Jan. 1, 1801: Up in the Sky ... It's a Star ... It's a Planet ... No, Wait
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It takes a little while to get the facts straight, but it turns out Giuseppe Piazzi has discovered the first asteroid.
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New Mexico's legislature expands its jurisdiction, mulling whether to return the slighted celestial body to its planetary status every time it passes overhead. By Robert Lemos.
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The leading theory of how planets form is being revised because of new observations from the US Spitzer Space Telescope. The process is not as smooth and quiet as once thought, but rather the result of violent collisions between massive space rocks.
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For the first time in almost two years, there are no bright planets in the evening sky. You might as well stay inside and eat dinner. The morning sky, on the other hand, is sparkling. Mercury. Venus. Saturn. A slender crescent Moon. The luminous stars of Orion. They're all on display in the days ahead: Sept. 10th through 12th.
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WASHINGTON - Astronomers in the US say they&#39;ve discovered a new class of planets orbiting stars outside our solar system. The two &quot;exoplanets&quot; are small compared to earlier finds.
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Virgin is all over the map. Yesterday morning, Sir Richard Branson introduced to the world that he was ready to make astronauts of us all by 2007.
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Those who are involved in popularizing astronomy are asked certain questions time and again.&nbsp; One of these is 'How many stars are there?' Only when one is blessed with a rare glimpse of a star-spangled sky with its myriad luminaries, can we understand why this question occurs.&nbsp; Special computer analysis can readily answer the question.&nbsp;
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Signs of ancient eruptions indicate a planet geologically active and may suggest presence of simple life forms. By Peter N. Spotts | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor.
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An astronomer at Penn State University is not certain whether the latest discovery in outer space is a planet or a failed star.
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The first global positioning system satellite is launched; 23 more will follow, and then we will always know where we are. Compiled by Tony Long.
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Two old stars appear to be gearing up for a second generation of planet formation, a phenomenon astronomers say they have never seen before.
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European scientists have found a planet circling a distant star that could be home to life. The planet, the first detected so far that is enough like Earth for life to develop, orbits a star called mu Arae in the southern constellation Altar.
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A supernova spotted by the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe more than four centuries ago that changed the course of human knowledge has just yielded a further discovery - the apparent discovery of the companion star that triggered the great event.
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Astronomers discover a newborn planet in a solar system that is still in the process of forming.
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The IAU's recent decision to retain Pluto as a planet was a political attempt to catch up with two trends: the recent discoveries by Mike Brown and his colleagues of new planetary objects, and a growing unease about Pluto's place in the classical notion of what a planet is. Whether or not they made the right decision about Pluto is rather pointless, as there are certainly more important things astronomers have to worry about. Although it is controversial amongst astronomers. And think of those poor astrologers and their horoscopes: "Your Libra is in the House of Quaoar. So, um, that makes you very cold and distant?"  If Pluto gets called a Planet or a Pluton or a Salami Sandwich in children's textbooks just isn't that important in the larger scheme of things. So certainly, the IAU got it right, for now: just let popular and historical notions hold sway. However, the IAU did not address a third trend on the horizon: we are beginning to discover planets outside of our solar system. This means our traditional notion of what a planet is and isn't is about to be challenged in a whole new bunch of ways that Pluto and Mike Brown could never muster. We are going to be exposed to a whole new cornucopia of exotic objects orbiting other stars in the next few decades. In this regard, the IAU's recent Solar Sytem-centric and politically rendered decisions just don't cut it.
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An embryonic star, just beginning its life as the center of a planetary system, is apparently deluged with massive rainfall as icy material vaporizes and refreezes. Astronomers are observing one such star in a nebula about 1,000 light years from Earth with the Spitzer Space Telescope.
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For the next few weeks sky-watchers can spot Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn in the same nighttime sky. The planets won't be visible together to the naked eye again until 2016.