NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured a never-before-seen transit of a moon and its shadow across the face of Uranus. The beautiful image shows what, to an observer on Uranus, would be a solar eclipse where the moon Ariel is blocking the light of the sun. While such events are commonplace for other planets like [...]

(NASA) Following a detailed inspection of NASA’s Space Shuttle Atlantis at the Kennedy Space Center, Fla., the six-member crew has a new launch date to begin the STS-115 mission to the International Space Station. The lift-off from Kennedy is set for 12:29 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Sept. 6. Shuttle managers decided on the launch date after [...]

Saturday night, September 2nd is another Utah Skies star party at Park City’s Trailside Park, and coincidentally, European astronomers have planned a special event for the same time. The SMART-1 spacecraft is approaching the end of its very successful mission and is low on fuel, so its scientists are going to bring it down — [...]

Tropical storm Ernesto threatened the shuttle with high winds yesterday, so NASA decided to move the 4.5 million pound launcher/orbiter back to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). Today, however, with Ernesto now forecast to veer more westerly in its track and to subject the shuttle to lesser winds, Launch Director Mike Leinbach and his team [...]

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has decided on a definition of planet that doesn’t include Pluto; what was the ninth planet in our solar system is now defined as a dwarf planet, as are the large asteroid Ceres and recently discovered 2003 UB313. The new definition, adopted today at the IAU’s 26th General Assembly, states [...]

Conjunctions are always a treat, and this event was no exception. As the morning sky began to lighten, Venus rose beacon-bright followed shortly by the razor-thin, 1.5% waning-crescent Moon. Without the camera, Saturn was invisible and Mercury was barely apparent over the morning’s glow. Check out this mouse-over, labeled version of the morning’s beauty. Venus [...]

Dark matter and normal matter have been wrenched apart by the tremendous collision of two large clusters of galaxies. The discovery, using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes, gives direct evidence for the existence of dark matter. "This is the most energetic cosmic event, besides the Big Bang, which we know about," said team [...]

Next Monday and Tuesday morning (August 21st and 22nd) just before sunrise, the lightening eastern sky will host a beautiful conjunction of shallow- and deep-sky objects. Monday morning has the slender crescent of a 5% waning crescent moon rising first, followed by the Beehive Cluster - M44, then Venus, followed by Saturn, and then Mercury, [...]

(STScI) NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered what astronomers are reporting as the dimmest stars ever seen in any globular star cluster. Globular clusters are spherical concentrations of hundreds of thousands of stars. These clusters formed early in the 13.7-billion-year-old universe. The cluster NGC 6397 is one of the closest globular star clusters to Earth. [...]

The SOHO spacecraft has detected a coronal mass ejection from sunspot 904 headed for the earth. This could trigger geomagnetic storms and aurora in the northern latitudes this Friday and Saturday nights. Look north around midnight for the reds and greens of the northern lights, and if you have a camera, take some long (10-to-60 [...]