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Explanation: What's that small black dot moving across the Sun? Mercury. Possibly the clearest view of Mercury crossing in front of the Sun earlier this week was from Earth orbit. The Solar Dynamics Observatory obtained an uninterrupted vista recording it not only in optical light but also in bands of ultraviolet light. Featured here is a composite movie of the crossing set to music. Although the event might prove successful scientifically for better determining components of Mercury' ultra-thin atmosphere, the event surely proved successful culturally by involving people throughout the world in observing a rare astronomical phenomenon. Many spectacular images...

Explanation: What's that dot on the Sun? If you look closely, it is almost perfectly round. The dot is the result of an unusual type of solar eclipse that occurred in 2006. Usually it is the Earth's Moon that eclipses the Sun. This time, the planet Mercury took a turn. Like the approach to New Moon before a solar eclipse, the phase of Mercury became a continually thinner crescent as the planet progressed toward an alignment with the Sun. Eventually the phase of Mercury dropped to zero and the dark spot of Mercury crossed our parent star. The situation could...

If you enjoy watching paint dry, you may enjoy the Transit of Mercury taking place right now. It is cloudy here, so we can't see it directly.

Asperger's syndrome. A myth. An invention by government to punish its victims for government's failures. This is because the government is supposed to always be right to the left. But far from it the government even in its efforts to conceal its failings and the failings of socialism and public education continues to fail and continues to injure innocent people in the name of the greater good. Instead of punishing bullies, instead of allowing educational alternatives, the government has invented a phony and dubious illness called Asperger's syndrome to punish the victims of bullying so our lazy teachers and...

Explanation: This coming Monday, Mercury will cross the face of the Sun, as seen from Earth. Called a transit, the last time this happened was in 2006. Because the plane of Mercury's orbit is not exactly coincident with the plane of Earth's orbit, Mercury usually appears to pass over or under the Sun. The above time-lapse sequence, superimposed on a single frame, was taken from a balcony in Belgium shows the entire transit of 2003 May 7. The solar crossing lasted over five hours, so that the above 23 images were taken roughly 15 minutes apart. The north pole of...

Explanation: Have you contemplated your home star recently? Featured here, a Sun partially eclipsed on the top left by the Moon is also seen eclipsed by earthlings contemplating the eclipse below. The spectacular menagerie of silhouettes was taken in 2012 from the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area near Page, Arizona, USA, where park rangers and astronomers expounded on the unusual event to interested gatherers. Also faintly visible on the Sun's disk, just to the lower right of the dark Moon's disk, is a group of sunspots. Although a partial solar eclipse by the Moon is indeed a good chance to...

Although both Mercury and Venus circle between the Earth and the sun on every orbit (with Mercury passing between the two bodies three times each Earth year), the three planets don't sit in a flat orbit compared to one another. Only when Earth and a passing planet line up is the interior world visible to skywatchers as it crosses the sun. Mercury's transits currently take place in either early May or November. It is during those months that Earth's orbital plane is intersected by Mercury's, according to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. However, the orientation of the two orbital planes...

Explanation: Innermost planet Mercury and a thin crescent Moon are never found far from the Sun in planet Earth's skies. Taken near dusk on April 8, this colorful evening skyscape shows them both setting toward the western horizon just after the Sun. The broad Tagus River and city lights of Lisbon, Portugal run through the foreground under the serene twilight sky. Near perigee or closest approach to Earth, the Moon's bright, slender crescent represents about 3 percent of the lunar disk in sunlight. Of course as seen from the Moon, a nearly full Earth would light up the lunar night,...

Explanation: February's five planet line-up stretches across a clear sky in this predawn scene. A hilltop Castell de Burriac looms in the foreground, overlooking the town of Cabrera de Mar near Barcelona, Spain, planet Earth. The mosaicked, panoramic image looks south. It merges three different exposure times to record a bright Last Quarter Moon, planets, seaside city lights, and dark castle ruins. Seen on February 1st the Moon was near Mars on the sky. But this week early morning risers have watched it move on, passing near Saturn and finally Venus and Mercury, sliding along near the ecliptic toward the...

Explanation: As January closes and in the coming days of February, early morning risers can spot the five naked-eye planets before dawn. Though some might claim to see six planets, in this seaside panoramic view all five celestial wanderers were found above the horizon along with a bright waning gibbous Moon on January 27. Nearly aligned along the plane of the ecliptic, but not along a line with the Sun, the five planets are spread well over 100 degrees across the sky. Just arriving on the predawn scene, fleeting Mercury stands above the southeastern horizon in the golden light of...

Skywatchers will have many opportunities in 2016 to see just how small we are in the universe. Four days into the new year, hundreds of meteors will dance across the night skies.... Come September, an outer ring of the sun's annular eclipse will be visible across Africa. In between, there will be spectacular shooting stars, super moons, and lunar eclipses to take in. ... From about Jan. 20 to Feb. 20, all five planets that are visible to the naked eye — Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn — will occupy the morning sky. This hasn't happened since 2005, according...

FBI Suspected McVeigh Link to Robbers JOHN SOLOMON Associated Press WASHINGTON - The FBI believed Timothy McVeigh tried to recruit additional help in the days before the deadly 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and gathered evidence that white supremacist bank robbers may have become involved, according to government documents never introduced at McVeigh's trial. The retired FBI chief of the Oklahoma City investigation, Dan Defenbaugh, said he was unaware of some evidence obtained by The Associated Press and that the investigation should be reopened to determine whether the robbery gang was linked to McVeigh. The evidence never shared with Defenbaugh's investigators...

Using a new process in planetary formation modeling, where planets grow from tiny bodies called "pebbles," Southwest Research Institute scientists can explain why Mars is so much smaller than Earth. This same process also explains the rapid formation of the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn, as reported earlier this year. "This numerical simulation actually reproduces the structure of the inner solar system, with Earth, Venus, and a smaller Mars," said Hal Levison, an Institute scientist at the SwRI Planetary Science Directorate. He is the first author of a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences...

Explanation: It was visible around the world. The sunset conjunction of Jupiter and Venus in 2012 was visible almost no matter where you lived on Earth. Anyone on the planet with a clear western horizon at sunset could see them. Pictured above in 2012, a creative photographer traveled away from the town lights of Szubin, Poland to image a near closest approach of the two planets. The bright planets were separated only by three degrees and his daughter striking a humorous pose. A faint red sunset still glowed in the background. Jupiter and Venus will be at it again this...

Uranus, which takes its name from the Greek God of the sky, is a gas giant and the seventh planet from our Sun. It is also the third largest planet in our Solar System, ranking behind Jupiter and Saturn. Like its fellow gas giants, it has many moons, a ring system, and is primarily composed of gases that are believed to surround a solid core. Though it can be seen with the naked eye, the realization that Uranus is a planet was a relatively recent one. Though there are indications that it was spotted several times over the course of...

Gina McCarthy, President Obama’s choice to replace Lisa Jackson at the Environmental Protection Agency, has been chastised for having lied to Congress, in claiming that EPA did not use “dangerous manmade climate change” to justify new 54.5 mpg standards for cars and light trucks. She’s also been implicated in the agency’s practice of using fake emails to hide questionable dealings and activities. These issues highlight attitudes toward ethics, law and public policy that prevail at EPA and too many other government agencies. However, that attention should not distract from other important matters. Ms. McCarthy may be the worst of the...

It was the end of the road for a Casanova who has swindled about 20 women of their money and jewellery when he was arrested by police. The 34-year-old man was believed to have been involved in 20 fraud cases amounting to about RM155,000 (S$55,000). [US$40,600] Identifying himself as Aidid Iskandar, Afzan Iskandar and Hafis, the man would approach his victims on Facebook and sweet-talk them into believing he was sincere. The father-of-three is said to have cheated about 20 women between the ages of 28 and 38 of their cash and jewellery in two years. Brickfields police chief Asst...

California Gov says yes to poisoning more children with mercury and aluminum in manditory vaccines,” he said. “This corporate fascist must be stopped.” He went on to say the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is corrupt because they “can’t solve a problem they helped start.” Carrey, who lives in Los Angeles, said he does not oppose vaccines, but is rather “anti-neurotoxin.” He believes vaccines should be free of chemicals and certain compounds, such as mercury and thimerosal. “All we are saying is, 'Take the neurotoxins out of the vaccines.' Make them toxin free. History will show that that...

The war has been waged on several fronts for nearly a decade, and the aggressors are poised to declare victory over the wounded U.S. coal industry. After powering the Industrial Revolution and helping to turn the U.S. into the world’s top economic power, coal now seems to be drowning in what environmentalists call a “deadly cocktail” — a rabid, politically potent anti-fossil fuels movement, the rise of cheap, abundant, relatively clean domestic natural gas and an Obama administration that freely admits it wants to decrease coal use in America through a host of new rules. That near-perfect storm is taking...

THE $90 million search for MH370 has discovered “man made objects” almost four kilometres under the surface of the southern Indian Ocean, but they are not the missing Boeing 777. Instead the debris is thought to be from an ancient shipwreck, comprising an anchor and other items. Australian Transport Safety Bureau Operational Search Director Peter Foley said they were “obviously disappointed” the discovery was not the missing aircraft.