'End of Days' for Europe's Ambitious GOCE and Planck Missions to Explore Earth and the Cosmos

By Ben Evans, on October 23rd, 2013

 

The European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, will bid a fond farewell to the GOCE and Planck missions this week. Both missions have contributed enormously to our understanding of Earth and the Universe. Photo Credit: ESOC

Two ambitious science missions—one circling Earth closer than any other research satellite, the other […]

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It's an Alien Blue World—But Nothing Like Earth

By Paul Scott Anderson, on July 13th, 2013

Artist’s conception of exoplanet HD 189733b—a “deep blue dot” reminiscent of Earth from a distance. Image Credit: NASA / ESA / M. Kornmesser

The planets and moons in our Solar System come in a wide variety of colors, and the natural beauty can be breathtaking. Now, the true color of a much more […]

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Hubble Space Telescope Reveals Evidence of Farthest Known Planet From Its Star

By Emily Carney, on June 14th, 2013

A gap in the protoplanetary disk of dust and gas whirling around TV Hydrae uncovered evidence of an unseen, growing planet, according to astronomers studying Hubble data. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Debes (STScI), H. Jang-Condell (University of Wyoming), A. Weinberger (Carnegie Institution of Washington), A. Roberge (Goddard Space Flight Center), G. Schneider […]

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Hubble and Herschel Make Surprising Deep-Space Finds

By Ben Evans, on May 30th, 2013

The Ring Nebula, with its dying progenitor star clearly visible. Photo Credit: NASA

New data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Herschel Space Observatory have provided new insights into the shape and structure of the far-off Ring Nebula—whose fate has important ramifications for the future of our own Sun—and may have begun […]

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Herschel Discovers Some of the Youngest Stars Ever Seen

By News Release, on March 22nd, 2013

Astronomers have found some of the youngest stars ever seen thanks to the Herschel space observatory, a European Space Agency mission with important NASA contributions. Dense envelopes of gas and dust surround the fledging stars known as protostars, making their detection difficult until now. The discovery gives scientists a window into the earliest […]

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NASA Telescopes Discover Strobe-Like Flashes In a Suspected Binary Protostar

By News Release, on February 8th, 2013

Image Credit: Robert Gutermuth / UMass Amherst

PASADENA, Calif — Two of NASA’s great observatories, the Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes, have teamed up to uncover a mysterious infant star that behaves like a strobe light.

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