Earth-Sized World Found In "Habitable Zone" By NASA Planet Hunter

The planet, named "TOI 700 d", is relatively close to Earth- only 100 light years away, NASA announced during the annual American Astronomical Society meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Scientists Finally Know How Long A Day Is On Saturn.

Using new data from the now extinct Cassini mission, scientists led by the University of California-Santa Cruz found that a year on Saturn is 29 Earth years.

This Spacecraft Is En Route To Furthest Object Humans Have Ever Explored.

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is ringing in the new year by flying past Ultima Thule, the furthest space object ever explored by humans.

This Is How Statue Of Unity Looks From Space

The image of Statue of Unity from space has been shared by the American Constellation of Satellites owned by Sky Lab.

Here's what California's wildfires look like from space

At least nine people have died in the most destructive wildfires ripping through north and south California. More than 250,000 people have been forced to flee their homes to avoid three major blazes in the state. Firefighters were powerless in stopping a wildfire destroying the northern town of Paradise, where 35 people are missing. A raging wildfire swept into the southern beach resort of Malibu - home to many Hollywood stars - on Friday.

Authorities say the Camp Fire in the north and the Woolsey Fire and Hill Fire in the south are being fanned by strong winds and dry forests. "The magnitude of the destruction of the fire is unbelievable and heartbreaking," said Mark Ghilarducci, of the California governor's office

Who Needs $20 Million? Moon Race Still On Without Google's Prize

Google called off its race to the moon weeks ago, when it became clear no private explorer would complete the trip by the March 31 deadline. That won't stop at least three teams from Israel, Japan and the U.S., who say their missions are a still a go, with or without the contest's $20 million prize.

"We are full steam ahead," said Yigal Harel, program director at SpaceIL, the Israeli team that plans a soft-landing on the moon later this year.

When the Lunar XPrize was introduced in 2007, interest in moon exploration was at a low. No government had landed there since the 1970s and no businesses had seriously contemplated it. But the contest has had its intended effect, jump-starting a cottage industry of would-be space explorers, even if no one emerged to take Google's money. Last year, overall investment in space startups by venture capitalists climbed to a record $2.8 billion, according research firm CB Insights

Scientists Discover The First Planets Outside The Milky Way

The truth is out there. And past that is a cluster of planets 3.8 billion light-years away, a recent discovery that if confirmed could extend the boundary of what we know about the universe.

Using data from a NASA X-ray laboratory in space, Xinyu Dai, an astrophysicist and professor at the University of Oklahoma, detected, for the first time ever, a population of planets beyond the Milky Way galaxy. The mass of the planets range in size from Earth's moon to the massive Jupiter, our solar system's biggest planet.

There are few methods to determine the existence of distant planets. They are so far away that no telescope can observe them, Dai told The Washington Post. So Dai and his postdoctoral researcher Eduardo Guerras relied on a scientific principle to make the discovery: Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity.

Scientists Are Slowly Unlocking The Secrets Of The Earth's Mysterious Hum.

It's comforting to think of Earth as solid and immovable, but that's false. The world is vibrating, stretching and compressing. We're shaking right along with it.

India From Space On Diwali

A picture of India on Diwali, taken from space by 'NASA', has by now become a standing joke. The Photoshopped picture was circulated year after year - but people are wise to it now. So what does India actually look like from space on Diwali - the festival of lights? Thanks to astronaut Paolo Nespoli, we now have an answer. On October 19, the 60-year-old Italian astronaut shared a photo of India, taken from space.

Solar Eclipse Could Wipe Out Enough Power To Supply 7 Million Homes In US

A solar eclipse on August 21 will cast a shadow along a 113-kilometer corridor stretching from Oregon to South Carolina in the US and could wipe wipe out power equivalent of about nine nuclear reactors.

NASA Finds 10 'Earth-Like' Worlds

Astronomers using the Kepler space telescope have detected 219 possible new exoplanets in our galaxy, including 10 relatively small, rocky and possibly habitable planets similar to our own, NASA announced.

These are the last additions to the catalog of exoplanets compiled during the first phase of the Kepler mission, when the space telescope scanned some 200,000 stars in the Cygnus constellation in an effort to find worlds beyond our own. The official catalog now contains 4,034 total "candidates" - tiny blips in the data that are thought to signal the presence of a planet around a star. Of these, 49 fit squarely into their star's "habitable zone," that Goldilocks region where liquid water can pool on the surface and life may be able to thrive.

India At Night, As Seen From Space

NASA has just released new global maps of the Earth at night - the first since 2012. The stunning satellite images of Earth at night, referred to as "night lights," have been released every decade or so for nearly 25 years. Now, NASA scientists are trying to see if the night lights imagery can be updated more frequently - perhaps even daily. Doing so would drastically change how we forecast weather, improve natural disaster responses and even help track the effects of war.

10 Things To Know About Earth-Like Planets Found In Nearby Solar System

US space agency NASA has announced that scientists researching outer space have found the existence of another 'solar system' - seven Earth-like planets orbiting a small star in a galaxy 40 light years away - opening up the most promising hunting ground so far for life beyond. A press release from the space agency said the Spitzer Space Telescope has found that the planets are as large as Earth and are in a "habitable zone". All seven roughly match the size and mass of Earth and are almost certainly rocky. Three are perfectly perched to harbour life-nurturing oceans of water, they reported in the journal Nature.

1. "New record! We've found 7 Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone around a single star outside our solar system," NASA tweeted.
2. The system is around 40 light-years, which is 235 trillion miles, away from Earth, in a constellation called Aquarius. Because they are located outside of our solar system, these planets are scientifically known as exoplanets.
3. The exoplanet system is called TRAPPIST-1, named for The Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) in Chile.
4. The scientists have measured the density of six of the planets and say further research will show if they have water on their surface.
5. It is possible that all seven planets have water, "the key to life as we know it, under the right atmospheric conditions, but the chances are highest with the three in the habitable zone," NASA said.
6. The mass of the seventh planet is yet to be measured. But scientists say it is possible that it would be covered in ice.
7. Spitzer, an infrared telescope that trails Earth, was well-suited for studying TRAPPIST-1 because the star glows brightest in infrared light. Further studies involved the Hubble Space Telescope. Ij future the James Webb Space Telescope is expected to chip in.
8. For decades, there have been speculations about information regarding the existence of alien life forms - one of the biggest questions facing astronomers.
9. The search for life had started in 1995 after NASA's Kepler Space Telescope found signs of the first alternative solar system. Called Kepler 10b, it also signaled what NASA said could be a "small planet orbiting a star about 540 light years away".
10. "This discovery could be a significant piece in the puzzle of finding habitable environments, places that are conducive to life," said Thomas Zurbuchen of NASA. "Answering the question 'are we alone' is a top science priority and finding so many planets like these for the first time in the habitable zone is a remarkable step forward toward that goal."

As 104 Satellites Were Launched, India's Rocket Shot Off This Selfie.

Selfie From Mars:The Curiosity rover sends a self-portrait home.

Nothing on Mars comes easy—and that includes the straightforward business of taking a selfie. The Curiosity rover has been trundling through the Martian dunes for three and a half years now, and since its first day on the job it’s been beaming home eye-popping images of the rusty plain, peaks and boulder fields that surround it.

The Southern tip of India from Space by Scott Kely

Astronaut Scott Kelly, the commander of International Space Station’s year-long space mission had shared this picture of India in November.

Diwali Stunning Pic of South India From Space

Diwali is the festival of light celebrated in India in the month of October or November.

Hubble Space Telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990, and remains in operation. With a 2.4-meter (7.9 ft) mirror, Hubble's four main instruments observe in the near ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared spectra. The telescope is named after the astronomer Edwin Hubble. Hubble's orbit outside the distortion of Earth's atmosphere allows it to take extremely high-resolution images with negligible background light. Hubble has recorded some of the most detailed visible-light images ever, allowing a deep view into space and time. Many Hubble observations have led to breakthroughs in astrophysics, such as accurately determining the rate of expansion of the universe.

Our Solar System

Ancient astronomers observed points of light that appeared to move among the stars.The Solar System comprises the Sun and the objects that orbit it.The Solar System formed 4.6 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of a giant molecular cloud. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun, with most of the remaining mass contained in Jupiter. The four smaller inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, also called the terrestrial planets, are primarily composed of rock and metal. The four outer planets, called the gas giants, are substantially more massive than the terrestrials. The two largest, Jupiter and Saturn, are composed mainly of hydrogen and helium; the two outermost planets, Uranus and Neptune, are composed largely of substances with relatively high melting points (compared with hydrogen and helium), called ices, such as water, ammonia and methane, and are often referred to separately as "ice giants". All planets have almost circular orbits that lie within a nearly flat disc called the ecliptic plane.

Black hole

A black hole is defined as a region of spacetime from which gravity prevents anything, including light, from escaping. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will deform spacetime to form a black hole. Around a black hole, there is a mathematically defined surface called an event horizon that marks the point of no return. The hole is called "black" because it absorbs all the light that hits the horizon, reflecting nothing, just like a perfect black body in thermodynamics.