Explorer

When you read a scientific story in a popular blog or magazine, many times you will see the caveat "artist interpretation" next to some of the accompanying images. This as a gross undersell of the time, effort, and most important, accuracy, that goes into developing the renders. While we don't know what a black hole or an exoplanet looks like, it is important to attempt to visualize them, and to do it as accurately as possible. This video is an interview with two people who are responsible for

Based on counts of sun spots on the surface of the Sun, it looks like our star is heading towards a solar minimum. This happens every 11 years or so, and is related to how the internal and external magnetic fields in the Sun interact with each other. Keeping track of this activity is important, because it can help us predict geomagnetic storms on Earth.

If humans are to become a space-fairing species (as many have argued the need for), there are many problems to solve: biology in zero-gravity, energy consumption, water recycling, and food (to name a few). The primary goal of the International Space Station is to solve these problems for long-duration space flight. In their latest video, the Science Mission Directorate at NASA takes a look at what we've learned about growing food in space so far.

NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission has begun its final mission phase, making its first dive between the planet Saturn and its rings. It is the only craft to ever make that plunge. Check out some of the amazing images it took as it went through, including the north pole hexagonal vortex.

In 2017 and 2018 there will be three comets passing relatively close to Earth. One has the chance of being naked-eye brightness. With the help of amateur astronomers, NASA plans to study these in detail. Check out the latest Science at NASA.

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.

Astronomers from Keele University, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, and others, have discovered the first atmosphere around an Earth-sized planet. The planet, GJ1132b is about 1.4x Earth's diameter and 39 light years away from us. Currently there are over 3000 known planets orbiting stars other than the Sun, but only a handful of which have been confirmed to have atmospheres, and all of which are massive Jupiter-sized planets. In the ongoing quest to find a planet similar to Earth, this