Magellanic Galaxy NGC 55

2019-07-12 Eric Benson

Irregular galaxy NGC 55 is thought to be similar to the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). But while the LMC is about 180,000 light-years away and a well-known satellite of our own Milky Way Galaxy, NGC 55 is more like 6 million light-years distant, a ...

The Ghost of Jupiter's Halo

2019-07-11 CHART32 Team

Close-up images of NGC 3242 show the cast off shroud of a dying, sun-like star fancifully known as The Ghost of Jupiter nebula. But this deep and wide telescopic view also finds the seldom seen outer halo of the beautiful planetary nebula at the ...

4000 Exoplanets

2019-07-10

Over 4000 planets are now known to exist outside our Solar System. Known as exoplanets, this milestone was passed last month, as recorded by NASA's Exoplanet Archive. The featured video highlights these exoplanets in sound and light, starting ...

Birds During a Total Solar Eclipse

2019-07-09 Leonardo Caldas

What do birds do during a total solar eclipse? Darkness descends more quickly in a total eclipse than during sunset, but returns just as quickly -- and perhaps unexpectedly to the avians -- just a few minutes later. Stories about the unusual ...

The Galactic Center in Radio from...

2019-07-08

What's happening at the center of our galaxy? It's hard to tell with optical telescopes since visible light is blocked by intervening interstellar dust. In other bands of light, though, such as radio, the galactic center can be imaged and shows ...

Crescent Saturn

2019-07-07

Saturn never shows a crescent phase -- from Earth. But when viewed from beyond, the majestic giant planet can show an unfamiliar diminutive sliver. This image of crescent Saturn in natural color was taken by the robotic Cassini spacecraft in ...

8 Minute and 30 Second Eclipse

2019-07-06 Bob Minor

The total phase of the July 2nd solar eclipse lasted about 4 minutes and 30 seconds at the point of maximum eclipse. On the surface of planet Earth, that was about 600 nautical miles north of Easter Island in the Southern Pacific Ocean. But from ...

La Silla Eclipse Sequence

2019-07-05 Petr Horálek

The road to the high mountaintop La Silla Observatory in the Chilean Atacama Desert also led in to the path of July 2nd's total solar eclipse. Recorded at regular intervals before and after the total eclipse phase, the frames in this composite ...

In the Shadow of the Moon

2019-07-04 Yuri Beletsky

On July 2 denizens of planet Earth could stand in the Moon's dark umbral shadow during South America's 2019 total solar eclipse. It first touched down in the Southern Pacific Ocean, east of New Zealand. Racing toward the east along a narrow ...

Robotic Dragonfly Selected to Fly...

2019-07-03

If you could fly across Titan, what would you see? To find out and to better explore this exotic moon of Saturn, NASA recently green-lighted Dragonfly, a mission to Titan with plans to deploy a helicopter-like drone. Saturn's moon Titan is one of ...