With 2013 scheduled to host two “Great Comets” in March and December amateur and professional astronomers alike will we gearing up to what looks to be a great double whammy. Comet PANSTARRS, a comet discovered in June 2011, will pass within 102 million miles from Earth at its closest and […]

Slowly orbiting the Sun, its eyes fixed on a single region of our galaxy, the Kepler space observatory quietly goes about its business, scouring the Milky Way for Earth-like planets. The spacecraft, launched in 2009, is a specially designed telescope known as a photometer, or light meter. The telescope monitors […]