Really? Sushi and beer "in space"? What's next? What the hell is going on with this weather balloon craze? It seems that everything from beer to sushi is being sent “into space” these days. There’s only one problem… weather balloons don’t go into space! Launching...

A base on the Moon? That would be awesome! But it can't be done for profit... yet (ESA). For more on this topic, you can listen to me chat with BBC 5live’s Dotun Adebayo (from “Up All Night” on Jan. 28 — at 1hr 26mins into the show) and check out the Al Jazeera article (“Gingrich...

A menagerie of strange divots (NASA/HiRISE/Univ. of Arizona) As 2011 draws to a close, it’s time to reflect on my absenteeism from Astroengine. But it’s not my fault, I’ve been typing like a madman for these guys. But that’s enough excuses, 2012 promises to be a huge year for...

A comparison between an observation of the sun using the ATA's 2.75 GHz band (left) and SOHO's 195A filter. Both are near-simultaneous observations on Oct. 1, 2009 (Saint-Hilaire et al., 2011). And no, “aliens” isn’t the answer. The Allen Telescope Array (ATA), located near...

An artist's impression of a lone exoplanet transiting its parent star. There are now 700 confirmed alien worlds orbiting other stars (ESO) On Friday, the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia registered more than 700 confirmed exoplanets. Although this is an amazing milestone, it won’t be long until...

Some galaxies undergo a rapid star formation phase, losing stellar gases to intergalactic space, others choose to recycle, thereby extending their star forming lifespans (NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)) It sounds like an over-hyped public service announcement: If you don’t recycle, you’ll...

"That's no sunspot." Assuming Star Trek‘s Borg Collective went into overdrive and decided to build a huge cube a few thousand miles wide, then yes, the exoplanet-hunting Kepler space telescope should be able to spot it. But how could Kepler distinguish a cube from a nice spherical...

The Aurora from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo. I actually posted this jaw-dropping video on Discovery News last month, but today it got picked up on Digg, so I was reminded why I had to feature it. The video is actually composed of 22,000 high-definition photographs, stitched together is a finely crafted...

Exoplanets may reveal their location through radio emissions (NASA) In 2009, I wrote about a fascinating idea: in the hunt for “Earth-like” exoplanets, perhaps we could detect the radio emissions from a distant world possessing a magnetosphere. This basically builds on the premise that planets...

It's a chocolate Mars rover! Photo credit and cake-making skills: Will Gater OK, so Astroengine has been a little quiet of late due to some uber-cool space news writing over at Discovery News, but to kick off an era of increased productivity (and not just Photoshop fun), I just had to share this...