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ESA Chooses Small Satellite for Exoplanet Mission
The European Space Agency has selected a Swiss proposal for funding as the first in a new class of small, low-cost science missions. Cheops (CHaracterising ExOPlanets Satellite) is planned for launch...
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DARPA Seeks Amateur Help to Track Space Debris
At the Arizona Science and Astronomy Expo in Tucson, DARPA unveiled a new program to engage amateur astronomers in helping to protect satellites. The goal of the program, called SpaceView, is to...
View ArticleMoore’s Law and SETI
An interesting comment from Dr. Gerry Harp, who recently succeeded Dr. Jill Tarter as director of the Center for SETI Research: This endeavor is not as long a shot as people think. The technology is...
View Article“Britain’s National Hobby”
The Guardian reports that Great Britain has a new national hobby: amateur astronomy. Membership and interest in astronomy and science clubs are said to be surging due to a popular BBC television...
View ArticleCitizen-Science Project Reports Another Confirmed Exoplanet
Planet Hunters has reported a second confirmed exoplanet discovery, along with 42 additional candidates and possible candidates. Planet Hunters is an online project that allows citizen scientists to...
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Kepler Has Discovered 2740 Possible Planets
Today at the 221st American Astronomical Society meeting, the NASA Kepler space-telescope team announced 461 new planet candidates. The total number of planet candidates identified by Kepler now totals...
View ArticleRecord-Setting Asteroid Encounter
On February 15, an asteroid half the size of a football field will fly past Earth, only 17,200 miles above our planet’s surface. This is the first time an object this large has been seen so close to...
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The Moon From Space
The photo above shows a sight that can only be seen from space: The Moon against a black sky, with the Earth in daylight. Fewer than .00001% of the world’s population have had the opportunity to see...
View ArticleFinding Advanced Extraterrestrial Civilizations
Scientists have started searching for Dyson spheres, artificial constructs where a star is entirely surrounded by a swarm of facilities or habitats, utilizing all available solar energy. Such a...
View ArticleFreeman Dyson: Amateurs Should Seek White-Dwarf Planets
Professor Freeman Dyson is encouraging amateur astronomers to look for exoplanets circling white dwarf stars. In this video, Dyson explains why such systems are appropriate targets for amateurs.
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NASA Announces Asteroid Data Hunter Contest
NASA’s Asteroid Data Hunter contest series will offer $35,000 in awards to citizen scientists who develop improved algorithms that can be used to identify asteroids. This six-month contest series will...
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First Potentially Habitable Exo-World Discovered
Astronomers using NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope have discovered the first Earth-size planet orbiting a star in the “habitable zone” — the range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on...
View ArticleNew Desktop Application for Asteroid Detection
NASA has released a new desktop application for asteroid detection, developed by NASA and Planetary Resources Inc. based on an algorithm from NASA’s Asteroid Data Hunter Challenge. Amateur astronomers...
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