On June 25, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) discovered its 1,500th comet. This tally tops all other comet discoverers throughout history combined. From ESA: When it comes to comet catching, the SOHO has one big advantage over everybody else: its location. Situated between the Sun and Earth, it has a privileged view of a region of space that can rarely be seen from Earth. From the surface, we can see regions close to the Sun clearly only...

The Space Place's Jim Lattis as he showed us around the facility. David J. Eicher Tucked away in a strip mall in Madison, Wisconsin, lies one of the nicest astronomy education and outreach facilities that I’ve ever seen. The Space Place , located at 2300 South Park Street in Wisconsin’s capital, is a cavernous wonderland that entertains students with the wonders of the heavens. Senior Editor Michael E. Bakich and I were treated to a private tour...

NASA engineers have proposed a mission to an asteroid threatening Earth. Bruce Damer (DigitalSpace) I’m happy to report NASA may be planning to do more about the as-yet unaddressed asteroid threat to Earth than helplessly watch giant space rocks whiz by the home planet from time to time. The Guardian , a British newspaper, reported recently that some NASA scientists have written a report outlining a mission to asteroid 2000SG344. The object is about...

There’s no better place to find astronomy related software than the web archive created by Astro Events Group of Ostend, Belgium. “Our compilation will actually never be complete,” says Patrick Jaecques, a member of the group. “We have updates about every week. It’s also the only part of our Dutch web site that is translated into French, German and English.” There you’ll find hundreds of programs for a wide variety of computing environments, including...

It seems to me that Saturn’s moon Rhea is a leading candidate for Rodney Dangerfield of the solar system. I tell you, it doesn’t get much respect. Even in the Saturn system, where Rhea is the second-largest moon, it ranks pretty low. You hear about Titan, with its thick atmosphere and methane lakes. Enceladus is known for its liquid-water geysers and Iapetus for its strange black and white hemispheres. Even tiny Mimas, with its cute “Death Star” crater...

On November 7, Japan’s SELENE spacecraft captured this high-definition image of Earth rising over the Moon’s north pole. JAXA/NHK If prime-time television, National Geographic specials, and sports programming don’t get you pumped for seeing TV at the highest-possible resolution, then what else is there? Television may not be the “vast wasteland” it once was claimed to be, but you could make a good case that seeing incredible detail in TV’s moving...

This just in from the hydrocarbon desk at Astronomy.com: Titan’s surface lakes and methane-ice-laden dune seas collectively hold hundreds of times Earth’s bounty of hydrocarbons (oil and gas). It’s a Texas oilman’s dream: hydrocarbons rain from the sky on Titan. To my mind, this could solve a lot of problems. Planetary scientists have been competing with NASA’s fantastically expensive manned space program for decades. Word on the aerospace street...

In 1967, Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin captured the famous footage of what many cryptozooligists and kooks believe is Bigfoot. Perhaps sick of urban sprawl, the Patterson-Gimin Sasquatch relocated to the Red Planet. In a panoramic image captured by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit in November 2007, a Bigfoot-like figure appears among the surface formations. The Internet grabbed hold of this photo around the beginning of 2008, and bloggers have...

On January 14, NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft flew past Mercury. MESSENGER — short for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging — made the first close-up observations of the innermost planet in 33 years. This flyby marked the first of three encounters with the planet, providing gravity assists necessary to place the probe in orbit around Mercury in March 2011. January 25, 2008 As Mercury fades in the distance, MESSENGER continues...

On January 14, NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft flew past Mercury. MESSENGER — short for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging made the first close-up observations of the innermost planet in 33 years. This flyby marked the first of three encounters with the planet, providing gravity assists necessary to place the probe in orbit around Mercury in March 2011. January 16, 2008 The first close-up images of Mercury have made their way...