Astronauts snap photo of aurora from space

Unfortunately I’m not lucky enough to have seen the spectacular light display visible every winter  - the aurora. At least not yet. But astronauts onboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour got to see the aurora from a very different perspective before they touched down - they saw the mysterious green light show from above.

So what is [...]

What’s bad about melting ice sheets?

Imagine a huge slab of ice with an area of about 200 square miles - if it was ever to melt it would release torrents of water into the oceans. The problem is that it already is melting - scientists with the British Antarctic Survey discovered last week that an iceberg that big has [...]

Planet Earth plunges into darkness for an hour

Whoa! What happened to Sydney in the photo above? Was there a major power outage or something?
Fortunately no - although what actually happened was something even more important than a power outage. At 8PM local time on March 29, Sydney was one of the first cities to participate in ‘Earth Hour’, in which households, towns [...]

Shuttle Endeavour touches down safely in darkness

 
It blasted off in darkness two weeks ago and has now touched down again at Cape Canaveral in the middle of the night. But Space Shuttle Endeavour’s mission was certainly nothing to be dark and depressed about - it successfully installed a huge robotic arm form Canada to the ISS, as well as delivering the [...]

Hawaii’s volcano Kilauea starts exploding and erupting new lava

It’s been erupting for 25 years now, but that doesn’t stop Hawaii’s volcano Kilauea throwing up new surprises. One of its major craters has now started exploding and oozing lava - the explosions are the first in 84 years, and the lava the first in a quarter of a century from this particular crater.
The [...]