Meteorites From Big Fireball in California Worth A Gold Price | NASA Scientists are on an epic treasure hunt for meteorite fragments from a spectacular fireball that lit up the daytime sky over California last month. The space rocks came from a minivan-size asteroid that plunged through Earth’s atmosphere and exploded into a dazzling daytime fireball over California and parts of Nevada on April 22. Meteorite fragments were scattered around Sutter’s Mill, an old sawmill in Coloma, Calif. — the same region where the first gold nugget was found, triggering …

Giant Asteroid Vesta Got Hit Twice | The giant asteroid Vesta got clobbered not once but twice, and it has the scars to prove it. Ever since the Hubble Space Telescope spied a huge depression in the asteroid’s south pole, scientists surmised it was carved by a collision with a celestial object, most likely a smaller asteroid. But a recent closer inspection revealed a surprise: There are actually two massive overlapping craters.…

Astronomers Exploring More Planets than Stars in Galaxy | The more astronomers look for other worlds, the more they find that it is a crowded and crazy cosmos. They think planets easily outnumber stars in our galaxy and they are even finding them in the strangest of places. And they have only begun to count.…

A Chinese Long March 2F carrier rocket hurled Shenzhou-8 into orbit a week ago. Two days later, the unmanned spacecraft linked up with the Tiangong-1 module, accomplishing China’s first space docking. Less than two months before, however, an orbiter launched by a similar Long March rocket had failed to reach its designated orbit due to a malfunction.…

A huge asteroid will pass closer to Earth than the moon Tuesday, giving scientists a rare chance for study without having to go through the time and expense of launching a probe, officials said. Earth’s close encounter with Asteroid 2005 YU 55 will occur at 6:28 p.m. EST (2328 GMT) Tuesday, as the space rock sails about 201,000 miles from the planet.…

Circumpolar startrails above a beautiful natural arch. Located near Moab, Utah, Arches National Park is home to over 2,000 natural sandstone arches. The park lies atop an underground salt bed, which caused the formation of the arches, sandstone fins, and enormous monoliths in the area. The salt bed was deposited over the Colorado Plateau around 300 million years ago when a sea flowed into the region and eventually evaporated. Over countless millennia, the erosive forces of water and wind have shaped the geologic wonderland we see today at Arches. As …

Billions and Billions of dollars are thrown at the Military while NASA’s budget continues to shrink causing them to cut programs which may actually benefit society unlike the wars we are currently involved in. America needs to wind down these wars and reallocate all that money into our space program and make it the inspiration that it was when Americans first landed on the Moon over 40 years ago. America and Humanity require a permanent presence in Space and no amount of telescopes or rovers are going to meet that …

The enchanting beauty of a clear summer sky. The Milky Way, the disc of our galaxy, home to billions of stars, stands above the southern horizon. A streaking meteor and a passing satellite are also captured in this lucky shot. The yellow glow at the horizon are lights from the nearby towns. Photographer: Oshin D. Zakarian in his work entitled, “Touched by the Sky”. The photo was shot at Kataleh Khor, Zanjan, Iran on August 2011.…

Stunning view of the Milky Way appears above coconut palms at the shores of Ilha Grande, Brazil. Note Altair, the brightest star in the constellation Aquila, above the palms. This island is located off the coast of Rio de Janeiro state and it is largely undeveloped and noted for its scenic beauty. Ilha Grande is one of the most pristine remnants of Brazil’s Atlantic rainforest and one of the richest ecosystems in the world. Photographer: Babak Tafreshi in his work entitled, “A Postcard from Brazil”.

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This heavenly view of the southern Milky Way arching in the sky space is photographed from a remote island in the Pacific Ocean. On the left the brightest region in the band of Milky Way is the galactic central bulge toward the constellations Sagittarius and Scorpius. Bright stars of Alpha and Beta Centauri, the Southern Cross, and the Coalsack dark nebula appear in the right along the fading Milky Way band. This pacific paradise in the southern hemisphere is Mangaia, the most southerly of the Cook Islands. This volcanic remnant …