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Explanation: In only about 12,000 years Vega will be the North Star, the closest bright star to our fair planet's North Celestial Pole. By then, when you fix your camera to a tripod long exposures of the night sky will show the concentric arcs of star trails centered on a point near Vega as Earth rotates on its axis. Of course, presently the bright star conveniently near the North Celestial Pole is Polaris, but that will change as the Earth's axis of rotation precesses, like the wobble of a spinning top with a precession period of about 26,000 years. If...

Scientists working on Europe's Planck satellite say the first stars in the Universe lit up later than was previously thought. The team has made the most precise map of the "oldest light" in the cosmos. Earlier observations of this radiation had suggested that the first generation of stars burst into life about 420 million years after the Big Bang. The new Planck data now indicates they fired up around 560 million years after the Universe got going. "This difference of 140 million years might not seem that significant in the context of the 13.8-billion-year history of the cosmos, but proportionately...

Stars Passing Close to the Sunby Paul Gilster on January 2, 2015 Every time I mention stellar distances I’m forced to remind myself that the cosmos is anything but static. Barnard’s Star, for instance, is roughly six light years away, a red dwarf that was the target of the original Daedalus starship designers back in the 1970s. But that distance is changing. If we were a species with a longer lifetime, we could wait about eight thousand years, at which time Barnard’s Star would close to less than four light years. No star shows a larger proper motion relative to...

The Dallas Stars video board is known for its clever barbs at the opposing teams and using current events to their comedic advantage. Well, if you hadn't heard, North Korea has been in the news lately. After hacking efforts that effectively shut down the release of Sony-produced film The Interview was traced back to North Korea by the FBI, the country has experienced widespread internet outages. So, naturally, this gave the Stars' entertainment team an ample opportunity to stir up a little national fervor in the proud American city of Dallas, Texas.

A star mystery solved? These newfound stars could help solve the so-called "photon underproduction crisis," which suggests that an extraordinary amount of ultraviolet light appears to be missing from the universe. The intergalactic stars could also help address what is known as the "missing baryon problem." Baryons are a class of subatomic particles that includes the protons and neutrons that make up the hearts of atoms inside normal matter. Theories of the formation and evolution of the universe predict there should be far more baryons than scientists currently see. The baryons that astronomers have accounted for in the local cosmic...

If there’s one star in the sky people know about, it’s Betelgeuse.* Marking the right shoulder of the hunter Orion—remember, he’s facing us, so it’s on our left—this orange-red star is one of the brightest in the night sky. It’s been studied for as long as we’ve had telescopes, yet for all our advanced technology and knowhow, details about it are maddeningly vague. We don’t even have a good determination of how far away it is! Still, there’s a lot we do know: It’s a red supergiant, a star that started out life already a lot bigger, more massive, and...

On this date in 1794, President George Washington signed a measure making the first changes to the American flag, by ordering the stars and stripes to be increased by two each, to symbolize the admissions of Vermont and Kentucky to the Union. The 15-star, 15-stripe flag would remain the standard for the United States for 23 years, until the admission of five more states would bring the next changes to the flag, reverting the number of stripes to a permanent 13 but increasing the stars for each state admitted thereafter.

HOUSTON — Beyond the security gate at the Johnson Space Center’s 1960s-era campus here, inside a two-story glass and concrete building with winding corridors, there is a floating laboratory. Harold G. White, a physicist and advanced propulsion engineer at NASA, beckoned toward a table full of equipment there on a recent afternoon: a laser, a camera, some small mirrors, a ring made of ceramic capacitors and a few other objects. He and other NASA engineers have been designing and redesigning these instruments, with the goal of using them to slightly warp the trajectory of a photon, changing the distance it...

Look for the 2013 Perseid meteor shower to be at its prolific best from late late August 11 until dawn August 12! Great times to watch: after midnight and before dawn on August 11, 12 or 13. We give the nod to Monday, August 12 – in the hours between midnight and dawn. But any of these mornings should be fine for watching this year’s Perseid shower. At dusk and early evening on August 11, the waxing crescent moon shines between the planet Venus and the star Spica. The planet Saturn is found above Spica. The Perseids are a summertime...

Low-mass Jupiter-like exoplanet challenges planetary formation theory Astronomers have detected a low-mass giant planet that challenges existing theories about how bigger worlds are formed.Artist's impression ... the Jupiter-like low-mass exoplanet GJ 504b The Jupiter-sized world, dubbed GJ 504b, was found much further out in its star's orbit than a planet its size should have been, if you go by existing planet-formation theory.GJ 504b weighs in at around four times Jupiter's mass, and is the lowest mass exoplanet* to be imaged orbiting a Sun-like star using direct imaging techniques.Given its similarity to Jupiter's size, NASA boffins were surprised to find that...

And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, And to...

Science & the Virgin of Guadalupe Read what science has discovered about the tilma of the Virgin of Guadalupe Download a high-resolution image of the Our Lady of Guadalupe here 1. Ophthalmic studies made on the eyes of Mary detected that when the eye is exposed to light, the retina contracts, and when the light is withdrawn, it returns to a dilated state, just as happens with a living eye. 2. The temperature of Juan Diego’s tilma, made of a material that comes from fibers of the maguey cactus, maintains a constant temperature of 98.6 degrees, the same as that...

An artist’s impression of the stars creating gamma-ray bursts. The background blue star is the progenitor of a standard long duration gamma-ray burst. A new type of powerful, long-lasting explosion deep in space may be the death knell of gigantic stars, scientists say. Star explosions (called supernovas) can give off high-powered flashes of radiation known as gamma-ray bursts. These bursts usually fall into two categories: ones that last less than two seconds, and ones that last for several minutes. But this new type of explosion can create a gamma-ray burst that goes on for much longer — up to several...

A California creationist is offering a $10,000 challenge to anyone who can prove in front of a judge that science contradicts the literal interpretation of the book of Genesis. Dr Joseph Mastropaolo, who says he has set up the contest, the Literal Genesis Trial ...

"For those of you with even a small refractor telescope, the next few nights present a once in a blue moon opportunity to spot all seven planets in the same evening. Five of them are visible without even binoculars, while the other two will require you to reference the charts below. While Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn will "move" faster in the sky, Uranus and Neptune will stay relatively fixed in their positions in Pisces and Aquarius for some time. The closest five planets all yield some features through a small amateur telescope, the largest, Saturn and Jupiter, even...

Explanation: Globular star cluster 47 Tucanae is a jewel of the southern sky. Also known as NGC 104, it roams the halo of our Milky Way Galaxy along with around 200 other globular star clusters. The second brightest globular cluster (after Omega Centauri) as seen from planet Earth, it lies about 13,000 light-years away and can be spotted naked-eye near the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) in the constellation of the Toucan. Of course, the SMC is some 210,000 light-years distant, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way and not physically close to 47 Tuc. Stars on the outskirts of the...

Orion is one of the most well-known and easily recognized constellations of the winter sky. The three bright blue stars in Orion’s belt seem to draw our attention instantly.1 Such stars are a strong confirmation of the biblical timescale. Most stars generate energy by the process of nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium in the stellar core. This is a very efficient power source. Theoretically, a star like the sun has enough hydrogen in its core to keep it burning for ten billion years. But that’s not the case with blue stars. Blue stars are always more massive than the...

Celebrities who lean to one side ... or the other. Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/slideshow/entertainment/2012/08/25/celebs-left-right-conservative-liberal/?intcmp=features#slide=1#ixzz24ZZcmy4z

Astroboffins have spotted a galaxy cluster that's breaking all the cosmic rules, including coming back to life to spawn stars at an enormous rate. The Phoenix cluster is spewing out the celestial bodies at the highest rate ever observed for the middle of a galaxy cluster; it's the most powerful producer of X-rays of any known cluster; it's one of the most massive of its kind; and the rate of hot gas cooling in the central regions is the largest ever observed. According to the scientists, the cluster is "experiencing a massive starburst" that's forming the equivalent of 740 Suns...

It seemed too good to be true: a superbright newfound galaxy cluster possibly more massive than any other known, forging fresh stars nearly a thousand times faster than normal.