‘Latest News’ Archives
IC 418: The Spirograph Nebula
IC 418: The Spirograph Nebula Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); Acknowledgement: R. Sahai (JPL) et al. Explanation: What is creating the strange texture of IC 418? Dubbed the Spirograph Nebula for its resemblance to drawings from a cyclical drawing tool, planetary nebula IC 418 shows patterns that are [...]
Active Volcanoes on Venus?
Idunn Mons, a mountain on Venus was radar mapped by the Magellan space probe. The color overlay is a new thermal map using an infrared detector on the European Venus Express probe, currently orbiting Venus. Red is warmer, and as you can see, Idunn Mons is certainly hotter than expected. Venus is a lot like the Earth with almost the same [...]
Protostar HH-34 in Orion
This is a three-colour composite of the young object Herbig-Haro 34 (HH-34), now in the protostar stage of evolution. It is based on CCD frames obtained with the FORS2 instrument in imaging mode, on November 2 and 6, 1999. This object has a remarkable, very complicated appearance that includes two opposite jets that ram into the surrounding [...]
The Milky Way over Ontario Canada
Taken over Ontario, Canada, when part of a spectacular sky is visible in a reflection off a lake. The brightest objects visible are bright stars and the planet Jupiter, seen as the brightest spot on the upper left. A distant town appears as a diffuse glow over the horizon. More faint still, the disk of the Milky Way Galaxy becomes apparent as a [...]
Barnard 30 Star Forming Region
This image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows infant stars "hatching" in the head of the hunter constellation, Orion. Astronomers suspect that shockwaves from a supernova explosion in Orion's head, nearly three million years ago, may have initiated this newfound birth. The region featured in this Spitzer image is called Barnard 30. It [...]
Rosebud – Berkeley 59 and NGC 7822
Berkeley 59 and NGC 7822 are located in the constellation Cepheus at a distance of about 3,300 light-years from Earth. Only recently released, this new infrared image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, shows what appears to be a blossoming rosebud with the Berkeley 59 cluster seen as the blue dots to the right of the [...]
Phobos, our closest look
Phobos is the larger of the two moons orbiting Mars. Both Phobos and Deimos appear very similar to asteroids, however capturing 2 asteroids, circularizing their orbits, and dragging them into Mars' equatorial plane seems unlikely. Here is Phobos as it appeared during last week's flyby of ESA's Mars Express. You can clearly see in great [...]
Saturn’s Rings – Up close
There are a number of sources of fantastic images these days, Hubble, HiRISE and Cassini. Here is another gorgeous natural color view of gradations in the transparency of Saturn's inner rings taken by the Cassini spacecraft. We can see the myriad of dark shadows of the rings separate Saturn's southern hemisphere in the bottom of the image [...]
Stunning Saturn
Saturn is truly more beautiful that we could have ever imagined. Here we see Saturn cast its shadow on the rings in this Cassini image that shows how the rings reflect sunlight onto the dark side of the planet. Saturn appears dimly illuminated by the ringshine. This view looks toward the southern, unilluminated side of the rings from about 10 [...]
3D flight over Mars Candor Chasma
I've finally accepted I wont be going to Mars, however if I did go, this 3D animation gives some idea of what I might actually see. It was produced by Adrian Lark (Adrian's Youtube channel) and it shows a three-dimensional flyover of Candor Chasma on Mars generated using HiRISE data. The flight takes us through part of Candor Chasma, one of the [...]
A look at some asteroids
So what is an asteroid? The term comes with some confusion as the distinction between asteroids, comets, meteoroids, and (TNO) Trans-Neptunian objects are somewhat ill-defined, and then there are minor planets, the preferred term by the International Astronomical Union until 2006, when the term "small Solar System body" (SSSB) was introduced to [...]
Download the Astronomy Sky Guide 2010 for Free!
Free is good but quality is better....so when something is both free and of high quality you should take note! For example, take a look at this free 40 page downloadable pdf file which contains just about everything you need to know if you have any interest in observing the night sky in 2010. This guide was recently brought to my attention, and [...]