NASA scientists have just confirmed an entirely new category of planet just 40 light years away: A world with a diameter 2.7 times larger than Earth that’s covered almost entirely in water. “If you want to describe in one sentence what this planet is, it’s a big, hot ocean.”

kateoplis:

Astronomers discover ‘Star Wars planet’ with two suns

An astrological discovery that would make Luke Skywalker a little homesick is making waves this week — a faraway planet has been found to have two suns.

A team of experts used the NASA Kepler space telescope to discover the planet, which orbits around two large stars — similar to Tatooine, the fictional home of Skywalker in the Star Wars films.

In this case, however, the discovery doesn’t get the Hollywood treatment in terms of a name. Its name is the far more prosaic Kepler-16b.

via: nationalpost

jtotheizzoe:

Humans fire laser to sky, sky laughs, responds with lightning

(They were actually firing a kind of “guide star” that is used to target and correct ground-based telescopes when this shot happened. Nature is still not impressed)

(via Short Sharp Science)

(via jtotheizzoe)

This is Helene, one of Saturn’s moons, also know as the “ice queen.” NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has captured photos that reveal Helene’s mysterious gullies and dark craters.

“I’ve said it before… Saturn’s moons are damn weird.” -Phil Plait, Discover

A star being gobbled by a massive black hole sends out a “mayday call,” and Earth receives it. This happens “only once every 100 million years.”

Photo: University of Warwick, Mark A. Garlick

Messier 33 is one of our closest neighbor galaxies. It’s just 3 million light years away. The orange spots studding the image are areas where stars are forming at an especially fast rate.

In 2009, NASA launched the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, on a mission to capture images of the entire sky with an infrared telescope. In the 14 month since its launch, WISE has captured 2.5 million images, and made a host of new discoveries, including 33,000 new asteroids and 20 comets. NASA has just released some of WISE’s amazing shots to the public. Here, more spectacular, out-of-this-world images.

Keep your eyes on the sky.

Next week, the moon will make its closest approach to Earth in almost 20 years. Astrologers say the phenomenon, known as “Super Moon,” historically coincides with enormous natural disasters. Both the New England hurricane of 1938 and the Australian Hunter Valley floods of 1955 happened during Super Moons, they say. The last Super Moon came in 2005, at around the same time as Hurricane Katrina and the Indonesian tsunami.