In 16 years of data observations, the Solar Heliophysics Observatory (SOHO) — a joint European Space Agency and NASA mission –- made an unexpected claim for fame: the sighting of new comets at an alarming rate. SOHO has spotted over 2100 comets, most of which are from what’s known as the Kreutz family, which graze [...]

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have directly determined the surface temperature of early Mars for the first time, providing evidence that’s consistent with a warmer and wetter Martian past. By analyzing carbonate minerals in a four-billion-year-old meteorite that originated near the surface of Mars, the scientists determined that the minerals formed at [...]

One of the supposedly best understood and least interesting landscapes on Mars is hiding something that could rewrite the planet’s history. Or not. In fact, about all that is certain is that decades of assumptions regarding the wide, flat Hesperia Planum are not holding up very well under renewed scrutiny with higher-resolution, more recent spacecraft [...]

A just-released video from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft takes viewers on a beautiful flyover of the giant asteroid Vesta. http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/16sep_vestaflyaround/

The dwarf galaxy NGC 4214 is ablaze with young stars and gas clouds. Located around 10 million light-years away in the constellation of Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dogs), the galaxy’s close proximity, combined with the wide variety of evolutionary stages among the stars, make it an ideal laboratory to research the triggers of star formation [...]

The first-ever discovery of ice and organic molecules on an asteroid may hold clues to the origins of Earth’s oceans and life 4 billion years ago. University of Central Florida researchers detected a thin layer of water ice and organic molecules on the surface of 24 Themis, the largest in a family of asteroids orbiting [...]

Light bounced off reflectors on the moon is fainter than expected and mysteriously dims even more whenever the moon is full. Astronomers think dust is a likely culprit, they report in a forthcoming issue of the journal Icarus. “Near full moon, the strength of the returning light decreases by a factor of ten,” said first [...]

For the first time, a team of astronomers has imaged the eclipse of the star Epsilon Aurigae by its mysterious, less luminous companion star. Very high-resolution images, never before possible, have been published online today in the journal Nature Letters. Epsilon Aurigae has been known since 1821 as an eclipsing double star system, but astronomers [...]