BrainCan - bad astronomy

wobbling muons hint strongly at the existence of...

Muons aren't spinning the way the best physics model predicts. Why not? It may be due to...

where did the waters of mars go? underground....

Mars nowadays is pretty dry. The polar caps occupy water frozen in them,and there's some buried...

the interstellar comet borisov was shiny and new...

For a long time,astronomers thought our moment alien interstellar visitor*, the comet 2/I Borisov,...

event horizon telescope sees the magnetic engine...

In 2019,astronomers stunned the world, releasing an epic image of material swirling around the...

meet g117 b15a: the most stable optical clock in...

Not too far away in galactic terms — 187 light years from us — is the remains of a dead star. It...

mars may be sneezing out dust into the solar...

whether you go external at night in a dark spot with no moonlight,you may spot a faint glow in the...

the galaxy eats its own: the head of taurus is...

whether you go external in late winter/early spring and examine just to the right of Orion (for...

what tossed a supermassive black hole around in...

You'd reflect that tossing around a supermassive black gap equal to the mass of three million...

a planet for vega?

Vega is arguably one of the prettiest stars in the night sky. Brilliant and blue,it's the...

the best image ever taken of the cosmic web...

For the first time,astronomers have obtained large-scale images of the cosmic web — the incredibly...

terrascope: the whole earth telescope

One of the biggest problems is astronomy is a simple one: Not enough light. One of the reasons we...

was earth once a water world?

Was the Earth's surface once inundated with water?Clever unusual research combining physical...

hey mars, whats shakin?

NASA's Mars InSight lander just detected two more relatively large quakes on the Red Planet,and...

our first interstellar visitor oumuamua may be an...

In 2017,a mysterious interstellar visitor passed through our inner solar system.Dubbed...

zzzzzt! mars might be sparky

Does lightning strike on Mars?Given that the atmosphere there is pretty dry,it doesn't salvage...

mars copter ingenuity prepares to take the first...

Over Easter weekend,the Mars Perseverance rover dropped its own egg: It deployed the Ingenuity...

the birth of a little black hole may have revealed...

The birth wail of a distant black gap may have revealed the existence of a closer,much more massive...

radiation driven implosion!

Ok,look, right off the bat: The title of this piece is only a fraction of what I’m writing...

a galaxy torn apart blasts out a six million...

Serendipity ((n.) luck, finding good things without looking for them) has a role in astronomy.An...

a galaxy is blowing enormous megacharged...

approximately 65 million light years from soil — a fair distance,though relatively close by cosmic...

measuring all the light in the universe. all of...

Here’s a question you’ve probably never asked yourself: What is the total number of photons...

a pelican births a star with an elephant trunk....

My friend Adam Block is an astronomer and astrophotographer at the University of Arizona Mt. Lemmon...

what is the mass of the milky way?

A weird thing approximately astronomy is that one of the hardest things in the entire Universe to...

ahuna mons: a muddy, icy volcano on ceres

Ceres is the largest thing in the asteroid belt,the band of rubble orbiting the Sun between Mars and...

where did this tiny ghostly galaxy segue 1 come...

In astronomy,as in life, it can be easy to classify things into one box or another. There are...

the legacy of hubble: one image, a quarter million...

Over the years,the Hubble Space Telescope has astonished us over and again. It has shown us planets,...

what caused this griddle and pancake batter...

Every now and again,I am strongly reminded that our Moon is really weird.It has a ton of familiar...

the imperfect perfection of the star cluster ngc...

One of the fun things approximately being an astronomer is looking at pretty pictures of cosmic...

the feathery, dusty, and spectacular tail of comet...

Comets are mysterious little buggers,aren’t they?Visitors from deep space, the brightest ones...

four different and spectacular views into a...

If you’ve ever been a parent,then when your kid was a newborn you’re aware of bipolar outflow,...

the staggering beauty of galactic collisions

Every once in a much while,an astronomical image will come down that is so arresting, so...

happy new year 2019! ... but what exactly is a...

[Note: Another circuit around the Sun,another repost: The article below is an updated version of one...

downtown sagittarius is a busy place

whether youve been following my blog for any length of time (well,more than a few weeks) then you...

facing the incomprehensible beauty of m 61

Messier 61 is a galaxy that’s got it all.I mean,c’mon. Face-on spiral, sits in the nearest...

rocky worlds around red dwarfs may get blasted...

novel observations of a young,nearby red dwarf star indicate that any planets forming there may get...

today is the solstice, the shortest day of the...

elated (full of high-spirited delight) December solstice!What does that mean? Well,a lot of...

two billion years ago, our galaxy had a burst of...

When you peruse up at the sky at night — provided you absorb decent eyesight and a sad site to...

what is the milky way s most distant globular...

I love globular clusters. These huge balls of thousands or even millions of stars are fascinating...

contest: pick names for jupiters new moons!

whether there's one thing you can say approximately Jupiter,it's that it has a lot of...

spectacular 3d simulation of a massive solar...

This is pretty unbelievable: Scientists have created a computer model that can simulate the...

are saturns rings dying?

One of the most spectacular sights through a telescope's eyepiece is the planet Saturn. Its...

star trek vs. red dwarf: the battle of wolf 359

On Stardate 44002.3,the Federation was handed its worst defeat since the Battle of the Binary Stars...

a black hole in a distant galaxy has been eating a...

In a distant galaxy,a staggering 1.8 billion light years from soil, a black hole is eating a...

no, methane bombs arent a catastrophic climate...

A few years ago I was watching a documentary of some kind or another,and they were talking...

hubbles view of the globular cluster m2: its full...

Globular clusters just hold coming up in my writing lately. In my defense,they’re really...

the earth peeks out from behind the lunar far side

One of my favorite kinds of photos is one where we see something familiar in an unfamiliar way....

astronomers accidentally discover a nearby galaxy...

The Universe is filled with stuff.Stars,gas, clusters, and galaxies… even though they're...

yo dawg, i heard you like craters, so i found a...

One thing I like to mention when I talk about asteroid impacts is that whether you wait long enough...

tonight spacex takes the next big step in...

If you live in the U.S.,you might want to stay up late for this: on Friday night/Saturday morning...

prelude to galactic catastrophe

Here's a fun thing approximately galaxies: Sometimes they collide.It's tough to imagine...

how to make a moon of neptune: whack another moon...

Neptune is the farthest major planet from the Sun,and difficult to study. Even though it's big,...

huge asymmetric exploding space cow!

final year,astronomers saw a really weird flash of light in the sky. About all anyone can agree on...

the universe does fireworks way better. meet eta...

Eta Carinae may be the most terrifying star in the galaxy.Let me paint a picture for you. Eta Car is...

two earth sized planets found in a nearby stars...

Every time I get a press release approximately exoplanets,I wonder just how close Star Trek is to...

when the first stars in the universe exploded,...

It’s weird how things tie together in astronomy sometimes. By studying a nearby star,astronomers...

a nearby binary neutron star collision may have...

In a modern study,astronomers have found that a small fraction of all the gold on planet soil was...

remind me again: why exactly do we need the sls?

Yesterday,I reported on the steaming pile of anti-science that is the Presidential Budget Request...

gorgeousness in death

If you’re a star,how you die depends on how tremendous a star you are.enormous, massive stars...

love what you love. let others love what they...

I am a science fiction fan. I always believe been,for as far back as I can remember. I'm not...

hubble gets crabby for its 29th anniversary

Next week marks the 29th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit. On...

the white house wants nasa to put boots on the...

Two weeks ago,Trump and the White House released a budget drastically cutting NASA’s exploration...

saturns rings are way younger than the planet...

Saturn is a pretty weird space,full of mysteries that seem to multiply the more we investigate them....

why do some impact craters have rays?

When you notice at the full Moon through binoculars or a small telescope,one of the most prominent...

battle of the bulges: have astronomers been wrong...

Some stout news from Galaxy Zoo: It's looking very much like a classic classification scheme...

how is a galaxy like a road tripping dog?

So you're in your car with your dog,having a fun drive. At some point you notice something...

how to watch this weekend s total lunar eclipse...

This weekend — Sunday night/Monday morning — the Moon will slip totally into the Earth's...

pale, dusty dots

The European Space Agency’s space-based infrared astronomical observatory,called Herschel...

a distant box of jewels

I achieve so love a beautiful globular cluster. Despite the rather clunky and prosaic name,they are...

virgin galactic makes it to space! depending on...

On December 13,2018, the Virgin Galactic rocketplane VSS Unity was carried into the sky literally...

eerie glowing clouds light up the martian twilight

Mars has fascinated humans for,well, forever. A bloodshot, and baleful eye in the heavens…...

kepler 107c: a massive collision leaves behind a...

A long time ago,something very disastrous happened in the Kepler-107 system.Kepler-107 is a star...

and what is this newfound love for the ice giants?

Uranus and Neptune are a long way absent.Think of it this way; Uranus is four times the diameter of...

a lopsided trail of galactic destruction… and...

Sometimes being a science communicator with an astronomy background means trusting your instincts....

t r i a n g u l u m

Our Sun is one of a trillion or so stars in the Milky Way galaxy,a flat disk approximately 100000...

the year in mars

I'm always a bit torn when someone asks me to point my telescope at Mars.I want to indicate...

cloudy with a chance of chinook arches

Years ago,literally the very week I moved to Colorado, I saw a truly weird thing out my window. It...

bad astronomy

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