Yesterday a press release about a new interstellar medium map that has been published (PDF) in Astronomy and Astrophysics caught my eye. A French-American team of astronomers, combining…

The Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), the latest addition to ESO's Paranal Observatory (eso0949), has captured a dramatic new image of the Orion Nebula. The New telescope…

For the first time, a team of astronomers has completed a demographic census of galaxy types at two different points in the Universe's history — in effect, creating two Hubble sequences — that help…

The starburst region NGC 3603 is a cosmic factory where stars form frantically from the nebula's extended clouds of gas and dust. Located 22 000 light-years away from the Sun, it is the closest…

Astronomers have discovered another black hole with a mass over fifteen times that of the Sun, one of only three such objects found so far. The newly announced black hole lies in a spiral galaxy…

Take 2 minutes with Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield and you too will know how to pee in space.  And the origins of shooting stars.   He starts with "when you go to the bathroom on…

Scientific Clogging A recent story about NASA's water recycling system is clogging Google search results.  Apparently, excess calcium in astro-urine is clogging the International Space Station's…

A doctor's office in nearby Virginia, just one state down from me, got clobbered by a 'mango-sized' meteorite this week.  Where others see disaster, I see envy. My envy.  My favorite…

In a recently released report the National Research Council lays out several options NASA could pursue in order  to detect more near-Earth objects (NEOs) – asteroids and comets that could pose a…

An international team of astronomers has viewed two distinct "tails" found on a long tail of gas that is believed to be forming stars where few stars have been formed before. The new observation was…