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For the first time, two neutron stars in a nearby galaxy have been observed engaging in a spiral death dance around one another until they collided. What resulted from that collision is being called an "unprecedented" discovery that is ushering in a new era of astronomy, scientists announced Monday.

Bursts of solar winds caused a huge sparkling region on Uranus, scientists observed this by using Hubble space telescope. Electrons that come from various origins such as solar winds, the planetary ionosphere and moon volcanism, when charged in the form of streams caused this, researchers from the Paris Observatory used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to observe this on Uranus. They were able to catch it in powerful magnetic fields and, controlled it into the upper atmosphere, where set off spectacular bursts of light when made interactions with gas particles, such as oxygen or nitrogen.

The results were mixed. Koschny said one big radar system in Puerto Rico did not work due to damage from Hurricane Maria but that another U.S. based radar system was used instead. “This is exactly why we do this exercise – to not be surprised by these things,” he said. Radar images showed the asteroid was about 10 to 12 meters (yards) wide, roughly the size of an asteroid that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia in 2013... Koschny said the ESA now needed to update its predictions for how close 2012 TC4 will come to Earth on its next flyby, which...

Asteroid 2012 TC4 doesn't have a very memorable name, but it might leave quite an impression years from now. The house-sized asteroid that just passed by Earth, almost as close as many satellites in orbit, will be back -- and a future visit might lead to it taking up permanent residency here. On Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, Asteroid 2012 TC4 safely passed by our planet at an altitude of 27,300 miles (44,000 kilometers), just a few thousand miles above the level of satellites in geosychronous orbit. That's nearly twice as close as when it passed us almost exactly five years ago,...

Planet Nine is out there, and astronomers are determined to find it, according to a new statement from NASA. ... While the mysterious world still has yet to be found, astronomers have discovered a number of strange features of our solar system that are best explained by the presence of a ninth planet, according to the NASA statement. In 2016, Batygin and co-author Mike Brown, an astronomer at Caltech, published a study that examined the elliptical orbits of six known objects in the Kuiper Belt, a distant region of icy bodies stretching from Neptune outward toward interstellar space. Their findings...

A unique opportunity to study the dwarf planet Haumea has led to an intriguing discovery: Haumea is surrounded by a ring. Add this to the already long list of unique things about the weird-shaped world with a dizzying rotation and a controversial discovery. On January 21, 2017 Haumea passed in front of a distant star, in an event known as an occultation. The background star can – pardon the pun – shine a light on the object passing in front, providing information about a distant object — such as size, shape, and density — that is otherwise difficult to obtain....

My history with bubble universes began in 1968 when I met Robert Kirshner while we were both undergraduates at Harvard in Massachusetts. He was a lively, funny, interesting fellow. We met up again a few years later, when he was a graduate student at Caltech in California and I was a new postdoc there. At Caltech, he had a piece of good luck that changed the direction of his career and, ultimately, helped reshape modern cosmology.While he was at Caltech, a bright supernova (an exploding star ending its life) became visible, and Kirshner was able to study it using the...

Asteroid 2012 TC4 was discovered on Oct. 4, 2012 by the Pan-STARRS observatory in Hawaii. Week later, it gave Earth a close shave when it passed the planet at the distance of 0.247 LD (lunar distance), or 58,900 miles (94,800 kilometers). Observations reveal that 2012 TC4 is an elongated and rapidly rotating object that has been known to make many close approaches to Earth in the past. The space rock orbits the sun approximately every 1.67 years at a distance of about 1.4 AU. Astronomers estimate that 2012 TC4 has a diameter between 26 to 85 feet (8 to 26...

After thirteen years of development and setbacks — including a fatal crash, technical difficulties and frequent delays — Richard Branson's private space program, Virgin Galactic, is soon ready for live action, at least according to Branson himself. “We are hopefully about three months before we are in space, maybe six months before I’m in space,” the founder of Virgin Galactic, which is part of Virgin Group, told an audience at Nordic Business Forum in Helsinki, Finland last week. When he received an audience question about who will reach Mars first, he or Elon Musk, Branson made clear he is not...

NASA will coordinate with observatories around the world to try and get an exact trajectory for the asteroid in the days leading up to the flyby.... "This is the perfect target for such an exercise because while we know the orbit of 2012 TC4 well enough to be absolutely certain it will not impact Earth, we haven't established its exact path just yet," says Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies. This experiment will test how well NASA can determine the orbit of a newly detected asteroid that might pose a danger to us. If the...

The bizarre long-term dimming of Tabby's star — also known as Boyajian's star, or, more formally, KIC 8462852 — is likely caused by dust, not a giant network of solar panels or any other "megastructure" built by advanced aliens, a new study suggests. Astronomers came to this conclusion after noticing that this dimming was more pronounced in ultraviolet (UV) than infrared light. Any object bigger than a dust grain would cause uniform dimming across all wavelengths, study team members said. [13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Aliens] "This pretty much rules out the alien megastructure theory, as that could not explain...

The Soviet Union inaugurates the “Space Age” with its launch of Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite. The spacecraft, named Sputnik after the Russian word for “satellite,” was launched at 10:29 p.m. Moscow time from the Tyuratam launch base in the Kazakh Republic. Sputnik had a diameter of 22 inches and weighed 184 pounds and circled Earth once every hour and 36 minutes. Traveling at 18,000 miles an hour, its elliptical orbit had an apogee (farthest point from Earth) of 584 miles and a perigee (nearest point) of 143 miles. Visible with binoculars before sunrise or after sunset, Sputnik transmitted...

For decades astronomers tried to prove Albert Einstein right by doing what Einstein thought was impossible: detecting the faint ripples in the universe called gravitational waves. They failed repeatedly until two years ago when they finally spotted one. Then another. And another. And another. Three American scientists — including one who initially flunked out of MIT — won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday that launched a whole new way to observe the cosmos. Sweden’s Royal Academy of Sciences cited the combination of highly advanced theory and ingenious equipment design in awarding Rainer Weiss of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...

Unusual composition of star suggests it swallowed planets that came too closeIt was a star with a hefty appetite. Astronomers say the sun-like star about 320 light-years from Earth may have eaten several of its planets, leading them to give it the nickname Kronos, after the Greek god who ate his sons. The star — with the official name of HD 240430 — is believed to be part of a wide binary star system, two stars that share a central point of orbit. Because the stars travel together in space, astronomers refer to them as co-moving stars. While the stars...

An asteroid the size of a house will pass very close to Earth later this month, giving scientists a chance to try out their planetary defence system. The asteroid, known as 2012 TC4, was first spotted by the Pan-STARRS observatory in Hawaii in 2012, but its orbit meant that it could not be tracked. Early observations indicated that it could come as close as 4,200 miles from the Earth's surface - well within the ring of geostationary satellites - on October 12. However, new observations by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile reveal that it will miss...

October is jam-packed with sky-watching delights, from shooting stars created by a famed comet to a celestial dance featuring the moon, Mars, and Venus. The night skies will also showcase a far-flung planet at its best for the year, while early mornings will offer a lunar hide-and-seek with a brilliant star. So dust off those binoculars, and mark your October calendar! Mars and Venus Join Forces—October 5 Moon Meets Stellar Bull's Eye—October 9 Moon Buzzes Beehive—October 13 Moon Eclipses Leo’s Heart—October 15 Zodiacal Lights—October 15-30 Planetary Pair Hosts Moon—October 17 Big, Bright Uranus—October 19 Orionid Meteor Shower Peaks—October 21 Bouncing...

The Hubble Space Telescope captured a view of Comet C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS), called K2 for short, as it came in from out beyond Saturn's orbit, 1.5 billion miles from the sun. As it approaches the sun and the temperature rises from minus 440 degrees Fahrenheit, the comet is developing a fluffy cloud of dust, called a coma, which surrounds its frozen body. While the comet's nucleus appears to be just 12 miles across, the coma stretches 10 times Earth's diameter. According to a statement from NASA, K2 likely began its journey in the spherical Oort Cloud surrounding the solar system,...

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has photographed the farthest active inbound comet ever seen, at a whopping distance of 1.5 billion miles from the Sun (beyond Saturn's orbit). Slightly warmed by the remote Sun, it has already begun to develop an 80,000-mile-wide fuzzy cloud of dust, called a coma, enveloping a tiny, solid nucleus of frozen gas and dust. These observations represent the earliest signs of activity ever seen from a comet entering the solar system's planetary zone for the first time. The comet, called C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS) or "K2", has been travelling for millions of years from its home in...

We are made from stretched quantum fluctuations. At least that’s cosmologists’ currently most popular explanation. According to their theory, the history of our existence began billions of years ago with a – now absent – field that propelled the universe into a phase of rapid expansion called “inflation.” When inflation ended, the field decayed and its energy was converted into radiation and particles which are still around today.

Lockheed Unveils Plans for Orbiting Mars Base Camp and Lander Within 10 Years By Mike Killian Mars Base Camp is Lockheed Martin’s vision for sending humans to Mars in about a decade. The Mars surface lander called the Mars Accent Descent Vehicle (MADV) is a single-stage system that uses Orion systems as the command deck. It could allow astronauts to explore the surface for two weeks at a time before returning back to the Mars Base Camp in orbit around Mars. Credits: Lockheed Martin Speaking at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Adelaide, Australia, officials with Lockheed Martin today revealed...