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Shuttle Movies
The most complete source of video from the countdown, launch and mission of space shuttle Discovery is available here! Spaceflight Now'sSTS-121 archive includes more than 200 movies you can watch online or download to your computer. Video Collection
NASA's Kepler mission is set to revolutionise the search for other worlds beyond our Solar System. Astronomy Now's Keith Cooper talks to various astronomers about the techniques used to find exoplanets, including a team of students at London's Mill Hill Observatory about their own observations of an exoplanet transit.
APEX lifts veil on cold Universe
A new atlas of the inner depths of our Milky Way Galaxy reveals thousands of previously unseen knots of cold cosmic dust - the potential birthplaces of new stars.
At its half-way milestone, the International Year of Astronomy (IYA) is well on the road to success with over a million people looking through a telescope for the first time.
Controllers bid farewell to long-lived Ulysses probe
The sun will set Tuesday on Ulysses, a robotic sentry that spent more than 18 years exploring unseen reaches of the sun for NASA and the European Space Agency.
Royal Society Exhibition has strong astro presence
The Summer Science Exhibition at the Royal Society in London kicks off today with a healthy dose of astronomy amongst the 26 exhibits that the public will be able to view.
Shuttle launch and noctilucent clouds point to Tunguska comet
The exhaust plume of a shuttle launch that created noctilucent clouds similar to those seen after the Tunguska event supports the theory that a comet, and not a meteoroid, exploded over Siberia one hundred years ago.
Stuck rover exposes fresh clues on Martian environment
NASA's plucky Mars Exploration Rover Spirit, which is still stuck in a patch of soil, has been taking advantage of the situation to learn more about the planet's environmental history.
Cosmic rays efficiently accelerated by exploded stars
Using ESO's Very Large Telescope and NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have shown that cosmic rays from the Milky Way are very efficiently accelerated in the remnants of exploded stars.
Growing supermassive black holes and bursts of star formation have been discovered in cosmic blobs - immense reservoirs of hydrogen gas located in the early Universe - representing the coming of age of galaxies.
Possible salty ocean hidden in depths of Saturn moon
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has provided strong evidence that Saturn's moon Enceladus harbours a salty ocean below its icy shell, a discovery that offers exciting possibilities in the search for extraterrestrial life.
NASA's lunar mapper goes into orbit around the Moon
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter reached the Moon and successfully performed its orbit insertion maneuver today. Full coverage can be found at Spaceflight Now
First direct evidence of lightning on Mars
University of Michigan researchers say they have found direct evidence for lightning on Mars caused by a large dust storm.
New images kick off Cassini celebrations at Greenwich
The Cassini imaging team have released a set of never-before-seen images and movies of the Saturn system to coincide with the opening of a week-long celebration of the mission at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich.
A new high resolution map of the Moon's rugged south pole region provides new and unprecedented detail of permanently shadowed craters that could be hiding water ice deposits.
A comprehensive computer model of sunspots unveiled by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany will advance research into the inner workings of our Sun and its impact on the Earth.
Very fast hydrogen atoms emanating from the Moon have been detected for the first time by NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft following decades of speculation regarding their existence.
An unusually slow-moving solar jet stream buried deep inside the Sun is causing the lack of sunspots and low solar activity, say scientists from the National Solar Observatory (NSO).
Coastguard stations received hundreds of reports of 'lights in the sky' over
the English Channel on Monday evening. Was this an unexpected meteor shower? The BAA needs your reports.
The interstellar stuff that became incorporated into the planets and life on Earth has younger cosmic roots than theories predict, according to new analysis of a meteorite that fell in 1969.
The Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) has begun returning images that will be used to detect unprecedented numbers of supernovae in distant galaxies, variable stars in our own Galaxy and possible new near-Earth asteroids.
Planetary pile-up possible in next five billion years
According to new simulations, the evolution of the Solar System's inner planets' orbits could lead to a planetary pile-up within the lifetime of our Sun.
Paving the way for the future of lunar exploration, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) missions will launch later this week.
Astronomers using the William Herschel Telescope and Nordic Optical Telescope have confirmed an effective way to search the atmospheres of planets for signs of life.
A discrepancy between the types of galaxies in today's Universe and those that existed shortly after the big bang is becoming clearer following new observations of galaxies that existed 2.7 billion years after the big bang.
During the International Year of Astronomy's 100 Hours of Astronomy event in April, Galaxy Zoo volunteers provided more than 2.5 million classifications, smashing the one million target the team had set.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)'s Moon explorer Kaguya concluded its twenty month mission with a controlled crash into the lunar surface last night.
Images collected with the Smithsonian's Submillimeter Array (SMA) radio telescope system reveal the presence of a molecular disc orbiting a young binary star system.
Stars have been seen being born in the inner sanctum of our Milky Way Galaxy, answering the question of whether stars can form there or instead have to migrate there.
A freezing cold, dark cloud of molecular hydrogen is beginning to stir up the materials for building a giant star, or even several massive stars, in a forbidding region of the Milky Way known as the Aquila Rift.
Estimates of the age of some millisecond pulsars are out by a factor of ten, according to new research presented at the 214th American Astronomical Society meeting in Pasadena, California, this week.
The discovery of new tidal debris stripped away from merging galaxies contains the full collision history, equivalent to being able to trace the skid marks on the road after a car crash, say astronomers.
New computer modelling has found that the black hole at the heart of M87 is as much as three times more massive than previously thought, which could up the masses of other supermassive black holes, too.
A rare and often overlooked type of star - cepheid variables - could allow astronomers to measure cosmic distances three times further than previously possible, to 300 million light years and beyond.
Mysterious gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) that leave no optical afterglow are exploding in very dusty patches hiding plentiful star formation in galaxies whose light has taken 12.9 billion years to reach us.
A new milestone in the effort to measure accurate distances to galaxies will be of huge assistance in the battle to understand the nature of dark energy.
A three-and-a-half year study of over 200 clouds in Titan's dense atmosphere reveals their formation and movement to be somewhat out of synch with the moon's seasons.
A weird explosion in space that confounded astronomers in 2006 may have been the destruction of a rare star with an unusual amount of carbon dust surrounding it, according to research carried out by scientists at the University of Warwick.
Weekly Guide to the Night Sky
What's up this week? Our weekly guide to the night sky will point you to all the planetary goings on, as well as pick out some deep sky objects for your viewing pleasure. WHAT'S UP THIS WEEK?
2009 Yearbook
This 132-page special edition features the ultimate observing guide for 2009, a review of all the biggest news stories of 2008, in depth articles covering all aspects of astronomy and space missions for 2009, previews of International Year of Astronomy events and much, much more. U.K. STORE E.U. STORE U.S. & WORLDWIDE STORE
"In 1920, in Germany, appeared an authoritative-seeming book A Hundred Scientists Against Einstein. It consisted of 100 essays by eminent people asserting that relativity was nonsense." READ MORE
Infinity Rising This special publication features the photography of British astro-imager Nik Szymanek and covers a range of photographic methods from basic to advanced. Beautiful pictures of the night sky can be obtained with a simple camera and tripod before tackling more difficult projects, such as guided astrophotography through the telescope and CCD imaging. U.K. STORE E.U. STORE U.S. & WORLDWIDE STORE Guide to the Constellations
Astronomy Now presents
this 100-page, full-colour guide to the 68 constellations visible from the British
Isles by Neil Bone, the respected amateur astronomer and writer. U.K. STORE E.U. STORE U.S. & WORLDWIDE STORE Exploring Mars Astronomy Now is pleased to announce the publication of Exploring Mars. The very best images of Mars taken by orbiting spacecraft and NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers fill up the 98 glossy pages of this special edition! U.K. STORE E.U. STORE U.S. & WORLDWIDE STORE