NASA's Kepler Space Telescope was an observatory in space dedicated to finding planets outside our solar system, with a particular focus on finding planets that might resemble Earth.
NASA's Curiosity rover is currently roaming Mars' landscape looking for signs of life and learning about the Red Planet's unique environment.
Curiosity has four main science goals:
Determine whether life ever arose on Mars.
Characterize the climate of Mars.
Characterize the geology of Mars.
Prepare for human exploration.
Remote sensing is the acquiring of information from a distance. NASA observes Earth and other planetary bodies via remote sensors on satellites and aircraft that detect and record reflected or emitted energy.
Quasars are distant objects powered by black holes a billion times as massive as our sun, Shining so brightly that they eclipse the ancient galaxies that contain them. These powerful dynamos have fascinated astronomers since their discovery half a century ago.
Asteroids are rocky objects revolving around the sun that are too small to be called planets. They are also known as planetoids or minor planets. There are millions of asteroids, ranging in size from hundreds of miles to several feet across.
Comets are cosmic snowballs of frozen gases, rock, and dust that orbit the Sun. When frozen, they are the size of a small town. When a comet's orbit brings it close to the Sun, it heats up and spews dust and gases into a giant glowing head larger than most planets. The dust and gases form a tail that stretches away from the Sun for millions of miles.
The sky above us is strewn with alluringly beautiful remnants of ancient supernovae, that is, stars that lived out their lives and then died in these violent explosions. A supernova is a name given to the cataclysmic explosion of a massive star at the end of its life.
The universe developed from a tiny speck (hypothetically containing the entirety of space) into something much, much bigger. Cosmic inflation explains how this occurred uniformly in spite of the rapidness of the process.
Gravity is one of the universe's fundamental forces and dominates every moment of our conscious experience. It keeps us close to the ground, drags baseballs and basketballs out of the air and gives our muscles something to struggle against. Cosmically, gravity is just as consequential.
Optical astronomy refers to an area of astronomy where astronomers observe and analyze light from the Universe that falls within the wavelength range that the human eye is sensitive to, using telescopes.
A nebula is a giant cloud of dust and gas in space. Nebulae exist in the space between the stars—also known as interstellar space. The closest known nebula to Earth is called the Helix Nebula.
A cosmological model is a mathematical description of the Universe that attempts to explain its current behaviour and evolution over time. Cosmological models are based on direct observations.
Relativity is the notion that the laws of physics are the same everywhere. We here on Earth obey the same laws of light and gravity as someone in a far-off corner of the universe.
Astroparticle physics looks at the most basic building blocks in nature to learn more about how they work. By studying particles from the universe we can learn more about how it was formed and hopefully start to answer big questions
Physical cosmology, as a branch of astronomy, is the study of the largest-scale structures and dynamics of the universe and is concerned with fundamental questions about its formation and evolution.
Quantum cosmology is the attempt in theoretical physics to develop a quantum theory of the Universe. This approach attempts to answer open questions of classical physical cosmology, particularly those related to the first phases of the universe.
Stellar dynamics is the branch of astrophysics which describes the collective motions of stars subject to their mutual gravity in a statistical way. That is, it describes systems of many point mass particles whose mutual gravitational interactions determine their orbits.
