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The Hubble Space Telescope spotted something no one had ever seen before: an asteroid shattering into as many as 10 smaller pieces. “This is a really bizarre thing to observe–we’ve never seen anything like this,” Jessica Agarwal of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany said in a statement. ... Asteroid P/2013 R3 was discovered last September 15 by the Catalina and Pan-STARRS sky surveys. At first, all astronomers saw was a faint, fuzzy object. Then, a couple of weeks later, the great Keck Telescope in Hawaii took a closer look and saw not one but three...

It is not certain when the reign of Ishpuini, who succeeded Sarduri, began. According to information gained from cuneiform inscriptions on tablets found near Zivistan Castle (now Elmal?), which is 15 km to the south of Van, Ishpuini was Sarduri's son. Thus it is probable that he ascended the throne in 825 or 824 B.C. One of the most important inscriptions made by King Ishpuini is the one describing the acquisition of the city of Musasir by the Urartu at Kelishin (Kel-i Shin). According to the information provided by the bilingual inscription on the Kelishin Stele, King Ishpuini had...

For the second day in a row, a space rock is going to zip close by Earth within the orbit of the moon, and you can watch the encounter live online.

The space rock known as 2014 DX110 is due to make its closest approach at about 4 p.m. ET Wednesday — at a distance of about 216,000 miles (345,600 kilometers), or roughly 90 percent of the moon's orbital distance. The passing asteroid is thought to be 60 to 140 feet (19 to 43 meters) wide. Sixty feet is the estimated width of the asteroid that broke apart roughly 20 miles (30 kilometers) above Chelyabinsk on Feb. 15, 2013, injuring hundreds of people. The Virtual Telescope Project 2.0, based in Italy, will air a webcast about 2014 DX110 at 3:30 p.m....

A giant sunspot – a magnetically strong and complex region on the sun's surface – has just appeared over the sun's horizon. This is the third trip for this region across the face of the sun, which takes approximately 27 days to make a complete rotation. Scientists track sunspots that are part of active regions, which often produce large explosions on the sun such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. Each time an active region appears it is assigned a number. Active regions that have survived their trip around the back of the sun and reappear are...

It might seem strange to say it, but I am a global warming skeptic because of Carl Sagan. This might seem strange because Sagan was an early promoter of the theory that man-made emissions of carbon dioxide are going to fry the globe. But it’s not so strange when you consider the larger message that made Sagan famous. As with many people my age, Sagan’s 1980 series “Cosmos,” which aired on public television when I was eleven years old, was my introduction to science, and it changed my life. “Cosmos&88221; shared the latest developments in the sciences of evolution, astronomy,...

John Bochanski wrote an article tilted The Next New Meteor Shower,Astronomers confirm that debris from Comet 209P/LINEAR should create a sky show on May 24, 2014 on November 12, 2013 that is one of the most detailed I've read so far. Here are some excerpts from it. "Most meteor showers ... occur when Earth plows into the debris trail left behind by a comet. The comet throws this debris off as itÂ’s heated by the Sun, but while all comets heat up as they enter the inner solar system, many do not have orbits that intersect with EarthÂ’s. ......

A tiny 4.4-billion-year-old crystal has been confirmed as the oldest fragment of Earth's crust. The zircon was found in sandstone in the Jack Hills region of Western Australia. Scientists dated the crystal by studying its uranium and lead atoms. The former decays into the latter very slowly over time and can be used like a clock. The finding has been reported in the journal Nature Geoscience. Its implication is that Earth had formed a solid crust much sooner after its formation 4.6 billion years ago than was previously thought, and very quickly following the great collision with a Mars-sized body...

And it's actually (relatively) nearby. This is poor, unfortunate Ceres. Discovered in 1801, it was at first called a planet, then soon classified as an asteroid, and recently as a dwarf planet, not quite qualifying for real planet status despite residing in the solar system's asteroid belt. But now it can feel special: the Herschel Telescope has, the for the first time, detected water on the lil' planet--probably a whole lot of it, too. The telescope, using infrared vision, detected a signature of water vapor from Ceres. The researchers think when the 590-mile-wide Ceres moves closer to the sun, part...

Looking for something off of the beaten celestial path to observe? The coming weeks will offer telescope users a rare chance to catch a well known asteroid, as it puts on its best show for over two decades. Over the coming weeks, 2 Pallas, one of the “big four” asteroids – or do you say minor/dwarf planet/planetoid? – reaches a favorable observing point known as opposition. Gliding northward through the constellations of Hydra and Sextans through February and March 2014, 2 Pallas presents a favorable binocular challenge for both northern and southern hemisphere observers as it rises to the east...

Top boffins from the British Antarctic Survey say that the Pine Island Glacier - famous as a possible major cause of global-warming-powered sea level rises - was melting just as fast thousands of years ago as it is melting today. “This paper [just published] is part of a wide range of international scientific efforts to understand the behaviour of this important glacier," explains Professor Mike Bentley, one of the leaders of a BAS effort to find out what's going on with the PIG. "The results are clear in showing a remarkably abrupt thinning of the glacier 8000 years ago," adds...

In 2008, a group of astronomers led by Alex Parker did a study of the size distribution of asteroid families using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Asteroid families often have distinctive optical colors, the team said, and they were able to offer an improved way to separate out the family members into their colors. This resultant animation put together just this week by Parker shows the orbital motions of over 100,000 asteroids, with colors illustrating the compositional diversity and relative sizes of the asteroids. All main-belt asteroids and Trojan asteroids with orbits known to high precision are shown...

Ancient trees are now emerging for the first time in decades along the Cornish and Welsh coasts after being underwater for thousands of years just off the British shores While scientists have long known of the existence of these forests, geologists have been now able to use radioactive carbon dating on the Mount Bay specimens and discern that forests extended across the entire bay between 4000 to 6000 years ago. This is a time period when human communities in Britain were slowly abandoning hunter gathering lifestyles for farming...

Residents of Oklahoma were left feeling rattled over the weekend after a strong of some 20 earthquakes as powerful as 3.5 magnitude rocked the central part of the state on Saturday alone. Areas north of Oklahoma City felt the brunt of the temblors, which some say were accompanied by startling booms like the sound of an explosion. The mystery earthquake wave now has residents fearing for their personal safety and the security of their property. Meanwhile, scientists have been left scratching their heads over the quakes, which are becoming more frequent each day.

Slooh’s robotic telescope attempted to recover the asteroid and share its speedy travels with the world but failed to capture an image at the predicted position. Now nicknamed Moby Dick after the elusive whale in Herman Melville’s novel of the same name, the asteroid’s gone missing in the deep sea of space. Earthlings need fear no peril; it’s not headed in our direction anytime soon. Either the asteroid’s predicted path was in error or the object was much fainter than expected. More likely the former. ... Rather than throwing their hands up in the air, the folks at Slooh are...

The first of the new large near-Earth asteroid discoveries is named 2013 UQ4, and it is perhaps the most unusual. This approximately 19-kilometer (12-mile) wide object was spotted by the Catalina Sky Survey on Oct. 23 when the asteroid was 435 million kilometers (270 million miles) away from Earth. Not only is this object unusually large, it follows a very unusual highly inclined, retrograde orbit about the Sun, which means it travels around the Sun in the opposite direction of all the planets and the vast majority of asteroids. The only objects usually found in retrograde orbits are comets, which...

Asteroid to hurtle past the Earth at 27,000 mph A giant "potentially hazardous" asteroid more than three times the size of a football pitch is to hurtle past the Earth at more than 27,000 miles per hour Although the speeding chunk of rock, named 2000 EM26, will be 1.6 million miles away it still represents a close shave for our planet in astronomical terms ‘potentially hazardous’ asteroid which is three times the size of a football pitch and travelling at 27,000 miles an hour will pass close to Earth on Monday night. Although the speeding chunk of rock – named...

Near-Earth asteroid 2000 EM26 poses no threat of actually hitting the planet, but the online Slooh Space Camera will track the asteroid as it passes by Earth on Monday. The live Slooh webcast will start at 9 p.m. EST (0200 Feb. 18 GMT), and you can also watch the webcast directly through the Slooh website. You can also watch the asteroid broadcast live on Space.com. Scientists estimate that 2000 EM26 is about 885 feet in diameter, and it is whizzing through the solar system at a break-neck 27,000 mph, according to Slooh. During its closest approach, the asteroid will fly...

'Catastrophic' event at Campi Flegrei 39,000 years ago Volcanic eruption near Naples may have killed Neanderthals Some researchers are suggesting that Neanderthals were driven to extinction by a massive volcanic eruption near Naples. The suggestion is one of the topics under debate this week at a conference at London's British Museum examining what forces led to the destruction of the Neanderthals and what led to the triumph of the homo sapiens. One new theory holds that a gigantic eruption of the volcano in the Campi Flegrei area near Naples 39,000 years ago was catastrophic for the Neanderthals. That was the...

The queen of Sheba was once one of the most powerful leaders in the world but there are few clues left anywhere about this woman who ruled a rich and powerful nation somewhere in Africa -- perhaps, as some archeologists maintain, in what is now southwest Nigeria. Now, in what may be the site of her last home and gravesite, a University of Toronto professor is trying to unearth the queen's story -- partially told in the Old Testament -- as well as honouring her in the form of a new Nigerian museum and interpretive centre. "Each year both Muslim...