This unprocessed image shows features in Saturn’s atmosphere from closer than ever before. The view was captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft during its first Grand Finale dive past the planet on April 26, 2017.

Earth’s annual Lyrid meteor shower peaked before dawn on April 22nd, as our fair planet plowed through dust from the tail of long-period comet Thatcher. Seen from the high, dark, and dry Atacama desert a waning crescent Moon and brilliant Venus join Lyrid meteor streaks in this composited view. Captured over 5 hours on the […]

Mt. Etna has been erupting for hundreds of thousands of years. Located in Sicily, Italy, the volcano produces lava fountains over one kilometer high. Mt. Etna is not only one of the most active volcanoes on Earth, it is one of the largest, measuring over 50 kilometers at its base and rising nearly 3 kilometers […]

On Saturday April 22, 2017, Expedition 51 Flight Engineer Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency photographed Orbital ATK’s Cygnus spacecraft as it approached the International Space Station. Using the station’s robotic Canadarm2, Cygnus was successfully captured by Pesquet and Commander Peggy Whitson at 6:05 a.m. EDT Saturday morning. The spacecraft’s arrival brought more than […]

Frank J. Cilluffo, George Washington University; Alec Nadeau, George Washington University, and Rob Wainwright, University of Exeter From 2009 to 2016, a cybercrime network called Avalanche grew into one of the world’s most sophisticated criminal syndicates. It resembled an international conglomerate, staffed by corporate executives, advertising salespeople and customer service representatives. Its business, though, was […]

Jennifer Mercieca, Texas A&M University President Donald Trump threatens people a lot. He menaces, he bullies and then he explains his words away. As a scholar of American political rhetoric, I have paid close attention to Trump’s use of words. In particular, I’ve focused on something called ad baculum – or threats. Ad baculum is […]

What’s happened to Comet Lovejoy? In the pictured image, a processed composite, the comet was captured early this month after brightening unexpectedly and sporting a long and intricate ion tail. Remarkably, the typically complex effect of the Sun’s wind and magnetic field here caused the middle of Comet Lovejoy’s ion tail to resemble the head […]

It’s springtime and the deployed primary mirror of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope looks like a spring flower in full bloom. In this photo, NASA technicians lifted the telescope using a crane and moved it inside a clean room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Once launched into space, the Webb telescope’s […]

Jon Major, University of Liverpool Scientists have just discovered massive amounts of a rare metal called tellurium, a key element in cutting-edge solar technology. As a solar expert who specialises in exactly this, I should be delighted. But here’s the catch: the deposit is found at the bottom of the sea, in an undisturbed part […]

Trillions have died in the Earth’s seas. Calcified shields of the dead already make up the white cliffs of Dover. The battle between ball-shaped light-colored single-celled plants — phytoplankton called coccolithophores — and even smaller, diamond-shaped viruses dubbed coccolithoviruses — has raged for tens of millions of years. To help fight this battle, the coccolithophores […]