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The Total Solar Eclipse of 2017 that crossed the United States garnered international attention. Here in Canada we were treated to a beautiful partial solar eclipse, and the Canada Aviation and Space Museum attracted thousands of visitors to watch. Here NASA has published some of the ways the eclipse was watched, from the ground and from space. My favourite is the above picture because it has the Sun, which is 150 million kilometres away, the Moon, which is 400,000 kilometres away, and the

The Boomerang Nebula is the coldest location in the known universe: it measures at roughly 2 degrees colder than empty space! This nebula is the result of the death of a red giant star, and the extreme temperature is caused by the rapid expansion of the nebula. According to thermodynamics, if you expand a gas you, cool a gas (just try using one of those compressed air cans for cleaning electronics). However, according to astronomers, a single star's death could not account for a strong enough

In early April 2017, the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), a division of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), announced a new robotic explorer to be launched towards Mars in 2024: the Martian Moons Exploration (MMX). The goal is not to observe the red planet, but its two moons: Phobos and Deimos. These two moons (about 25 km wide) are just a fraction the size of Earth's Moon (about 3400 km wide), and their origins are still disputed. Maybe Phobos and Deimos were

Human's have been launching satellites into space since 1957, and now the current number of objects in orbit larger than 10 cm is about 23,000. The growing number poses a real threat to the future of space exploration. Humanity will need to solve this problem moving forward, and ideas are currently being discussed.

A short description of the upcoming Grand Finale of the Cassini Spacecraft. Over the next 5 months, Cassini will make 22 plunges between Saturn's rings and the planet itself. No craft has ever been that close. During this final phase, Cassini will make close up measurements of the rings for the first time, image the planet's cloud-tops in unprecedented detail, and even answer long-standing questions like: how fast does Saturn actually rotate? It's going to be a very interesting 5 months.