Watch an exoplanet orbit its star

A series of images has been made into a video, showing Beta Pictoris b moving through 18 months of its 22-year orbit around its star. Very cool!

Fact and fiction of Martian dust storms

Andy Weir’s book The Martian - soon to be released as a movie - begins with a huge dust storm that strands a fictional astronaut on Mars. Could it happen?

Mercury rotates faster than expected

Analysis of data from the MESSENGER spacecraft reveals that, along with the sun, distant Jupiter may be influencing Mercury's orbit and spin.

Global ocean on Saturn moon Enceladus

Active water and ice geysers on Enceladus now are believed to spew from a planet-wide, liquid ocean beneath this moon's icy crust.

New Pluto images wow scientists

These latest Pluto images from New Horizons have scientists stunned, says NASA. It’s not just the breathtaking views, but the strangely familiar, arctic look.

Video: The solar system to scale

Beautiful short film depicting what happened when a group of friends built a scale model of the solar system on a dry lakebed in Nevada.

SOHO discovers its 3000th comet

Before its 1995 launch, no one knew what a spectacular comet finder the SOHO spacecraft would be. It excels at spotting sungrazers, comets sweeping near the sun.

No nearby advanced civilizations, astronomer says

Following the July announcement of a big new SETI initiative, a Netherlands astronomer says advanced civilizations are rare or absent from the local universe.

NASA’s SDO catches a double eclipse

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory sees dozens of Earth eclipses and several lunar transits each year. On September 13, 2015, it saw the two happening at once.

New model explains Io’s misplaced volcanos

Io's volcanic activity may be due to a unique combination of ordinary gravitational squeezing by Jupiter and friction on molten rock within Io's interior.

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