Here's the best way to see an eclipse. Pull off to the side of the road in Oakland and turn your back to the sun. Find a flat surface that is facing our star, perhaps an old VW van with one of those old yellow-on-blue California license plates. Ball up your first and hold it up to the sun, open your hand just enough to let a tiny stream of photons through your fingers. Look at the van: that's the moon passing in front of the sun. Your hand has become a pinhole camera, an astronomical technology.

"XCOR Aerospace is a private California-based company that has developed the Lynx, a reusable launch vehicle that has suborbital flight capabilities. Low-speed test flights are expected to commence later this year, with incremental testing to take place over the following months."

Minnesota based Cinopt Studios LLC introduces Space Junk Runner 1.0, their first gaming title for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices. Space Junk Runner takes place above a planet's atmosphere with randomly generated platforms that appear as the spaceship continues its journey. The goal of Space Junk Runner is to jump from platform to platform as far as possible. Players can break and compare high scores with friends by attempting to travel as far as possible.

A new generation of experiments might shore up the cosmic orthodoxy - or blow it out of the water. That unexpected alternative, some people go so far as to say, might be no bad thing at all.

WANTED: Rocky planet outside of our solar system. Must not be too hot or too cold, but just the right temperature to support life.

It sounds like a simple enough wish list, but finding a planet that fulfils all of these criteria has kept astronomers busy for decades. Until recently, it meant finding a planet in the "Goldilocks zone" - orbiting its star at just the right distance to keep surface water liquid rather than being boiled off or frozen solid.

If you're Starfleet, you spend your whole life wishing you never see an EPAS uniform right up until the moment they become your only hope. Whether you're dying a slow, cold death in space, or a long painful one on some godforsaken planet, they're going to come for you. So count your last breaths, son, and hold on tight. They leave no soul behind.

If you have astronomical imaging of the sky with celestial coordinates you do not know—or do not trust—then Astrometry.net is for you. Input an image and we'll give you back astrometric calibration meta-data, plus lists of known objects falling inside the field of view.

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