udf featured

NASA’S Hubble Provides First Census of Galaxies Near Cosmic Dawn

DISTANT WORLDS--Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have uncovered a previously unseen population of seven primitive galaxies that formed more than 13 billion years ago.
by David McGee
 

 
 
4 meteorite bacteria4

Fallen Stars: A Gallery of Famous Meteorites

The meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk in Russia's Ural Mountains on Feb. 15 is only the latest of history's most famous meteorites. Tale a look at this gallery of notable alien rocks, on earth and from elsewhere in the univ...
by David McGee
 

 

 
titan lake

Saturn’s Titan Moon Gets a Dune ‘Makeover’

The craters of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, are being erased as they're filled with dunes of exotic hydrocarbon sand, complicating efforts to estimate the age of the planet's surface.
by David McGee
 

 
 
star forming ring

Dancing the Dance of Stars and Space

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope provides a spectacular image of the bright star-forming ring that surrounds the heart of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1097. Also: Like a ship plowing through still waters, the giant star Zeta...
by David McGee
 

 

 
penny boston spotlight 880x3851

From Earth’s Caves, A Better Understanding of Mars

Dr. Penny Boston is exploring some of the most extreme environments on earth--the Snowy River Cave, the Cave of Crystal Giants--both in New Mexico, n the land where Billy the Kid once roamed--on the educated guess that those re...
by David McGee
 

 
 
04

NASA’S Fermi Measures Cosmic ‘Fog’ Produced by Ancient Starlight

Astronomers using data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have made the most accurate measurement of starlight in the universe and used it to establish the total amount of light from all of the stars that have ever sho...
by David McGee
 

 

 
cme ejection

Cause and Effect

CAUSE AND EFFECT: When the sun spit out a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) on Oct. 5, a brilliant aurora appeared three days later over Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. When Earth-directed, CMEs can affect electronic systems in sate...
by David McGee
 

 
 
supernova1

Oldest Recorded Supernova: Last Remnants of Chinese ‘Guest Star’ of 185 A.D.

A truly cool image, combined from data from four different space telescopes, shows all that remains of the oldest documented example of supernova RCW 86, which the Chinese documented in 185 A.D. as a mysterious "guest star" in ...
by David McGee
 

 

 
Black Hole

‘Cry’ of a Shredded Star Heralds a New Era for Testing Relativity

‘This gives us an opportunity to explore the nature of black holes and test Einstein’s relativity at a time when the universe was very different than it is today,’ Last year, astronomers discovered a quiescent...
by David McGee