The spectacular new image of the Milky Way marks the completion of the APEX Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy (ATLASGAL). This is the sharpest such map yet made, and compliments those from recent space-based surveys. (European Southern Observatory ) In the most detailed image of the Milky Way yet, the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope captured the star-forming regions of the galaxy, which will help astronomers estimate the density of the clouds distributed along its plane. According to...

It was one of the most intense explosions in Earth's atmosphere in three years, and yet it took weeks for anyone to talk about it. NASA announced last week that back at the beginning of February, a meteor exploded over the Atlantic Ocean. Turns out, it was one for the record books. The fireball shot through the sky over the Atlantic Ocean just off the coast of Brazil on Feb 6. As the meteor disintegrated, it released an, the BBC...

The image on the left is a combination of five 300-s exposures tracking the 'asteroid,' while the image on the right is a smoothed version to help enhance the tail (indicated by the arrow), proving that it is in fact a comet. (M. Kelley/S. Protopapa/UMD) Astronomers with their eyes on the sky thought they spotted an asteroid, but a closer look revealed a comet. It was initially labeled as asteroid 2016 BA14 by the Pan-STARRS survey, but a group of...