News

Take the cold tolerance of bacteria that thrive in arctic ice, add the ultraviolet resistance of tomato plants growing high in the Andes mountains, and combine with an ordinary plant. What do you get? A tough plant "pioneer" that can grow in Martian soil. <b>NOTE: French, German, Italian, and Spanish translations follow...</b>

Cambridge, MA - Reporting in the May 12th issue of Nature, astronomers announced that they have penetrated the heart of the universe's most powerful explosion - a gamma-ray burst (GRB). <b>NOTE: French, German, Italian, and Spanish translations follow...</b>

This Chandra image shows the Orion Nebula Cluster, a rich cluster of young stars observed almost continuously for 13 days. <b>NOTE: French, German, Italian, and Spanish translations follow...</b>

An illuminating review of the little solar powerhouse from Coronado nabs this week's prize...

After 30 years of dimming, the planet's surface is brightening, an international collaboration concludes this week in Science magazine. <b>NOTE: French, German, Italian, and Spanish translations follow...</b>

ESA’s comet chaser mission Rosetta took these infrared and visible images of Earth and the Moon, during the Earth fly-by of 4/5 March 2005 while on its way to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. <b>NOTE: French, German, Italian, and Spanish translations follow...</b>

Saturn's battered little moon Phoebe is an interloper to the Saturn system from the deep outer solar system, scientists have concluded. The new findings appear in the May 5 issue of the journal Nature. <b>NOTE: French, German, Italian, and Spanish translations follow...</b>

An 85mm Super Plossl steps up to the plate.

Sixty-nine days before it gets up-close-and-personal with a comet, NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft successfully photographed its quarry, comet Tempel 1, from a distance of 64 million kilometers (39.7 million miles). <b>NOTE: French, German, Italian, and Spanish translations follow...</b>

During the 15 years NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has orbited the Earth, it has taken more than 700,000 photos of the cosmos; images that have awed, astounded and even confounded astronomers and the public... <b>NOTE: French, German, Italian, and Spanish translations follow...</b>

The data paints a picture of the universe as a virtual sea of dark energy, with billions of galaxies as islands emerging from the sea, said Fabio Governato, a University of Washington research associate professor of astronomy and a researcher with Italy's National Institute for Astrophysics. <b>NOTE: French, German, Italian, and Spanish translations follow...</b>

The peculiar orbits of three planets looping around a faraway star can be explained only if an unseen fourth planet blundered through and knocked them out of their circular orbits, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and Northwestern University. (sorry - body text too long for international translations - Ed.)

Many of us have observed M87 visually through our scopes. Here's a chance to peek a little deeper into what's actually going on... <b>NOTE: French, German, Italian, and Spanish translations follow...</b>

The review is great but how does the scope stack up?

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., April 14, 2005 -- A University of California scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory working with astronomers from around the world recently validated a computer model that predicts the rebirth and stellar burning and mixing processes of evolved stars. <b>NOTE: French, German, Italian, and Spanish translations follow...</b>