The SpaceX Dragon capsule is now a part of the ISS (NASA TV)

Space history has been made today! At 11:02 a.m. CDT, NASA’s Houston mission control announced a successful berth of the SpaceX Dragon capsule to the Harmony Node of the International Space Station, making it the first commerc… Read full post »

In the dark hours before dawn this morning, Tuesday May 22, 2012, history was once again made along Florida’s warm and humid space coast. After a series of extensions and delays — and even one literal last-second scrub — SpaceX successfully launched its Dragon capsule aboard/… Read full post »

If you didn’t get a chance to see the annular eclipse from where you are, either due to weather or location, here’s a shot of it I managed to grab from Dallas, TX just as the Sun emerged from some low clouds and right before it set beyond the trees.It… Read full post »

Lights In The Dark posted a photo:

Another solar eclipse photo from Dallas... includes a Southwest plane on takeoff from Love Field.

Lights In The Dark posted a photo:

Captured from Dallas, TX.

If you can’t see the annular eclipse occurring tonight from where you are, you can watch it LIVE here on LITD! The feed above (providing it’s not over capacity) will be aired from Petroglyph National Monument in New Mexico, beginning at 9 pm Eastern time — right in prime U.S./… Read full post »

Image of Earth as seen by ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft in 2009.

Proposed by scientists James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis in the 70s, the Gaia theory suggests Earth is a self-supporting singular life form, similar to a cell. The theory claims that, rather than being merely a stage upon which/… Read full post »

HiRISE image showing three dust devils on Mars

The HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Oribiter captured this image of Mars’ surface, showing the presence of three different dust devils in the same region.

Dust devils are common during the springtime on Mars’ nort… Read full post »

The curious, 20-km tall central ridge of Iapetus, a.k.a. the Voyager Mountains

Saturn’s 914-mile (1471-km) -wide Iapetus (pronounced eye-AH-pe-tus) has a particularly curious feature: a chain of 20-kilometer (12-mile) high mountains encircling the moon’s equator. On the anti-Saturn… Read full post »

Color-composite image of Saturn and Titan from Cassini data (NASA/JPL/SSI)

Here’s a great shot of Titan and Saturn acquired by Cassini on May 6, 2012 just after a pass by the haze-covered moon. It’s a color-composite made from images taken in Cassini’s red, green and blue color channels,/… Read full post »

Can’t see the video below? Click here.

Because I wanted to know, so I decided to ask him. And thanks to “Team Coco†and Google Plus, I was able to — last night at 9:30 p.m. Central/7:30 p.m. Pacific, to be exact!

On Monday afternoon, Team Coco — that is, the/… Read full post »

Can’t see the video below? Click here.

The 15th and latest installment of the awesome Symphony of Science videos is out, and like all those before it it’s a fun, inspirational and educational trip through the cosmos with voiceovers by leading astronomers and physicists. These are great,… Read full post »

Craters and ridges abound on the surface of Vesta, the solar system’s second-largest asteroid.

Bright craters, dark craters… craters shaped like butterflies… they’re all represented here in a panorama made from images acquired by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, currently orbiting the 3/… Read full post »

Lights In The Dark posted a photo:

The May 5 "super moon" was followed today by an impressive double sun halo over Dallas, TX USA. The first shot was with a Nikon D7000, the second with my iPhone (and a sunglasses filter!)

Coincidence????? (Probably.) But the… Read full post »

May 5, 2012 super moon. © Jason Major

Did you get a chance to see last night’s “super Moon”? Weather permitting, it put on a nice show — especially as it rose above the horizon! The photo above was taken at about 9:00 p.m. central time from Dallas, TX. It was a… Read full post »

Can’t see the video below? Click here.

Here’s a new video from the folks at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD that will make you fall in love with the Universe…for the first time, or all over again.

It’s a good reminder that, even though the shuttles a… Read full post »

Margot Trudell's graphic design thesis project shows the vast distances of the Solar System.

“You may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.â€
– Douglas Adams

Standard classroom models and textbook illustrations of the Solar System, r… Read full post »

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This is one for the OMG Holy Crap files… a passenger on board an airplane waiting at JFK airport captured this incredible video this morning as the space shuttle Enterprise landed on the adjacent runway! Talk about a once-in-a-lifetime shot!

As you… Read full post »

Harper Collins' latest iPad app reveals our planet's changing landscapes

As a follow-up to the previous Wonders of the Universe i-app released by Harper Collins, Fragile Earth brings us back from the farthest reaches of the Universe to our own beautiful blue world, whose surface is rapidly cha/… Read full post »

Photo left on the Moon by Charlie Duke during Apollo 16 (NASA/JSC scan)

On April 23, 1972, Apollo 16 astronauts Charlie Duke and John Young embarked on the third and final EVA of the mission, exploring the Descartes Highlands via Lunar Roving Vehicle. During the EVA, just before setting up/… Read full post »

Lights In The Dark posted a photo:

A panorama of the Apollo 16 landing site as seen by John Young on April 22, 1972. The image was made from three scans of original Hasselblad frames, available on the Project Apollo Image Library.

Charlie Duke can be… Read full post »

Lights In The Dark posted a photo:

Here's a panorama from the Apollo 16 mission, showing Charlie Duke on the lunar surface on April 21, 1972, during the first EVA of the mission. The lunar rover (LRV) is on the far side of Plum Crater.

The… Read full post »

This big!

AIA 304 image of the April 16, 2012 CME with Earth inserted to scale. (NASA/SDO/J. Major)

The M1.7-class flare that erupted from active region 1461 on Monday, April 16 let loose an enormous coronal mass ejection many, many times the size of Earth — and I for… Read full post »

Lights In The Dark posted a photo:

On Monday, April 16, a class M1.7 coronal mass ejection (CME) exploded from the Sun’s eastern limb — an enormous expulsion of solar material, flung out into space by a giant snap of the Sun’s complex magnetic field.

How… Read full post »