* Astronomy

Crude oil from the wrecked 146 000-ton tanker, Hebei Spirit, is seen polluting the sea off South Korea in this Envisat image. More than 10 000 tons of oil from the tanker is reported to have leaked into the sea since colliding with another vessel on Friday 7 December. The South Korean government has dec...

An exoplanet of around 11 Jupiter masses, with an eccentric orbit around its star.

FIU program builds cosmic ray detector For most teenagers, summer vacation and particle physics don't exactly go together. But the four high school students spending the summer at Florida International University aren't exactly most teenagers. They're working alongside nuclear physicists t...

Title: WASP-16b: A new Jupiter-like planet transiting a southern solar analogy Authors: T. A. Lister, D. R. Anderson, M. Gillon, L. Hebb, B. S. Smalley, A. H. M. J. Triaud, A. Collier Cameron, D. M. Wilson, R. G. West, S. J. Bentley, D. J. Christian, R. Enoch, C. A. Haswell, C. Hellier, K. Horne, J. Irwi...

Q: How many galaxies have humans discovered? A: "We don't know. We know its a very large number" - Ed Churchwell, professor of astronomy. Read more

The 1000 - 2000 metre wide asteroid 2004 BX159 will make a close pass, travelling at 13.97 km/s, to the Earth-Moon system on the 29th August, 2009. See more The Lunar Distance (LD), the distance between Earth and the Moon, eq...

Jupiter will occult the magnitude +5.9 star 45 Capricorni tonight. The eclipse will occur between 22:53 and 1:00 UT, 3rd - 4th August, 2009. The event is visible from Brazil, N. Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Position(2000): RA 21 44 00.9652, Dec -14 44 57.734

Orbital elements: C/2009 K4 (Gibbs) T 2009 June 18.433 TT MPC q 1.56252 (2000.0) P Q Peri. 126.837 -0.846542 -0.450668 Node 29.747 +0.068679 -0.620234 e 1.0 Incl. 34.820 +0.527872 -0.642035 From 41 observations 2009 May 27-28. [url=http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/mpec/K09/K09K63.html]MPEC

Orbital elements: 2009 PD Earth MOID = 0.0344 AU Epoch 2009 June 18.0 TT = JDT 2455000.5 MPC M 352.06016 (2000.0) P Q n 0.68718140 Peri. 163.81059 +0.13211740 +0.98918396 a 1.2718087 Node 113.74560 -0.91698549 +0.14637863 e 0.1758333 Incl. 3.99170 -0.37640750 -0.00940113 P 1.43 H 24.1 G 0.15 U 8 [u...

Ave Kludze: Ghana's rocket man He was not able to fulfil his childhood dream of being a pilot, but Ghanaian scientist Dr. Ave Kludze has arguably gone one better: developing and flying spacecrafts for NASA. The 43-year-old didn't enter orbit when controlling a NASA rocket to launch the Calipso envi...

The 580 - 1300 metre wide asteroid (9162) Kwiila will make a close pass (41.2 Lunar Distances, 0.1060 AU), travelling at 19.35 km/s, to the Earth-Moon system on the 14th August, 2009. See more The Lunar Distance (LD), the distanc...

The 170 m - 380 metre wide asteroid 2007 VM243 will make a close pass (77.2 Lunar Distances, 0.1983 AU), travelling at 14.57 km/s, to the Earth-Moon system on the 8th August, 2009. See more The Lunar Distance (LD), the dis...

The 14 - 31 metre wide asteroid 2004 SR26 will make a close pass (72.9 Lunar Distances, 0.1874 AU), travelling at 9.20 km/s, to the Earth-Moon system on the 9th August, 2009. See more The Lunar Distance (LD), the distance b...

The 43 - 95 metre wide asteroid 2007 RT12 will make a close pass (56.6 Lunar Distances, 0.1453 AU), travelling at 9.18 km/s, to the Earth-Moon system on the 9th August, 2009. See more The Lunar Distance (LD), the distance b...

The 790 - 1800 metre wide asteroid 2006 SV19 will make a close pass (59.2 Lunar Distances, 0.1522 AU), travelling at 11.17 km/s, to the Earth-Moon system on the 21st August, 2009. See more The Lunar Distance (LD), the distance b...