Classical Cepheid Variables, commonly called Cepheids, are unstable stars larger and much brighter than the Sun which expand and contract in a regular way, taking anything from a few days to months…

The Nov 22 launch of the heaviest satellite known has everyone a twitter.   A Delta IV Heavy booster out of Kennedy put up NROL-32, a "classified spy satellite cargo for the U.S. National…

Astronomers using two decades of observations from many telescopes around the world have discovered an unusual star system which looks like, and may even once have behaved like, a game of snooker.…

Every wonder what to get an astronomy fan for a present?  In this 365DOA Podcast, Emma the waitress and Sandy the diner roleplay the Meteorite Cafe.  Judging by that name, you can guess…

An exoplanet orbiting a star that entered our Milky Way from another galaxy has been detected by astronomers.  This Jupiter-like planet is unusual because it is orbiting a star nearing the end…

This story about the "chubby" galaxy cluster Abell 1689 and dark matter made me laugh out loud. Here's the title: Chubby Galaxy Cluster Suggests Dark Energy Was Stronger Long Ago Then, later on in…

Saturn emitted less energy each year from 2005 to 2009, according to observations by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, but Saturn's southern hemisphere consistently emitted more energy than its northern one…

I finished building my test Picosatellite!  It's a working skeleton, using the real PCB boards but without the electronics wired in.  In short, it's 'real enough'.  Were I to put in…

The Herschel Space Observatory is the largest telescope in space.   It's capable of detecting longer-wavelength light than the human eye can, light in the far-infrared portion of the…

In our many accolades of citizen science, nothing stands taller among discoveries than the strange object Hanny van Arkel found in archived images of the night sky in 2008. After catching sight of it…