Articles

Stories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.

The Lupus 3 dark cloud and associated hot young stars

Stars, and stars, and stars: pretty pictures from the European Southern Observatory

My solar system chauvinism is well-established, but I am as much a sucker for beautiful astrophotos as the rest of you. Once in a while I get a media advisory from the European Southern Observatory about a new pretty picture posted on their website, and then I inevitably lose an hour following links to one stunner after another.

Jupiter and Io from Pleiades-1B (animation)

Pretty picture: Jupiter photo from an unusual source

A recently launched Earth-observing satellite is using the stars to practice its pointing, and caught a neat animation of Jupiter.

Crowdsourcing the Andromeda Galaxy

Scientists would like your help starting at high-resolution images of the Andromeda Galaxy captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Exploring the XDF: The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field

The newly-released eXtreme Deep Field takes us even further back into the history of our universe than the Ultra Deep Field or UDF.

Nighttime Sky View of Future Galaxy Merger: 4 Billion Years

Artist's views of a night sky transformed by a galaxy merger

A measurement of the Andromeda galaxy's proper motion shows it's coming directly at us, and will collide with the Milky Way in 4 billion years. The event will transform the appearance of our night sky.

This is how far human radio broadcasts have reached into the galaxy

There is an ever-expanding bubble announcing Humanity's presence to anyone listening in the Milky Way.

The Scale of the Universe, by Cary and Michael Huang

Cary and Michael Huang present a basic

NuSTAR telescope to get close look at black holes, supernovae

The NuSTAR X-ray telescope will enable scientists to get a much-improved look at black holes and supernovae in both the Milky Way and other galaxies.

A little fun with Deep Impact deep-sky data

Last week, the team put all of the data from Deep Impact's deep-sky imaging session online, and challenged visitors to see what they could make from it. I made some photos of M51, but there were some challenges.

Citizen Science projects for Planetary Science: Get Involved! Do Science!

Citizen Science projects let volunteers easily contribute to active science programs. They're useful when there is so much data it overwhelms computing algorithms (if they exist) or the scientific research team attempting to process it.

The scale of our solar system

Space.com has taken advantage of the infinitely scrollable nature of Web pages to produce a really cool infographic on the scales of orbital distances in the solar system.

The Solar System from the Inside Out - and the Outside In

Space probes grant us perspective, the ability to see our place within the vastness of the solar system. But opportunities to see all of the solar system's planets in one observation are rare. In fact, there's only been one opportunity on one mission to see the whole solar system at once, until now.