Project News

Betelgeuse Star Braces for Crash with Strange Bar

Herschel • January 22nd, 2013

Orion, the famous hunter presiding over northern winter skies, may experience a stellar crash in its future. The red star at its shoulder, called Betelgeuse, appears to be set...

Planck Spots Colossal Intergalactic Bridge

Planck • November 20th, 2012

The Planck space telescope has made the first conclusive detection of a bridge of hot gas connecting a pair of galaxy clusters across 10 million light-years of intergalactic space.

NASA Survey Counts Potentially Hazardous Asteroids

Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer • May 16th, 2012

Observations from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have led to the best assessment yet of our solar system's population of potentially hazardous asteroids. The...

NASA's WISE Catches Aging Star Erupting With Dust

Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer • April 26th, 2012

Images from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) reveal an old star in the throes of a fiery outburst, spraying the cosmos with dust. The findings offer a rare,...

WISE All-Sky Image Now Available on "Science on a Sphere"

Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer • April 9th, 2012

The WISE all-sky image is now available for projection on "Science on a Sphere" (see http://sos.noaa.gov/ for info). Science On a Sphere is a large visualization system that...

NASA Extends Spitzer, Planck, Kepler Missions

Planck • April 5th, 2012

NASA is extending three missions affiliated with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. -- Kepler, the Spitzer Space Telescope and the U.S. portion of the European...

NASA Releases New WISE Mission Catalog of Entire Infrared Sky

Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer • March 14th, 2012

NASA unveiled a new atlas and catalog of the entire infrared sky today showing more than a half billion stars, galaxies and other objects captured by the Wide-field Infrared...

All-Sky Images Show Cold Gas and Strange Haze

Planck • February 13th, 2012

New images from the Planck mission show previously undiscovered islands of star formation and a mysterious haze of microwave emissions in our Milky Way galaxy.

NASA's Kepler Announces 11 Planetary Systems Hosting 26 Planets

Kepler • January 26th, 2012

NASA's Kepler mission has discovered 11 new planetary systems hosting 26 confirmed planets. These discoveries nearly double the number of verified planets and triple the number...

NASA's Kepler Mission Finds Three Smallest Exoplanets

Kepler • January 11th, 2012

Astronomers using data from NASA's Kepler mission have discovered the three smallest planets yet detected orbiting a star beyond our sun. The planets orbit a single star, called...