano night. At 4,500 meters its reflection in a river, a volcanic peak on the distant horizon, is captured in this stitched panorama under naturally dark skies of the northern Chilean highlands near San Pedro de Atacama. Along the Solar System's ecliptic plane, the band of Zodiacal light also stands out, extending above the Milky Way toward the upper left. In the scene from late April, brilliant Mars, Saturn, and Antares form a bright celestial triangle where ecliptic meets the center of the Milky Way. Left of the triangle,...