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Clandestine comets found in main asteroid belt 19:00 23 March 2006 NewScientist.com news service Kimm Groshong You do not have to look to the outer edges of the solar system, or even out beyond Neptune to observe a reservoir of comets. A bevy of the ice-containing bodies lies disguised as main-belt asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, claim astronomers from the University of Hawaii, US. David Jewitt and Henry Hsieh have dubbed the new population "main belt comets". They describe three objects with near circular, flat orbits in the asteroid belt that stream volatile materials, producing an observable tail for weeks...

Though NASA officials have said nothing on the subject, astronomy today is on the edge of a critical shift in perception—a revolution that could redefine our view of the heavens. Credit NASA Above, the “Great Comet” of 1996, Hyakutake. The stunning discovery of X-ray emissions from the visitor was a milestone in comet science, as was the discovery that the comet's coherent and filamentary ion tail spanned more than 350 million miles. Proponents of the “Electric Universe” say that a revolution in the sciences is inescapable, and they believe the failure of modern comet theory could be the tipping point....

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Given the reality of the dark spots, which soon became known as "atmospheric holes" because of their appearance in the images, there is only one explanation which has endured over all these years to present. That is, the holes are due to the shadowing of the atmospheric light by an object above the atmosphere. This object simply cannot be a stony or iron meteor because the holes are very large, tens of miles in diameter. A rock of this size would provide a disastrous impact on the Earth's surface. As it turns out, water vapor is very good at absorbing...

The Mars rover Opportunity's examination of Martian rocks last week provided the first convincing evidence that our neighbour world was once "awash" in water, as one NASA scientist described it. But where did the water come from? And why does Mars have no liquid water now, while Earth apparently has been covered with the stuff for 4 billion years? Scientists are just beginning to piece the story together, and it goes right back to the beginning. Mars, like Earth, was formed from dusty and rocky debris left over after the sun was born 4.57 billion years ago. Initially, there were...

For 15 years, scientists have benefited from data gleaned by U.S. classified satellites of natural fireball events in Earth's atmosphere — but no longer. A recent U.S. military policy decision now explicitly states that observations by hush-hush government spacecraft of incoming bolides and fireballs are classified secret and are not to be released, SPACE.com has learned. The satellites' main objectives include detecting nuclear bomb tests, and their characterizations of asteroids and lesser meteoroids as they crash through the atmosphere has been a byproduct data bonanza for scientists. The upshot: Space rocks that explode in the atmosphere are now classified.

For 15 years, scientists have benefited from data gleaned by U.S. classified satellites of natural fireball events in Earth's atmosphere — but no longer. A recent U.S. military policy decision now explicitly states that observations by hush-hush government spacecraft of incoming bolides and fireballs are classified secret and are not to be released, SPACE.com has learned. The satellites' main objectives include detecting nuclear bomb tests, and their characterizations of asteroids and lesser meteoroids as they crash through the atmosphere has been a byproduct data bonanza for scientists. The upshot: Space rocks that explode in the atmosphere are now classified

The question about the origin of oceans on Earth is one of the most important questions with respect to the formation of our planet and the origin of life. The most popular theory is that water was brought by impacts of comets and asteroids. Data from the Rosetta Orbiter Spectrometer for Ion and Neutral Analysis (ROSINA) instrument aboard the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft indicate that terrestrial water did not come from comets like 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The findings were published today in the journal Science. Researchers agree that water must have been delivered to Earth by small bodies at a later...

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) – A Sacramento man scanning the night sky caught a sudden burst of light through his telescope. He recorded that strange sight with his smart phone. CBS13 shared the video with experts to see if they could solve the mystery. This mysterious little tale begins earlier this week when Good Day Sacramento’s Cody Stark got this message on Facebook: “I have something on video no one has ever seen. I had my telescope out, caught an explosion in space. Wanna see the video?” Cody’s response? Absolutely! The video was shot with an iPhone through the eyepiece of a...

The pre-dawn phenomenon, which looks like a huge bubble expanding and then popping, was recorded June 22 by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and the Subaru Telescope. Since then, speculation has run rampant about the source of the early morning flash. Ichi Tanaka, a support astronomer at Subaru Telescope, describes it as "a huge halo of light above the eastern horizon," adding, "It was slowly expanding to over 45 degrees in five minutes or more."