Oribiting gas stations for refueling on the way to the moon
FORGET huge, expensive rockets. A plan being examined by a US government panel would allow smaller, cheaper rockets to fly to the moon and beyond by stopping off at an “orbiting gas station”.
 

When the camera was falling back to Earth do you think the guys were saying amongst themselves “Now thats a really high speed camera or maybe Say cheeeeese?”
A piece of cheese that went missing after being sent into space has been located – in High Wycombe.

Startling image of the newly discovered Soap Bubble Nebula has generated enormous excitement among astronomers
It may look as if a child’s soap bubble has strayed in front of a camera lens, but this extraordinary image from the heavens shows a newly discovered planetary nebula. (Pics)
 

Come on its just a rock
How many planets are in the solar system? The official answer is eight – unless you happen to live in Illinois. Earlier this year, defiant Illinois state governors declared that Pluto had been unfairly demoted by the International Astronomical Union, the authority that sets the rules on all matters planetary.

The Green Peas stuck out because of their small size and green color compared to the more common galaxies
A team of astronomers has discovered a group of rare galaxies called the “Green Peas” with the help of citizen scientists working through an online project called Galaxy Zoo. The finding could lend unique insights into how [...]

Space can be so cool
Most photographs don’t adequately portray the magnificence of the Sun’s corona. Seeing the corona first-hand during a total solar eclipse is best. The human eye can adapt to see features and extent that photographic film usually cannot. Welcome, however, to the digital age. The above picture is a combination of thirty-three [...]

Milky Way Galaxy
95%. That is the percentage of the known Universe that is missing. As in it is not there. Or at least if it is there, we can’t see it. We call this unseen stuff “dark matter”. That has been well known for sometime. What is trickier in answering is why? Why is it [...]

A mosaic of Nasa satellite images gives the most detailed true-colour image of the Earth ever created
For decades, man has gazed up at the stars and marvelled at the wonders of the universe.  But, as this amazing selection of images shows, there are many mind-blowing sights to behold from the other direction.
 

Star Trek inspired power?
There’s a growing chorus of calls to send astronauts to Mars rather than the moon, but critics point out that such trips would be long and gruelling, taking about six months to reach the Red Planet. But now, researchers are testing a powerful new ion engine that could one day shorten the [...]

The galaxy NGC-1097 with a monstrous black hole surrounded by a ring of stars at its center
Nasa has found a monster black hole 100 million times the mass of the Sun feeding off gas, dust and stars at the centre of a galaxy 50 million light-years away.
 

Earth-sized spot on Jupiter
NASA has confirmed the discovery of a new hole the size of the Earth in Juiter’s atmosphere, apparently showing that the planet was hit by something large in recent days. The impact mark was first spotted on Monday morning by an amateur astronomer in Australia, who then drew the attention of scientists [...]

A view of the moon in the new feature of Google Earth 5.0
Forty years ago Neil Armstrong took man’s first step on the Moon. And to mark the historic occasion Google Earth has taken the same leap in cyberspace.  (Video)
 

Birth of the solar system
A team of international astrophysicists, including Dr Maria Lugaro from Monash University, has discovered a new explanation for the early composition of our solar system.
 

Neil Armstrong
When Neil Armstrong first spoke from the moon, he said one thing and people on Earth heard another. What the world heard was grammatically flubbed: “That’s one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.” Armstrong insists he said: “That’s one small step for ‘a’ man.” It’s just that people just didn’t hear [...]

A supernova occurs when a massive star more than 50 times the mass of the Sun dies in a powerful bright explosion
Two dying stars at the edge of the universe and further away than any detected to date have been discovered using a new imaging technique.
 

The moon is responsible for spurring human imagination as it has provided the basis for countless works of literature, art, music, and as representative of the power of human endeavour. (Pics)
 

ECSTATIC space officials at Nasa could be about to unveil one of their most stunning discoveries for 40 years – new and amazingly clear footage of the first moon landing.

View this century’s longest solar eclipse aboard the JetLite 737-700 
On Wednesday, July 22, 2009, we are going to witness the greatest eclipse of the 21st century. A total eclipse of the sun will be visible from within a narrow corridor that traverses half of Earth. The path of the Moon’s umbral shadow will begin in India [...]

Image of part of a stellar remnant whose explosion was recorded in 185 A.D.  
Thanks to a unique “ballistic study” that combines data from ESO’s Very Large Telescope and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have now solved a long-standing mystery of the Milky Way’s particle accelerators. They show in a paper published today on Science Express [...]

 The surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus shows evidence of ongoing geological activity 
Alien life could have evolved on one of Saturn’s moons, scientists say.
They have found evidence that seas may lie beneath the frozen surface of Enceladus  – the planet’s sixth biggest moon.
 

 
Space Colony
For more than 50 years, many have taken the so-called Fermi Paradox to indicate that the existence of intelligent alien civilizations is an impossibility. However, a recent re-examination of the paradox points out that, rather than discounting the spread of an intelligent civilization, the Fermi Paradox merely points out that advanced civilizations with exponential [...]

Photo of volcanic eruption taken from space 
A fortuitous orbit of the International Space Station allowed the astronauts this striking view of Sarychev Volcano (Kuril Islands, northeast of Japan) in an early stage of eruption on June 12, 2009. Sarychev Peak is one of the most active volcanoes in the Kuril Island chain, and it is [...]

Noah Fulmor and Erin Finnegan getting married in 727 at zero gravity
I am very fond of love. It makes people do silly things, giddy things, and, sometimes, very strange things indeed.
However, I am full of vicarious admiration for Noah Fulmor and Erin Finnegan, a Brooklyn couple who decided to do silly, strange, and giddy all [...]

 
Dense knots of dust in otherwise normal galaxies dim the light of a dark gamma-ray burst
Gamma-ray bursts are the universe’s biggest explosions, capable of producing so much light that ground-based telescopes easily detect it billions of light-years away. Yet, for more than a decade, astronomers have puzzled over the nature of so-called dark bursts, which [...]