Launched in early 2006, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is scheduled to rendezvous with dwarf planet Pluto in a little over one year. The observatory will fly within 6,200 miles of Pluto, gathering data on the dwarf planet and its companion…
Hubble Space Telescope: Deep Field Image Brightened With Ultraviolet Light
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) is one of the most iconic and impressive images ever taken of deep space. The image, taken of a tiny section of the southern sky, shows thousands of galaxies, putting the vastness of space…
Water Vapor Detected on Jupiter’s Moon Europa
New research published this week in the journal Science Express has revealed that there is water vapor in the atmosphere of Jupiter‘s moon Europa. The vapor was detected by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope over the moon’s south pole. Though the…
Hubble Finds Young Milky Way-Like Galaxies
Astronomers this week detailed findings showing how our own galaxy, the Milky Way, may have looked when it was first forming. The research, published recently in The Astrophysical Journal, shows that the Milky Way was likely once a blue-hued, gas-filled,…
Hubble Telescope Spots Six-Tailed Asteroid
Astronomers today announced that an asteroid with six “comet-like” tails has been discovered. The asteroid, currently named P/2013 P5, was imaged twice in September by the Hubble Space Telescope. Its strange tails were seen changing position over the course of…
Hubble Telescope Spots a Blue Planet
Astronomers have been finding and cataloging exoplanets for years now, but NASA this week announced that the Hubble Space Telescope has helped determined the color of a planet orbiting a star 63 light-years from our solar system. The planet, HD…
“Strobe Light” Star Spotted by NASA Telescopes
NASA this week revealed that astronomers have discovered a mysterious object that acts like a strobe light. The object, named LRLL 54361, releases a flash of light every 25.34 days. Though other objects in the universe have been observed with…
Rogue Planet Orbit Spotted by NASA’s Hubble
New images of the Fomalhaut star system could show evidence of a “titanic planetary disruption.” Astronomers have found that the debris belt in the system is wider than was thought, and that a “rogue” planet has a precarious orbit that…
Globular Cluster Aging Revealed in New Study
Globular clusters are spherical groupings of stars tightly bound by gravity. While these objects are usually 12 to 13 billion years old, a new study has found that clusters can appear to be vastly different ages, depending on the behavior…
NASA’s Hubble Takes Census of Early Galaxies
Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered seven previously unseen galaxies that formed over 13 billion years ago – a time when galaxies were just beginning to form. The new discovery has provided researchers with a “statistically robust” sample…