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The layout of Tell el-Amarna, ancient Egypt's capital during the reign of pharaoh Akhenaten (1353B.C-1336B.C), has been reveled through remote sensing techniques, the Antiquities Ministry stated Wednesday. The discovery is attributed to a spatial high resolution satellite imagery system that was carried out by the archaeology mission of Belgian University of Leuven, currently excavating at Amarna on the east bank of Upper Egypt's governorate of Minya, said Antiquities Minister Mamdouh al-Damaty. "The team captured and analyzed images from satellites orbiting 450 kilometers above the earth, equipped with advanced cameras," Damaty said in the statement, adding that the images showed "the...

An Islamist preacher from Kuwait called for the demolition of the Giza pyramids and Sphinx "to put an end to idolatry and the worship of such pagan constructions." "The fact that early Muslims did not destroy the pharaohs' legacy upon the Arab conquest of Egypt does not mean that we shouldn't do it now," preacher Ibrahim al-Kandari was quoted by the Kuwaiti Al-Watan daily newspaper Tuesday. The call echoes that of leader of Islamic State (IS) group Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who described the destruction of the historic monuments and archaeological sites as a "religious duty," Al-Ahram reported. The alleged call...

Another 18th Dynasty tomb has been discovered by archaeologists from the American Research Center in Egypt at Al-Qurna in Luxor. Paintings on the walls of this New Kingdom (1550-1070 B.C.) tomb "are records of daily life practices that prevailed in that era," according to a statement made by Antiquities Minister Mamdouh al-Damaty. This tomb, which belonged to Satmut and his wife Ta-kh-at, was also looted in antiquity, and some of the scenes and inscriptions on its walls were erased. "The newly discovered tomb is located to the east of TT110 and they share the same courtyard. The tomb door is...

Explanation: Several key conditions came together to create this award-winning shot. These included a dark night, few clouds, an epic auroral display, and a body of water that was both calm enough and unfrozen enough to show reflected stars. The featured skyscape of activity and serenity appeared over Iceland's Vatnajökull Glacier a year ago January, with the Jökulsárlón Iceberg Lagoon captured in the foreground. Aurora filled skies continue to be common near Earth's poles as our Sun, near Solar Maximum, continues to expel energetic clouds of plasma into the Solar System.

The eastern coastline of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, a mecca for tourists, may have been walloped by a tsunami between 1,500 and 900 years ago, says a new study involving Mexico’s Centro Ecological Akumal (CEA) and the University of Colorado Boulder. There are several lines of evidence for an ancient tsunami, foremost a large, wedge-shaped berm about 15 feet above sea level paved with washing machine-sized stones, said the researchers. Set back in places more than a quarter of a mile from shore, the berm stretches for at least 30 miles, alternating between rocky headlands and crescent beaches as it tracks...

Explanation: What are the unusual spots surrounding that galaxy? They are all images of the same supernova. For the first time, a single supernova explosion has been seen split into multiple images by the gravitational lens deflections of intervening masses. In this case the masses are a large galaxy and its home galaxy cluster. The featured image was captured last November by the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. The yellow-hued quadruply-imaged Supernova Refsdal occurred in the early universe far behind the cluster. Measuring the locations and time-delays between the supernova images should allow astrophysicists to recover the amount of dark matter...

Explanation: The center of our Milky Way Galaxy is hidden from the prying eyes of optical telescopes by clouds of obscuring dust and gas. But in this stunning vista, the Spitzer Space Telescope's infrared cameras, penetrate much of the dust revealing the stars of the crowded galactic center region. A mosaic of many smaller snapshots, the detailed, false-color image shows older, cool stars in bluish hues. Reddish glowing dust clouds are associated with young, hot stars in stellar nurseries. The very center of the Milky Way was only recently found capable of forming newborn stars. The galactic center lies some...

Explanation: Near the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy some 200 thousand light-years distant, lies 5 million year young star cluster NGC 602. Surrounded by natal gas and dust, NGC 602 is just below center in this telescopic field of view with the angular size of the Full Moon on the sky. The cluster itself is about 200 light-years in diameter. Glowing interior ridges and swept back shapes strongly suggest that energetic radiation and shock waves from NGC 602's massive young stars have eroded the dusty material and triggered a progression of star formation moving away from...

Syrian activists say government helicopter gunships have dropped bombs on the Syrian city of Aleppo, killing at least 10 people and wounding many others. An Aleppo-based activist who goes by the name Abu Raed told the Associated Press news agency that a barrel bomb struck a shop that sells gasoline and diesel, causing a fire that burned bystanders on Thursday. Abu Raed said the strike on the Qadi Askar neighbourhood killed at least 10, while the Britain-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said as many as 18 people died. The aerial attack comes as government forces and rebels...

Explanation: It looks like a fine collection of aggies. But this grid of embedded swirls and streaks actually follows the dramatic development of planet Earth's auroral substorms. The sequence of over 600 horizon-to-horizon fisheye images was taken over a 2 hour period near the artic circle in March of 2012 from Lapland, northern Sweden. It begins at upper left in evening twilight and ends at lower right, covering two activity peaks with bright coronae forming overhead. While exploring space between Earth and Moon, NASA's fleet of THEMIS spacecraft discovered that these explosions of auroral activity are driven by sudden releases...

Explanation: Our solar system's ruling giant planet Jupiter and 3 of its 4 large Galilean moons are captured in this single Hubble snapshot from January 24. Crossing in front of Jupiter's banded cloud tops Europa, Callisto, and Io are framed from lower left to upper right in a rare triple-moon conjunction. Distinguishable by colors alone icy Europa is almost white, Callisto's ancient cratered surface looks dark brown, and volcanic Io appears yellowish. The transiting moons and moon shadows can be identified by sliding your cursor over the image, or following this link. Remarkably, two small, inner Jovian moons, Amalthea and...

Explanation: The faint and somehow menacing cometary globule CG4 reaches through the center of this deep southern skyscape. About 1,300 light-years from Earth toward the constellation Puppis, its head is about 1.5 light-years in diameter and its tail about 8 light-years long. That's far larger than the Solar System's comets that it seems to resemble. In fact, the dusty cloud contains enough material to form several Sun-like stars and likely has ongoing star formation within. How its distinctive form came about is still debated, but its long tail trails away from the Vela Supernova remnant near the center of the...

Explanation: The sprawling Caloris basin on Mercury is one of the solar system's largest impact basins, created during the early history of the solar system by the impact of a large asteroid-sized body. The multi-featured, fractured basin spans about 1,500 kilometers in this enhanced color mosaic based on image data from the Mercury-orbiting MESSENGER spacecraft. Mercury's youngest large impact basin, Caloris was subsequently filled in by lavas that appear orange in the mosaic. Craters made after the flooding have excavated material from beneath the surface lavas. Seen as contrasting blue hues, they likely offer a glimpse of the original basin...

Explanation: What dark structures arise from the Pelican Nebula? Visible as a bird-shaped nebula toward the constellation of a bird (Cygnus, the Swan), the Pelican Nebula is a place dotted with newly formed stars but fouled with dark dust. These smoke-sized dust grains formed in the cool atmospheres of young stars and were dispersed by stellar winds and explosions. Impressive Herbig-Haro jets are seen emitted by a star on the right that is helping to destroy the light year-long dust pillar that contains it. The featured image was scientifically-colored to emphasize light emitted by small amounts of ionized nitrogen, oxygen,...

A tomb dating to the 18th Dynasty has been discovered by a team from the American Research Center in the Gorna necropolis on Luxor’s west bank. The t-shaped tomb has two large halls and an unfinished small niche at one end. A side room has a shaft that “could lead to the burial chamber,” Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh el-Damaty told Ahram Online. The walls of the tomb, which was looted and damaged in antiquity, are decorated with paintings of hunting scenes and images of the tomb’s owner, a guard of Amun’s gate, and his wife in front of an offering...

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a fortified settlement that could be Libnah, part of the Kingdom of Judah in ancient Israel, and a place where the Israelites stopped during the Exodus... Libnah was also the site of a revolt during the reign of King Jehoram of Judah (mentioned in 2 Chronicles 21:10) when the king had forsaken "the God of his fathers". Another biblical account states 185,000 Assyrian soldiers under King Sennacherib were killed by an angel of God while they were encamped near Libnah, which prevented them from advancing on Jerusalem from Lachish (2 Kings 19:35)... Tel Burna...

Likely owner had royal connections given quality of jewellery Archaeology student had been amateur metal detector since childhood Coins and other jewellery found next to female skeleton in field Pendant described by experts as of 'national significance' Student, landowner and others on dig will get to split proceeds

Explanation: It was late in the northern martian spring when the HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spied this local denizen. Tracking across the flat, dust-covered Amazonis Planitia in 2012, the core of this whirling dust devil is about 140 meters in diameter. Lofting dust into the thin martian atmosphere, its plume reaches about 20 kilometers above the surface. Common to this region of Mars, dust devils occur as the surface is heated by the Sun, generating warm, rising air currents that begin to rotate. Tangential wind speeds of up to 110 kilometers per hour are reported for dust...

Hezbollah is funded, trained and controlled by Iran’s Shiite government and includes both a political party represented in Lebanon's parliament and an armed wing, and considered a terrorist organization by the European Union. The U.S. has put the entire organization, which has operations in dozens of nations, on its terrorist list. Ali Fayyad, a Hezbollah member of parliament, said his party is ready to put aside its religious stance in the interest of defending all of Lebanon’s 18 religious sects and establishing a “nonsectarian, democratic state.” “Although [Hezbollah] is a Muslim party we believe that all those fighting against imperialism,...

About forty kilometres south of Cairo, close to the town of Helwan, lie the ruins of the Sadd-el-Kafara ( = "dam of the Pagans"), an embankment dam of great size built around 2700-2600 BC, discovered over 100 years ago in the old, deep and dry Garawi ravine. The masonry-faced earthen dam originally measured 14 m height and 113 m length along the crest and is considered today the oldest dam of such size known in the world. The primal aim of the dam was to retain the water from rare but violent floods. It could also ensure water to workers...