Space

Astronomy

New alcohol added to space-stuff catalog

Researchers have discovered the molecule vinyl alcohol in space.

Astronomy

Distant spiral galaxy poses for Gemini

The newly operating Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph instrument on the Gemini North Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, took a high-resolution composite photograph of a galaxy 30 million light-years away.

Astronomy

A Cosmic Crisis?

Astronomers appear to have a heavenly crisis on their hands, and it concerns material they can't even detect.

Astronomy

Faint body may be galaxy building block

Using a cosmic zoom lens, astronomers may have found one of the first building blocks of a galaxy in the universe.

Astronomy

Probe’s comet encounter yields close-ups

A crippled NASA probe successfully navigated close enough to Comet Borrelly to capture and beam home black-and-white and infared images of its nucleus and new data about ions and other particles that radiate from it.

Astronomy

After a failure, a new craft to sail

Despite the July 20 failure of its mission to test the unfurling of a solar sail in a suborbital trajectory, the Planetary Society announced plans in late August to conduct a second test of a sail-propelled craft.

Astronomy

A meteorite’s pristine origins

A rare, carbon-rich meteorite that fell into a frozen Canadian lake last year ranks as the most pristine of such specimens ever found.

Astronomy

Gravity’s lens: Finding a sextet of images

Astronomers have for the first time found a gravitational lens in which the image of a distant galaxy has been split into six distinct images.

Astronomy

Gravity’s lens: Finding a dim cluster

Relying solely on a gravitational mirage rather than visible images, astronomers have discovered a previously unknown cluster of galaxies and measured its distance from Earth.

Astronomy

When Branes Collide

A controversial new theory proposes that our universe existed as a cold, featureless void for eons, until a parallel universe floating through a hidden fifth dimension crashed into it, igniting the Big Bang.

Planetary Science

Galileo finds spires on Callisto

The sharpest images ever taken of Jupiter's icy moon Callisto show a group of features never seen before on the remote body—icy, knoblike spires that show signs of slow but steady erosion.

Astronomy

X rays trace fierce stellar winds

A high-resolution X-ray view of the Rosette nebula, a nearby star-forming region, has revealed for the first time that the stellar winds from massive stars heat surrounding gas to a scorching 6 million kelvins.