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Explanation: On June 30, Venus and Jupiter were close in western skies at dusk. Near the culmination of this year's gorgeous conjunction, the two bright evening planets are captured in the same telescopic field of view in this image taken after sunset from Bejing, China. As the two bright planets set together in the west, a nearly Full Moon rose above the horizon to the south and east. Imaged that night with the same telescope and camera, the rising Moon from the opposite part of the sky is compared with the planetary conjunction for scale in the digitally composited image....

Russia's investigative committee spokesman has demanded that an international investigation be launched into the US 1969 moon landings, after a US-led investigation into the world governing body Fifa, cast doubt over the fairness of choosing Russia to host the next World Cup. Nine Fifa officials were implicated in a US and Swiss investigation into the alleged corruption, with the scandal eventually leading to the organisation's president Sepp Blatter to announce his resignation. Russia and Qatar have both denied that their hosting rights are linked to any wrongdoing, however about a fortnight ago the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) confirmed...

Is something really big about to happen? For months, people have been pointing to the second half of this year for various reasons. For some, the major concern is Jade Helm and the unprecedented movement of military vehicles and equipment that we have been witnessing all over the nation. For others, the upcoming fourth blood moon and the end of the Shemitah cycle are extremely significant events. Yet others are most concerned about political developments in Washington D.C. and at the United Nations. To me, it does seem rather remarkable that we are seeing such a confluence of economic, political...

Explanation: What are those colorful rings around the Moon? A corona. Rings like this will sometimes appear when the Moon is seen through thin clouds. The effect is created by the quantum mechanical diffraction of light around individual, similarly-sized water droplets in an intervening but mostly-transparent cloud. Since light of different colors has different wavelengths, each color diffracts differently. Lunar Coronae are one of the few quantum mechanical color effects that can be easily seen with the unaided eye. The featured lunar corona was captured around a Strawberry Moon on June 2 from La Plata, Argentina. Similar coronae that form...

Agencia Espacial Mexicana (AEM) and Astrobotic Technology Inc. are pleased to announce a joint effort to facilitate the development and delivery of the first payload from Latin America to the Moon. Astrobotic and AEM have entered into an agreement outlining a commitment by both organizations to enable a Mexican payload to the Moon. Through this partnership, AEM will take its first step to another planetary body. "Opening access to the Moon is precisely at the core of Astrobotic's mission," said John Thornton, CEO of Astrobotic. "AEM's rising space science and exploration community is yet one more example of the immense...

The surface of the Moon is covered with a fine powdery material that scientists refer to it as “lunar regolith”. Nearly the entire lunar surface is covered with regolith, and bedrock is only visible on the walls of very steep craters. The Moon regolith was formed over billions of years by constant meteorite impacts on the surface of the Moon. Scientists estimate that the lunar regolith extends down 4-5 meters in some places, and even as deep as 15 meters in the older highland areas. ... However, landings performed by robotic Surveyor spacecraft showed that the lunar soil was firm...

Explanation: Many bright nebulae and star clusters in planet Earth's sky are associated with the name of astronomer Charles Messier, from his famous 18th century catalog. His name is also given to these two large and remarkable craters on the Moon. Standouts in the dark, smooth lunar Sea of Fertility or Mare Fecunditatis, Messier (left) and Messier A have dimensions of 15 by 8 and 16 by 11 kilometers respectively. Their elongated shapes are explained by an extremely shallow-angle trajectory followed by the impactor, moving left to right, that gouged out the craters. The shallow impact also resulted in two...

* Nasa is thought to have successfully tested a revolutionary power source * Claimed it could fly for eons at the equivalent of 450 million miles an hour * It is powered by a device similar to that found in a microwave oven * Invented by now retired British scientist Roger Shawyer a decade agoAnyone who has ever watched an episode of Star Trek or a Star Wars film will know how it works. The good guys are minding their business in outer space when suddenly the Klingons or the Dark Empire bear down on them out of nowhere. There...

More secular confusion about the moon’s former magnetic field by D. Russell Humphreys A recent paper by Clèment Suavet et al.1 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that uniformitarian scientists, who assume the world is billions of years old, are still very puzzled about the moon’s magnetic field. They don’t understand why it was formerly strong but now doesn’t exist, and how it could exist in the first place.2 The moon’s magnetic data fit creation science theories very well. Suavet and his colleagues have carefully analyzed the magnetism of two basalt samples brought from the moon...

The last known surviving member of the German engineering team that designed the rocket that took US astronauts to the Moon has died in Alabama. Oscar Holderer, who was 95, suffered a stroke last week and did not recover, his son Michael said. Mr Holderer was one of about 120 engineers who moved to the US after World War Two, bringing technology used in the German V2 rocket. They played a key role in the Saturn V rocket used in the 1969 Moon landing. The team, led by Wernher von Braun, was part of a project called Operation Paperclip that...

Is Russia Planning to Disassemble the International Space Station? Goodbye, International Space Station. We hardly knew ye. For nearly two decades, since the launch of its first "module" in 1998, the International Space Station has been a symbol of global cooperation, and the site of actual cooperation among scientists from many nations. Comprised of 15 separate modules, and inhabited continuously since 2000, the International Space Station has hosted upward of 200 astronauts and cosmonauts from 15 different nations over 17 years in service. But in just a few more years, all this will come to an end. Like disassembling an...

Explanation: What's that in front of the Moon? It's the International Space Station. Using precise timing, the Earth-orbiting space platform was photographed in front of a partially lit Moon last year. The featured image was taken from Madrid, Spain with an exposure time of only 1/1000 of a second. In contrast, the duration of the transit of the ISS across the entire Moon was about half a second. The sun-glinting station can be seen just to the dark side of the day / night line known as the terminator. Numerous circular craters are visible on the distant Moon, as well...

The Clintons took in more than $140M in 2013 but spent just $9M on direct aid.....the bulk spent on travel, salaries and bonuses, with fat payouts going to family and friends. On 2013 tax forms, most recent available, they claim $30 million on payroll/employee benefits; $8.7 million in rent/office expenses; $9.2 million on “conferences, conventions and meetings”; $8 million on fund-raising; and nearly $8.5 million on travel. Significantly, none of the Clintons are listed on the payroll, except for first-class flights paid for by the Foundation. The tax-exempt came under fire following reports that then-Secy of State Hillary Clinton allowed...

A long-sealed tunnel has been found under the ruins of this ancient city, and chambers that seem to branch off it may hold the tombs of some of the city's early rulers, archaeologists said Tuesday. Experts say the social structure of Teotihuacan remains a mystery after nearly 100 years of exploration at the site, best known for the towering Pyramids of the Moon and the Sun.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The discovery of a tomb filled with decapitated bodies suggests Mexico's 2,000 year-old "Pyramid of the Moon" may have been the site of horrifically gory sacrifices, archeologists said on Thursday. The tomb at Teotihuacan, the first major city built in the Americas, whose origins are one of history's great mysteries, also held the bound carcasses of eagles, dogs and other animals. "It is hard to believe that the ritual consisted of clean, symbolic performances -- it is most likely that the ceremony created a horrible scene of bloodshed with sacrificed people and animals," said Saburo Sugiyama,...

Explanation: Last week the Full Moon was completely immersed in Earth's dark umbral shadow, just briefly though. The total phase of the April 4, 2015 lunar eclipse lasted less than 5 minutes, the shortest total lunar eclipse of the century. In fact, sliding just within the Earth's umbral shadow's northern edge, the lunar north stayed relatively bright, while a beautiful range of blue and red hues emerged across the rest of the Moon's Earth-facing hemisphere. The reddened light within the shadow that reaches the lunar surface is filtered through the lower atmosphere. Seen from a lunar perspective it comes from...

1. Introduction As related by Clube and Napier in their monograph The Cosmic Winter, see [1], in the year 1178 A.D. four wise men of Canterbury were sitting outside on a clear and calm 18th June night, a half Moon standing placidly in the starry sky. Suddenly they noticed a flame jutting out of a horn of the Moon. Then they saw the Moon tremble and its colour change slowly from light brilliant to a darker reddish tone. Such a colour remained for all the time the Moon was visible during that phase. This story is found in a manuscript...

Friday, 20 December, 2002, 01:57 GMT Moon's youngest crater discovered Is this the youngest crater on the Moon? By Dr David Whitehouse BBC News Online science editor Astronomers have discovered the only known lunar crater to have been formed in recorded history. In 1953 a flash was seen on the Moon that was taken to be the impact of a small asteroid. But ground-based telescopes were not powerful enough to see any crater. But now, searching more detailed images of the Moon obtained by orbiting spacecraft, researchers have found a small, fresh, crater in the same position as the flash....

"We found that if lunar lava tubes existed with a strong arched shape like those on Earth, they would be stable at sizes up to 5,000 meters, or several miles wide, on the moon," said David Blair, a graduate student in Purdue's Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary sciences. "This wouldn't be possible on Earth, but gravity is much lower on the moon and lunar rock doesn't have to withstand the same weathering and erosion. In theory, huge lava tubes -- big enough to easily house a city -- could be structurally sound on the moon." The researchers applied known...

Despite a declaration from President Barack Obama that the moon is not a planned destination for American astronauts, senior NASA engineers have quietly begun reconsidering using it as a staging point for an eventual mission to Mars.William Gerstenmaier, the chief of human exploration for NASA, does not see the president's plan of a direct, 900-day mission to the red planet as achievable. Instead, Gerstenmaier believes large amounts of ice at the lunar poles may provide an important reservoir of oxygen and hydrogen fuel to propel rockets and spaceships across the 40 million miles of space to Mars."If propellant was available...