Astronomy News

This Saturday will mark 15 years that the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope first opened its eyes on the Universe, and ESO is celebrating its first-light anniversary with a beautiful and intriguing new image of the stellar nursery IC 2944, full of bright young stars and ink-black clouds of cold interstellar dust.

Explanation: Beautiful barred spiral galaxy M109 , 109th entry in Charles Messier's famous catalog of bright Nebulae and Star Clusters , is found just below the Big Dipper's bowl in the northern constellation Ursa Major.

This weekend brings the galaxy and astronomy a little bit more down to Earth in the Gorge and the Oregon coast range, while next weekend does the same in eastern Oregon, in Prineville.

May 25: Penumbral lunar eclipse. A penumbral lunar eclipse occurs when the moon passes through the Earth's partial shadow, or penumbra.

The European Space Agency inaugurated its Near-Earth Object Coordination Center today , cutting the ribbon on a facility that officials said will strengthen Europe's contribution to the hunt for potentially dangerous asteroids and comets.

The week in science: Chile pushes for a national science ministry, Indonesia protects its forests, and Nobel laureate Heinrich Rohrer dies.

Capturing the creation of this type of large, short-lived star body is extremely rare -- the equivalent of discovering a missing link between winged dinosaurs and early birds, said the scientists, who relied on the once-powerful Herschel space telescope and observatories around the world.

EARTH is shoving the moon away faster now than it has done for most of the past 50 million years, says a new model for the way tides influence the lunar orbit.

Two hungry young galaxies that collided 11 billion years ago are rapidly forming a massive galaxy about 10 times the size of the Milky Way, astronomers have discovered.

Two star-forming galaxies in the process of colliding 11 billion light-years away, as seen by a variety of telescopes.

A bright light seen traveling across the sky over the weekend by dozens of witnesses across Maryland and the region is what astronomers are calling a fragmenting meteoric fireball.

Swarthmore engineering sophomore Yousef Alhessi, left, and Fred Orthlieb, emeritus professor of mechanical engineering at Swarthmore; work on taking apart the historic telescope at UI Observatory so it can be restored off-site by Ray Museum Studios in Pennsylvania.

Neil deGrasse Tyson's new book, Space Chronicles: Facing The Ultimate Frontier , at times, reads like an updated version of some of Carl Sagan's classic work about the history of astronomy and our place in the Universe.

Even in places where skies are dark and the Milky Way seems to fill our view, the night sky is teeming with stars we cannot see.

Pictured is an artist's rendering of CoRoT Sol 1 and a chronology of the Sun's evolution based on data from the Subaru Telescope and the CoRoT space mission.

In the year 1600, Giordano Bruno went up n smoke in the Campo de' Fiori in Rome, the Field of Flowers.

The ground feels firm and solid beneath your feet. Of course, the Earth is rotating, turning once on its axis every day.

NRF CEO Dr Albert van Jaarsveld has said that astronomy could make South Africa a world leader.

Information on the mystery bomber who 100 years ago attacked the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh during a suffragette campaign is being sought.

Did you know that there are actually space sounds? Or, that there have been several occurrences of raining fish and that it's possible to travel faster than light? If not, those are just some of the fascinating science mysteries that we've rounded up for you today.