What does a dying comet look like? This. The comet ISON, previously declared dead as it circled the sun, then thought alive when pieces of it appeared to survive, is, in fact, dead, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced today. Its demise was captured by the SOHO spacecraft. Astrophysicist Karl Battams, at the Comet ISON Read more

That dot there? That’s us. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft took pictures of Earth from nearly 900 million miles away on Friday. It took a day to send them back. Cassini fans took the images, stretched and pasted them, adjusted the color. Guillermo Abramson, a physicist at Argentina’s Bariloche Atomic Center, came up with this striking image. Read more

A new documentary on a plane crash 17 years ago must have the National Transportation Safety Board rattled, because the NTSB today announced an unusual background briefing next week in the crash of TWA Flight 800. “The TWA Flight 800 investigation remains one of the NTSB’s most extensive and exhaustive investigations; the final report includes Read more