New Hubble images reveal what happened to one of Jupiter’s main cloud belts: It’s hiding behind ammonia clouds.
“Weather forecast for Jupiter’s Southern Equatorial Belt: cloudy with a chance of ammonia,” planetary scientist Heidi Hammel of …

The Cassini spacecraft made its deepest dip ever into the atmosphere of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, at 8:28 p.m. Eastern time on June 20. The data it collected will help determine whether the moon has …

Giant planets with wonky orbits mostly circle blistering-hot stars, two new studies find. This pattern could explain why some “hot Jupiters” — planets from a third to 12 times the mass of Jupiter that sit …

Wear patterns on ancient antelope teeth have allowed researchers to reconstruct Europe’s environment 8 million years ago, when the continent’s great apes vanished.
One of those ape species could have given rise to the human lineage, …

A thick haze of organic material let the early Earth soak up the sun’s warmth without absorbing harmful ultraviolet rays, according to a new study.
The model offers a new twist on an old puzzle: Although …

The flashes of white light accompanying some solar flares are caused by the sun’s acceleration of electrons to speeds greater than half the speed of light.
The phenomenon’s new explanation derives from data recorded from a …

Exoplanet orbits that seem just right for life could be bent out of shape by pushy neighbors. New simulations of extrasolar planetary systems may mean the definition of “habitable” planets needs to be completely overhauled.
When …

Detailed Hubble images reveal a single supermassive black hole wandering away from its host galaxy’s center where it belongs. The misplaced black hole is probably the result of a merger between two smaller black holes, …

Mysterious clouds of gas hovering above the plane of the Milky Way may be the fractured remnants of superbubbles blown by stellar winds and exploding stars.
“There’s a fundamental, interesting connection between gas far away from …

The Allan Hills meteorite, named for the site where it was found in Antarctica, was once thought to contain fossil traces of life. That idea has been mostly dismissed, and now the rock also appears …

A new study cites spikes of ammonium in Greenland ice cores as evidence for a giant comet impact at the end of the last ice age, and suggests that the collision may have caused a …

The Planck space telescope, which is surveying the entire sky in four massive sweeps, has nearly finished its first scan.
Rotating in orbit, Planck takes data of the sky in strips, almost the reverse of a …

Extrasolar planet hunters are excited about a not-so-hot discovery. For the first time, they’ve found a relatively cool extrasolar planet that they can study in detail.
sciencenews The finding is a milestone, says study co-author Hans …

A moon probe has found millions of tons of water on the moon’s north pole, NASA reported Monday. The vast source of water could one day be used to generate oxygen or sustain a moon …

Stars shine amidst a luminous, cotton-candy nebula in this new image of NGC 346, the largest star-forming region in our neighboring galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud.
The star cluster, located about 210,000 light-years away and measuring …

The Cassini spacecraft’s November flyby of Saturn’s moon Enceladus has revealed new features including at least 20 more icy plumes spewing from the moon’s southern pole.
New infrared data gives scientists the highest resolution temperature map …

NASA’s new infrared telescope has released its first images.
The Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer has returned more than 250,000 raw images. To celebrate its performance thus far, NASA selected four of them for processing and publication.
Above, …

As the sun reawakens from an anomalously quiet period, keep track of solar flares, sunspots and coronal mass ejections with a new iPhone app that puts the real-time status of the sun in your hand.
“This …

A new technique that uses a laser to vaporize materials like rocks and steel to analyze their chemical composition is finding new applications from Mars to forensics.
Thanks to its relatively small size and low cost, …

Once Martian sand grains hop, they don’t stop.
That’s the conclusion of a new study that finds sand can move on Mars without much windy encouragement.
Mars’ sandy surface has clearly been shaped by wind. Its characteristic …