Ian O'Neill is a media relations specialist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California. Prior to joining JPL, he served as editor for the Astronomical Society of the Pacific‘s Mercury magazine and Mercury Online and contributed articles to a number of other publications, including Space.com, Space.com, Live Science, HISTORY.com, Scientific American. Ian holds a Ph.D in solar physics and a master's degree in planetary and space physics.
Latest articles by Ian O'Neill

By Ian O'Neill Published
The space telescope has captured a stunning view of a galaxy that just won't conform to a regular shape.

By Ian O'Neill Published
It may be fighting age-related issues, but Opportunity certainly isn't done with Mars yet.

By Ian O'Neill Published
This massive black hole candidate may be of the 'intermediate-mass' variety, possibly tying up a perplexing astrophysical puzzle.

By Ian O'Neill Published
Pluto's weirdly dynamic and 'young' surface has just become even more intriguing with the release of this stunning color image of what is thought to be a huge cryovolcano, or ice volcano.

By Ian O'Neill Published
China is moving forward with plans to land a probe on the far side of the moon, state news agency Xinhua reports.

By Ian O'Neill Published
There are few more potent reminders that Mars used to be a wet world than seeing ancient, dried up river beds etched into the red planet's surface.

By Ian O'Neill Published
You can say what you like about our nearest star, but as this latest solar eruption proves, it certainly has impeccable timing.

By Ian O'Neill Published
In a galactic cluster far, far away, a galaxy has grown an unprecedented tail of super-heated gases, providing astronomers with a unique glimpse of an extreme intragalactic environment.

By Ian O'Neill Published
What's that? Not one, but a SWARM of dust devils on Mars!

By Ian O'Neill Published
There are few views in Saturnian orbit that are more satisfying than seeing two or more moons in the same frame -- particularly when they align.

By Ian O'Neill Published
Jupiter's Big Red Spot is the largest example of a long-lived storm in the solar system, but now it has some pretty stiff competition in another star system.

By Ian O'Neill Published
Astrophysicists have created a computer model that simulates a dying stars' magnetic guts before generating a cosmic monster.

By Ian O'Neill Published
Shimmering deep inside a cosmic supervoid is MCG+01-02-015, a pristine galaxy that is the undisputed galactic loner of the universe.

By Ian O'Neill Published
Could the seismic fingerprint of dust devils detected on Earth be used to decipher the tiny tornadoes racing across the Martian surface?

By Ian O'Neill Published
A new sci-fi TV show is coming this December and it's good. Like really, REALLY good.

By Ian O'Neill Published
Recent observations of the gaps in protoplanetary disks surrounding nearby young stars may not be "proof"of the formation of exoplanets.

By Ian O'Neill Published
According to observations by Hubble and Kepler, the universe has only just begun to produce habitable worlds — what does this mean for the evolution of intelligent life?

By Ian O'Neill Published
The fascinating speculation surrounding a recent Kepler observation of a star 1,500 light-years away has reignited questions of alien life in our universe and what it means for future studies.

By Ian O'Neill Published
NASA's Kepler space telescope has detected something weird orbiting a nearby star — is it evidence of an alien civilization? Or is it just a clump of comets?

By Ian O'Neill Published
Our universe is actually really simple, it's just our cosmological theories that are getting needlessly complex, argues one of the world's leading theoretical physicists.
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