The Northern Lights seen near Hallbankgate in North Cumbria, on Feb. 27, 2014. (Stuart Walker/Caters News Agency) People in Illinois, Oregon and other northern states may catch a glimpse of colorful aurora Wednesday as a brews in Earth's magnetosphere. The Space Weather Prediction Center has issued a , expecting a G3 storm to arrive in conjunction with a coronal mass ejection impact. A coronal mass ejection impact is likely on Dec. 30, which is expected to cause geomagnetic storming with...

Lake Chad and a Bodele Dust Plume, Sahara—Expedition 42: February 2, 2015 If you were looking for the best way to catch a great glimpse of the glorious planet we live on, there's without a doubt no better spot to do so than the International Space Station. Drifting 250 miles above the Earth's surface, the ISS has the ultimate vantage point to see all the Earth has to offer. Those aboard the space station are able to witness the raw...

The image above shows the Large Magellanic Cloud which scientists initially believed was home to J0439.8-6809, the hottest known white dwarf of its class. (NASA Kuiper Airborne Observatory) On the outskirts of the Milky Way sits a white dwarf described as the hottest known member of its class. According to a report published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, the dead star known as RX J0439.8-6809 has a . In addition to its scorcher status, the white dwarf also features an atmosphere...

The time is near to watch the annual Quadrantids meteor shower, which NASA considers to be one of the best. This year , particularly between 3 a.m. and dawn local time, according to NASA. The photo above shows a Quadrantid fireball streaking through the sky. (NASA) “Most of the contiguous U.S. should see relatively good viewing conditions Sunday night into Monday morning. However, snow showers near the Great Lakes, northern New England and into portions of western Pennsylvania and West...

An astronaut captured this picture of Bowknot Bend, a section of the Green River in Utah as it doubles back on itself from the International Space Station. Have you ever looked out of the window of a plane or building and made shapes, numbers or letters out of objects that weren't intended to be seen that way? Well, if you have, what NASA just did will blow your mind. In a joint operation involving readers, employees and their colleagues, NASA,...

On the cusp of the new year, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured two galaxies merging into one 230 million light-years away. The image above shows the galaxy NGC 6052, a "new" galaxy in the process of forming. (ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt) The photos taken last month show NGC 6052, , according to ESA. It was formed by two separate galaxies that gravity gradually pulled toward each other until they collided. Now they’re in the process of creating...

Researchers in South Australia celebrated New Year’s Eve with an astronomical find: a meteorite estimated to be about 4.5 billion years old. The on Dec. 31, 2015, just hours before heavy rains that would have washed it away, according to a release from Curtin University. According to Australia's Bureau of Meteorology, some light rain fell around the lake on New Year's Eve, followed by heavier rains of 1 to 2 inches (25 to 50 mm) on New Year's Day and...

The photo above shows an image of galaxy SDSS J1126+2944 that was taken with the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. The black hole that lost most of its stars is pointed out by the arrow. (University of Colorado Boulder ) A supermassive black hole may have lightened up some due to a galaxy-merged crash “diet” that has nothing to do with New Year’s resolutions. According to Space.com, the surprisingly light black hole is one of two found...

If you were to go outside on a clear night, equipped with only a moderately powerful backyard telescope, you could spot something that has perplexed physicists for centuries: a black hole. The black hole in question is nearly 8,000 light-years away, in the Cygnus constellation, and normally would be invisible, except this particular black hole has quite the appetite. It's swallowing nearby stars and emitting flashes of light in the process. But wait, aren't black holes all-consuming? How can any...

When NASA’s New Horizons Space Probe became the first spacecraft ever to reach Pluto on its July 14 flyby, it sent back some curious photos of the dwarf planet’s surface. Transmitted to Earth on Christmas Eve from New Horizon's Long Range Reconnaissance Imager, or LORRI for short, the probe’s images show of broken terrain known as Sputnik Planum, according to Tech Times. NASA scientists believe the ’snail' near the center of the image is a dirty block of water ice...

(NASA) NASA recently released this image of Saturn and asked social media users a seemingly trick question: Can you spot the three moons pictured? Two of them are pretty easy to see. The large satellite in the back, above Saturn's rings, is known as Enceladus. The larger moon seen below the rings is known as Rhea. The third moon, however, is much more difficult to spot. If you look closely you should be able to see a tiny speck just...

Have no fear— if a day ever comes when an asteroid is on a collision course with Earth and Bruce Willis is nowhere to be found, we’ll be in good hands thanks to NASA's new office. The Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) will take the reigns of NASA’s current efforts to monitor near-Earth objects (NEO) and arrange with other nations and/or federal agencies if the time comes to prepare for impact. NASA defines near-Earth objects as " by the gravitational...