Is that a cloud or an alien spaceship?

What creates these long and nearly straight grooves on Mars?

APOD Turns Eighteen

Over a five hour period last Tuesday morning,

Sharpless 115

You can see four planets in

How many different astronomical phenomena have come together to create the above vista?

The Cassini probe in orbit around Saturn is going to picture the ringed planet in a special photo that also includes a distant Earth.

Recent studies linking bullying and depression, coupled with extensive media coverage of bullying-related suicide among young people, led to a CDC-assembled expert panel to synthesize the latest research about the complex relationship between youth involvement in bullying and suicide-related behaviors: 1) Bullying among youth is a significant public health problem, with widespread and often harmful results; 2) There is a strong association between bullying and suicide-related behaviors; and 3) Public health strategies can be applied to prevent bullying and suicide.

Older male burying beetles work harder at parental care and mating than younger counterparts, a study suggests.

A hairy crab named after US actor David Hasselhoff hitched a ride on an ocean "super-highway" to colonise deep sea vents in the Atlantic tens of millions of years ago.

The quality of a performance does not drive the amount of applause an audience gives, a study suggests.

Google admits its new balloon-based connectivity project is a "moonshot" to bring the last two-thirds of the global population online. How realistic is the audacious plan?    

Mosaic of Saturn seen in eclipse in September 2006. Earth is the bright dot just inside the F ring at upper left. (CICLOPS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI)

Citizens of Earth, get ready for your Cassini close-up: once again the spacecraft is preparing to capture images of Saturn positioned between it and the Sun, allowing for incredible views of the ring system and its atmosphere — and also a tiny “pale blue dot” in the distance we call home.

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© Jason Major for Universe Today, 2013. | Permalink | 5 comments |
Post tags: Cassini, Earth, NASA, pale blue dot, Porco, Sagan, Saturn, Solar System

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All the latest on newscientist.com: living without oxygen, writing the body, how the Med is killing the Atlantic, Lego Curiosity, slimy computers, and more    

After suffering the worst smog on record earlier this year, China has decided to cut the emission of air pollutants by 30 per cent in 5 years    

About 70 pages into The Milky Way, An Insider’s Guide, a strange craving for hamburgers overtook me.

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© Elizabeth Howell for Universe Today, 2013. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: Book Reviews, the milky way: an insider's guide, william h. waller

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Meteorologists and scientists meeting at the Met Office say the UK's damp summers could be caused by a warmer Atlantic Ocean.

Over the past six years wind speeds in Venus’ southern atmosphere have been steadily rising (ESA)

High-altitude winds on neighboring Venus have long been known to be quite speedy, whipping sulfuric-acid-laden clouds around the superheated planet at speeds well over 300 km/h (180 mph). And after over six years collecting data from orbit, ESA’s Venus Express has found that the winds there are steadily getting faster… and scientists really don’t know why.

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© Jason Major for Universe Today, 2013. | Permalink | 12 comments |
Post tags: clouds, esa, planet, Solar System, super-rotation, Venus, wind speeds

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Eight people have been selected as the first US astronauts since Apollo to be trained for deep space, but will they visit an asteroid or Mars?