By observing a high-speed component of the massive galaxy cluster MACS J0717.5+3745, an extraordinarily dynamic cluster with a total mass greater than 1015 (a million billion) times the mass of the…

The surface of Venus is totally hostile to Earth life, a dim, hot furnace, with temperatures well over 400°C. But conditions are different at the Venus cloud tops. Temperatures are ideal, with plenty…

The near-infrared vision of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has given us a new view deep inside the Tarantula Nebula - and its more than 800,000 stars and protostars within. Also known as 30 Doradus,…

This idea dates back to the Russians in the 1970s. The surface of Venus is far too hot, and the atmosphere too dense, for Earth life. However, our air is a lifting gas on Venus, with about half the…

Messier 83, the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy, is one of the largest and closest barred spiral galaxies to us.  At 15 million light-years away, it is one of the most conspicuous galaxies of its type…

The most scientifically interesting objects are not the bright blueish white ones in the center of the image, but the small reddish looking ones off to the sides.  Here's how and why. …

Welcome to the first big solar flare of 2014. The sun emitted a significant solar flare peaking at 1:32 p.m. EST on Jan.7, 2014. This is the first significant flare of 2014 and follows on the heels…

Astronomers using NASA's Fermi observatory have made the first-ever gamma-ray measurements of a gravitational lens, thanks to B0218+357, located 4.35 billion light-years from Earth in the…

Astronomers has discovered the first Earth-mass planet that transits its host star and found that KOI-314c is the lightest planet to have both its mass and physical size measured. Though it weighs…

Using the new capabilities of the upgraded Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), scientists have discovered previously-unseen binary companions to a pair of very young protostars, which gives strong…