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NASA Hubble's designers prepared for gyroscope failure by equipping the observatory with a backup. Unfortunately, when one of Hubble's gyroscopes conked out in early October, the backup didn't work as expected -- it was rotating too fast and hence won't be able to hold the telescope in place when it needs to stay still and lock in on a target. NASA has since been able to reduce its rotation rates and fix its issues by implementing an age-old fix for malfunctioning electronics: turning it off and on again. Back to science! @NASAHubble is well on its way to normal...

Blue asteroids are rare, and blue comets are almost unheard of. An international team led by Teddy Kareta, a graduate student at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, investigated (3200) Phaethon, a bizarre asteroid that sometimes behaves like a comet, and found it even more enigmatic than previously thought. Phaethon sets itself apart for two reasons: it appears to be one of the "bluest" of similarly colored asteroids or comets in the solar system; and its orbit takes it so close to the Sun that its surface heats up to about 800 degrees Celsius (1,500 degrees Fahrenheit), hot...

An amazing new Nasa image captures the youngest pulsar ever found by scientists. The pulsar - an ultra-dense chunk of a star leftover from its explosive death into a supernova - sits just 19,000 light years from Earth. It provides our best look yet at the early stages of star death, a mysterious and violent process that scientists still don't fully understand. The image was taken using Nasa's Chandra X-ray Observatory, an orbiting telescope that has been out of action for nearly two weeks following a catastrophic gyroscope failure.

Astronomers have discovered a massive proto-supercluster of galaxies -- bigger than even one million billion Suns. Scientists have called the ancient colossal structure Hyperion, the European Southern Observatory announced Wednesday. It is reported to have appeared just 2.3 billion years after the Big Bang, which took place about 13.7 billion years ago. The cluster's namesake is one of 12 titans born to the gods Gaia and Uranus in Greek mythology.

SEX-BOTS will help humans colonise Mars, according to a love-doll enthusiast who helps "test drive" randy robots.YouTuber, love-doll collector and sex-bot consultant Brick Dollbanger told The Sun that we'll soon by relying on droids for space travel – and said we'll eventually become bots ourselves. A divorced property developer in his 60s, Brick (not his real name) has been buying sex dolls for over a decade, and regularly advises California sex robot firm Realbotix on their upcoming Harmony love droid.And he's convinced they're going to help advance the human race: "I think we have to remember [sex robots] are here to help us...

NASA is considering a spectacular airship concept for Venus exploration. The space agency’s Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate (SACD) has posted potential designs of the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC) on its website. The airships have even been compared to a “cloud city” by Space.com. A similar size to Earth, Venus is our closest planetary neighbor. However, exploring Venus poses a unique set of challenges, according to NASA. “Though its internal geology is similar to Earth’s, its surface is hot enough to melt lead and is covered with craters, volcanoes, mountains, and lava plains,” it explains.

Galaxy clusters contain thousands of galaxies of all ages, shapes and sizes. Typically, they have a mass of about one million billion times the mass of the Sun and form over billions of years as smaller groups of galaxies slowly come together.The large mass of the galaxy cluster SDSS J0952+3434 creates the fascinating phenomenon of strong gravitational lensing.The cluster’s gravity bends light coming from behind it in a similar way to how the base of a wine glass bends light.The effects of this lensing can be clearly seen as an arc of light in the lower part of the new...

The wizards of early Europe wore hats of gold intricately embellished with astrological symbols that helped them to predict the movement of the sun and stars... ...Wilfried Menghin, the director of the Berlin Museum... carrying out detailed research on a 3,000-year-old 30in high Bronze Age cone of beaten gold that was discovered in Switzerland in 1995... ...discovered that the 1,739 sun and half-moon symbols decorating the Berlin cone's surface make up a scientific code which corresponds almost exactly to the "Metonic cycle" discovered by the Greek astronomer Meton in 432bc - about 500 years after the cone was made --...

A massive glowing "rogue" planetary-mass object has been discovered, surprising scientists with not only its size, but also the fact it's not orbiting a star. The object, named SIMP J01365663+0933473, has a magnetic field more than 200 times stronger than Jupiter’s and is nearly 13 times the size of the gas giant. At its size, it's right between the size of a planet and a failed star, so scientists will need to study it further to determine exactly what it is. “This object is right at the boundary between a planet and a brown dwarf, or ‘failed star,’ and is...

A rogue, planet-size object 20 light-years away from Earth has stunned astronomers with its incredibly powerful magnetic field. The scientists found that the object's magnetic field is more than 200 times stronger than Jupiter's, which, in turn, is between 16 and 54 times stronger than Earth's, according to NASA. How the object, which scientists call SIMP J01365663+0933473, can maintain a magnetic field so strong, as well as generate spectacular auroras, is still unclear. "This particular object is exciting because studying its magnetic dynamo mechanisms can give us new insights on how the same type of mechanisms can operate in extrasolar...

A bizarre rogue planet without a star is roaming the Milky Way just 20 light-years from the Sun. And according to a recently published study in The Astrophysical Journal, this strange, nomadic world has an incredibly powerful magnetic field that is some 4 million times stronger than Earth’s. Furthermore, it generates spectacular auroras that would put our own northern lights to shame. The new observations, made with the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), not only are the first radio observations of a planetary-mass object beyond our solar system, but also mark the first time...

Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) have made the first radio-telescope detection of a planetary-mass object beyond our Solar System. The object, about a dozen times more massive than Jupiter, is a surprisingly strong magnetic powerhouse and a "rogue," traveling through space unaccompanied by any parent star. "This object is right at the boundary between a planet and a brown dwarf, or 'failed star,' and is giving us some surprises that can potentially help us understand magnetic processes on both stars and planets," said Melodie Kao, who led this study while a graduate...

"The new images of Occator Crater and the surrounding areas have exceeded expectations, revealing beautiful, alien landscapes," Dawn principal investigator Carol Raymond, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said in a statement yesterday (July 16).  The $467 million Dawn mission launched in September 2007 with a bold goal: to orbit and study the two largest bodies in the asteroid belt: Vesta and Ceres. Both objects are considered leftovers from the solar system's planet-formation period (hence the mission's name).  Dawn reached Vesta in July 2011 and eyed the object up close for more than a year, finally leaving...

The Kuiper Belt, the region immediately beyond Neptune, harbors TNOs of many sizes. The largest is Pluto, which was discovered more than 60 years before any of the others. Some TNOs are "detached objects," which orbit so far from the sun that they're not appreciably affected by the gravity of Neptune or any other known planet. Perhaps the most famous of these is Sedna, which takes 11,400 years to make a single orbit and never comes closer to the sun than 20 times farther out than Pluto. In 2016, astronomers Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown announced that a distant undiscovered...

About 11 light-years away, Ross 128 b is closer to the solar system than any known exoplanet save Proxima b. First there was Proxima b, the Earth-sized planet orbiting the closest star to us, Proxima Centauri. Then came the seven Earth-sized worlds orbiting TRAPPIST-1, a star 39 light-years away, three of which are in the habitable zone. Now we welcome a new tantalizing exoplanet to the group, the second closest we know of, also Earth-sized and temperate, orbiting a calm red dwarf star: Ross 128 b. Ross 128 is an old, inactive red dwarf star that sits 11 light-years away....

Astronomers have found a cool, Earth-sized planet that's relatively close to our Solar System. The properties of this newly discovered planet - called Ross 128 b - make it a prime target in the search for life elsewhere in the cosmos. At just 11 light-years away, it's the second closest exoplanet of its kind to Earth. But the closest one, known as Proxima b, looks to be less hospitable for life. Found in 2016, it orbits the star Proxima Centauri, which is known to be a rather active "red dwarf" star. This means that powerful eruptions of charged particles periodically...

The International Astronomical Union currently defines a planet as: "a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit." A newly suggested definition takes a different approach:

August 24, 2006 was a dark day for Pluto enthusiasts. It was on that day that the International Astronomical Union established three conditions a celestial body must meet in order to be considered a planet. A planet must orbit around the sun, it must be massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, and it must have “cleared the neighborhood” around its orbit, which means, simply put, that it must have a certain amount of gravitational pull. Pluto does not meet the third condition, so once those rules were put in place, Pluto was demoted to “dwarf planet,” 75...

“Of the seven million Gaia stars with full 3D velocity measurements, we found twenty that could be traveling fast enough to eventually escape from the Milky Way,” said team member Dr. Elena Maria Rossi, an astronomer at Leiden Observatory.“Rather than flying away from the Galactic center, most of the high velocity stars we spotted seem to be racing towards it,” added team leader Dr. Tommaso Marchetti, also from Leiden Observatory.“These could be stars from another galaxy, zooming right through the Milky Way.”It is possible that these intergalactic interlopers come from the Large Magellanic Cloud, a relatively small galaxy orbiting the...

There will be signs in the sun and moon and stars, and on the earth dismay among the nations, bewildered by the roaring of the sea and the surging of the waves. - Luke 21:25 In my estimation, the greatest sign in the heavens that the LORD has ever given to the inhabitants of the earth has now completed or is near its conclusion.  Jesus predicted such things would happen before He returned and He wasn't being facetious. The Revelation 12 Sign, which undoubtedly occurred on September 23–24 of last year was the culmination of it, but was only...