A bright meteor briefly outshined the lights of New York City Friday evening, according to reports by witnesses who used Twitter and the Internet to report sightings of the fireball streaking over a broad stretch of the U.S. East Coast. (PHOTOS: ) "Strange Friday night … a passed over my house tonight!" wrote one New Yorker writing as Yanksmom19. The first fireball sightings came at about 8 p.m. EDT and sparked more than 500 witness reports to the American Meteor...

This image provided by NASA-TV shows the SpaceX Dragon commercial cargo craft as it is backed away from the International Space Station early Tuesday March 26, 2013 by the International Space Station's Canadarm2 robotic arm. (AP Photo/NASA) CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The SpaceX Dragon capsule is back on Earth. The privately owned cargo ship splashed down in the Pacific on Tuesday, five hours after leaving the International Space Station. The California-based SpaceX confirmed the Dragon's return to Earth via Twitter....

Astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., Lunar Module Pilot, stands near a scientific experiment on the lunar surface in July 1969. (NASA/Newsmakers) Earlier this week, a New York auction house put more than 300 space artifacts on the auction block, including original documents that were flown to the moon and used to carry out the first manned lunar landing. But contrary to recent headlines prompted by Bonhams' "Space History Sale," the Apollo 11 moonwalker, whose lunar-traveled checklists and flight plans are...

The sun should roar back to life sometime in 2013, producing its second activity peak in the last two years, scientists say. (MORE: ) Our star has been surprisingly quiet since unleashing a flurry of flares and other eruptions toward the end of 2011. But this lull is likely the trough between two peaks that together constitute "solar maximum" for 's current 11-year activity cycle, researchers say. The largest solar flare in 5 years leapt from the sun in early...

The Sun's Most Explosive Moments The sun has been exploding with activity for the last decade. From solar flares to coronal mass ejections (CMEs), NASA and its partners around the world have captured stunning images and video of this heightened period of solar activity. This year will likely mark the end of the sun's latest active cycle, according to scientists. So we dug through videos and photos to bring you . MORE ON WEATHER.COM: Stunning Northern Lights Big Lake, Alaska...

This artist's conception shows the suspected progenitor of a new kind of mini supernova called Type Iax. Material from a hot, blue helium star at right is funneling toward a carbon/oxygen white dwarf star at left, which is embedded in an accretion disk. (CREDIT: Christine Pulliam (CfA)) (Christine Pulliam (CfA)) Astronomers have discovered a new kind of supernova, a star explosion so weak that scientists dubbed it a miniature stellar blast. Supernovas represent the deaths of stars, which collapse in...

Mysterious pond circles appeared in an upstate New York pond. (CREDIT: Peggy Gervase) (Peggy Gervase) In the small town of Eden, N.Y., the recent appearance of mysterious circles in a frozen pond has residents baffled. Last Friday, during an early spring snowstorm, Eden resident Peggy Gervase was looking at the pond near her home when she noticed an unusual pattern in the snow covering the water's surface: large circles that resembled giant polka dots. "I've never seen this before in...

Baby stars can grow to an incredibly large size — 10 times more massive than the sun, at the least — if they are cocooned in a group of older stars feeding gas to the youngsters, a new study suggests. This theory could explain how young stars get so big, rather than pushing away gas as they grow and starving themselves once they get about eight times as massive as the sun. Researchers spotted evidence of this type of "convergent...

The FBI says its most viewed public record is a memo from 1950 recounting a strange story someone told an agent about three "flying saucers" that were allegedly recovered in New Mexico. The so-called was first released in the late 1970s under the Freedom of Information Act, but it's been viewed nearly a million times since 2011, when the FBI launched an online database of public records called the Vault. Dated March 22, 1950, the memo was addressed to FBI...

The Universe in Color Throughout the month of March, Robert Gendler's astrophotographs are on display at Grumpy Bert gallery in Brooklyn. (Miriam Kramer/SPACE.com) NEW YORK -- An astrophotographer who has snapped images of the cosmos from a driveway in Connecticut is taking center stage in a Brooklyn space art exhibit. Robert Gendler has loved snapping for years. What started off as a vague childhood interest in the cosmos has become a hobby that Gendler has carried with him through most...

This image provided by NASA-TV shows the view from the Soyuz capsule as it approaches the International Space Station on Thursday, March 28, 2013. (AP Photo/NASA) MOSCOW -- A Soyuz capsule carrying three astronauts successfully docked Friday with the International Space Station, bringing the size of the crew at the orbiting lab to six. Chris Cassidy of the United States and Russians Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin traveled six hours in the capsule before linking up with the space station's...

This illustration of a bright comet over Mars was created by artist Kim Poor. (Kim Poor) A close encounter between Mars and Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) in 2014 is creating both opportunity and anxiety in scientific circles. Scientists are in the early stages of assembling a comet-watching campaign that uses a spacecraft currently orbiting the Red Planet, as well as rovers on the Martian surface. Scientists are also investigating what techniques could be used to prevent cometary debris from...