Quite frankly, I’m stunned. An Australian amateur astronomer has just observed his second ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ event: an impact in the atmosphere of Jupiter. Phil Plait was very quick to get the news out, describing it as a “major coincidence,” and he ain’t wrong! Anthony...

Where is this mystical land? (NASA/ESA/HST). Sometimes, words are not enough to describe views of the universe when captured through the lens of the Hubble Space Telescope. This is one of those moments. Kicking off its 20th anniversary (yes, that super-sized telescope has been in space that long —...

The Orion Nebula's star-forming region (NASA). Firstly, apologies that it’s been over a month since last posting to Astroengine.com. Call it slacking off, call it a sabbatical, either way, it’s not good. I’ve actually prepared several half-finished articles, but I just never got around...

Something rather bizarre was observed in the asteroid belt on January 6. Ray Villard at Discovery News has just posted an exciting article about the discovery of a comet… but it’s not your average, run-of-the-mill kinda comet. This comet appears to orbit the Sun, embedded in the asteroid...

This week has been a horrid few days for UK physics. The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) announced on Wednesday that it was going to plug a hole in their funding deficit by withdrawing the UK’s participation in a number of astronomy, nuclear and particle physics projects. This...

Artists impression of an ultra-luminous galaxy heating the surrounding dust (JAXA/ISAS/LIRA) In the early 1980′s, NASA’s Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) detected a number of unknown objects lurking in the depths of the cosmos. At the time, these IRAS objects stirred speculation in...

In agreement with Phil Plait, this video made me smile too. A lot. President Obama (now a Nobel Peace Prize recipient) hosted an astronomical party on the White House lawn on October 7th for an audience of 150 middle school students from the Washington area and some guests of honour (including Charlie...

One scenario: Exploding star flings binary parter away at high velocity (Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics) HC 271791 is a star with a problem, it’s moving so fast through our galaxy that it will eventually escape from the Milky Way all together. However, there is a growing question mark hanging...

Triton, Neptune’s largest moon, hasn’t been studied in detail since Voyager 2 did a flyby in 1989. That was until a team headed by Will Grundy, a Lowell Observatory planetary scientist, did a 10-year study into the distribution of the moon’s ices. Soon to be published in the journal...

The Japanese HTV-1 taken 3 days after launch at an altitude below 300km (©Ralf Vandebergh) I first came across Ralf Vandebergh’s outstanding astrophotography when I was inquiring about a “mystery” object that appeared to be stalking the International Space Station (ISS) in July....