India's Chandrayaan programme is "ambitious"
A moon rush is hotting up, with India, China and Japan devising substantial space exploration programmes to compete with the big players -- the …
Curtain falls over aurora borealis
The aurora borealis is caused not by solar flares but by gigantic portions of the corona flowing out of the Sun
Encounter Jovis Pater
A solar system within a solar system? Seems like a riddle, but if one planet can hold 1,000 earths, is 318 times as massive and 1,400 times more …
Catch a falling planet
...A recent discovery is the first confirmation of the long-held belief that planets such as Earth may exist in other parts of the universe
Universal law
A mathematical relationship between planets in our solar system holds astoundingly true even for 3 distant planets orbiting a pulsar
Groping for invisible matter
What we can see constitutes only about 10 per cent of the universe's mass. Where is the rest hidden?
Cometary conundrum
Fresh data on the collision of shards of Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter last year has divided scientists on the size of the comet fragments
Light, ahoy!
Scientists say 'hallelujah' in jubilation, having captured the glimmer of what is known as the farthest and the oldest galaxy in the universe
Chasing Mercury
Of all the planets in our solar system, Mercury has been the most elusive -- it took astronomers almost 14 centuries to predict its orbit …
The central truth
Latest studies lend credence to the theory that the Milky Way has a large black hole at its center
Breaking the ice
Discovery of ice on the Moon might make colonising it and using it as a low-cost outer- space missions launching centre a less difficult target
Cousins in space
Observation of the star Lalande 21185 could lead to the first direct imaging of another solar planet
Witness to genesis
Cosmologists spy on galaxies being born, and conclude that these massive stellar assemblages might have formed earlier than believed
Far but near
Detection of two galaxies that are unassociated with a quasar raise further questions about galactic evolution
Hey, how old are you?
The age of a newly discovered galaxy defies the predictions of the standard cosmological model, meaning some more work for the theoreticians
Mystery behind the dazzle
Far away from the sun but exceptionally bright, the comet Hale-Bopp has baffled a lot of scientists who are struggling to explain its strange …
A Keck for the specks
The faintest and the most distant objects in the heavens no longer remain invincible with the introduction of the powerful Keck Telescope, the …
Another of the same kind
Geneva Observatory astronomers Study spectral lines in the visible spectrum and detect a planet thefirst to be observed outside our own planetary …
Stars apart
X-ray emissions from a contracting mass of gas far away in the universe raises questions about the birth of the solar system
Over before we knew it
Lenoid meteor shower, the biggest astronomical non-event of 1998, caused hardly any damage to orbiting satellites
Mars' water connection
Channels and valleys observed on the Martian surface and meteorites of Martian origin indicate that once there might have been water on the planet
Manipulating reality
The concept of Virtual Reality -- simulating the real world -- is adding a new dimension to entertainment and education.
Moon keeps Earth's tilt in check
Scientists say the Moon exerts a moderating influence on variations in the Earth's obliquity or tilt and this has a direct effect on our climate.
Stars of wonder
Stargazers feast their ey'es on what could be the event of the century - star births - as the Hubble photographs the phenomenon
New light on black holes
Researchers almost catch a glimpse of the ravenous vortexes in the Universe which don't even let light escape their gravitational grip
