Space, Astronomy and Planetary Science News

A unique discovery of two celestial explosions at exactly the same position in the sky has led astronomers to suggest they have witnessed the death of one of the most massive stars that can exist.

Picture the Milky Way galaxy—a disk of stars and gas, a stellar spheroid and an enormous halo of dark matter. It spirals around a black hole that is supermassive—about 3 million solar masses.

Gusting winds and the pulsating exhaust plumes from the Phoenix spacecraft's landing engines could complicate NASA's efforts to sample frozen soil from the surface of Mars, according to University of Michigan atmospheric scientist Nilton Renno.

A team of astronomers from Canada, France and the United States is announcing the discovery of a record-breaking black hole located nearly 13 billion light years from the Earth.

Saturn’s moons Tethys and Dione are flinging great streams of particles into space, according to data from the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini mission to Saturn. The discovery suggests the possibility of some sort of geological activity, perhaps even volcanic, on th

A young star's strange elliptical ring of dust likely heralds the presence of an undiscovered Neptune-sized planet, says a University of Rochester astronomer in the latest Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

UC Berkeley geophycists are providing strong evidence that Mars once had an ocean. Naysayers have argued that what appear to be ancient coastlines near the North Pole are too warped to be true seashores.

This year’s list highlights three critical man-made threats: political conflict, unchecked urban and industrial development, and, for the first time, global climate change.

Anyone connected by Internet can now see planet Mars better than at any time in history, through the eye of HiRISE, the most powerful camera ever to orbit another planet.

“Boring” light from red dwarf star Gliese 581 means better odds for extraterrestrial life in that planetary system, according to University of British Columbia astronomer Jaymie Matthews.