Space

  1. Planetary Science

    Roaming Giants: Did migrating planets shape the solar system?

    New simulations suggest that the solar system's four biggest planets were once bunched together, setting up a planetary bowling game that rapidly and violently rearranged the structure of the outer solar system and tossed chunks of debris inward.

    By Ron Cowen
  2. Planetary Science

    Ringing in a new moon

    The Cassini spacecraft has spotted a new moon of Saturn, only the second known to lie within the planet's main rings.

    By Ron Cowen
  3. Planetary Science

    Roving on the Red Planet

    Scientists review the discoveries made by the Mars rovers after nearly 18 months on the Red Planet.

    By Ron Cowen
  4. Planetary Science

    Saturnian moonscape

    Planetary scientists have obtained their closest image yet of Epimetheus, one of Saturn's tiny moons.

    By Ron Cowen
  5. Astronomy

    Spotty neutron stars

    Astronomers have for the first time discerned hot spots on the surfaces of neutron stars.

    By Ron Cowen
  6. Astronomy

    Fleeting Flash: Pinpointing a short gamma-ray burst

    An invisible, highly energetic flash detected by a spacecraft early this week may have given astronomers their first glimpse of two neutron stars colliding to forge a black hole.

    By Ron Cowen
  7. Astronomy

    Planetary Picture? Criteria for planethood cloud object’s identity

    Astronomers are debating whether an image of a planetary-mass object orbiting a brown dwarf qualifies as the first image of an extrasolar planet.

    By Ron Cowen
  8. Astronomy

    Shell of a finding

    A new X-ray portrait of a supernova remnant suggests that this shell of hot gas may be hard to discern if the interstellar medium around the exploded star has extremely low density.

    By Ron Cowen
  9. Planetary Science

    Far-out science

    New measurements show that the planetoid Sedna spins more rapidly than earlier observations had suggested.

    By Ron Cowen
  10. Planetary Science

    The Huygens Chronicles

    After several months of painstaking work analyzing data from the Huygens probe, planetary scientists are able to see the surface of Saturn's moon Titan in greater detail than ever before.

    By Ron Cowen
  11. Astronomy

    Distant Dust: Asteroid belt or boiling comet?

    A swarm of warm dust surrounding a star 41 light-years from Earth may be a sign of the closest extrasolar analog to the solar system's asteroid belt.

    By Ron Cowen
  12. Planetary Science

    Comet mission loses some focus

    A camera aboard the Deep Impact spacecraft, set to fire a projectile into the icy heart of Comet Tempel-1 on July 4, is slightly out of focus.

    By Ron Cowen