Brandon Specktor

1 month ago | yahoo.com | Brandon Specktor

Far beyond the eight familiar planets in our solar system, countless bizarre and extreme worlds await discovery — and some have already been found. Thanks to rapidly advancing telescope technology, astronomers have detected more than 5,600 planets outside our solar system. These exoplanets, as scientists call them, are worlds of lava, and worlds of water. They're worlds being ravaged by the heat of their stars, and worlds locked in eternal night.

1 month ago | livescience.com | Brandon Specktor

While millions of Earthlings watched the moon turn red during last night's "blood moon" total lunar eclipse, a spacecraft parked on the moon was watching Earth swallow the sun. In a series of stunning images shared by Texas-based Firefly Aerospace — the private company whose Blue Ghost lander successfully touched down on the moon's near side on March 2 — the distant sun is slowly eclipsed by the dark orb of Earth until only a bright ring remains.

1 month ago | yahoo.com | Brandon Specktor

In 2015, NASA's Curiosity rover spotted what appeared to be a wooden spoon, floating in midair with a shadow on the ground beneath it. It was, of course, an optical illusion; the spoon is simply a rock, shaped by the wind over eons, also known as a ventifact. The handle of the spoony rock juts out from a larger formation, allowing the spoon's rounded tip to hover over the ground below, casting a distinct shadow beneath it.

1 month ago | msn.com | Brandon Specktor

Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.

1 month ago | livescience.com | Brandon Specktor

The U.S. government's secretive X-37B space plane has returned to Earth after a 434-day mission in orbit, according to a statement from the U.S. Space Force. Although the details of the mysterious uncrewed spacecraft's more-than-yearlong mission remain largely classified, the Space Force is touting the recent flight as the start of an "exciting new chapter" in the X-37B program.