Hitomi Launches
On February 17 at 5:45pm JST this H-IIA rocket blasted skyward from JAXA's Tanegashima Space Center located off the southern coast of Japan, planet Earth. Onboard was the ASTRO-H X-ray astronomy satellite, now in orbit. Designed to explore the ...
Milky Way over the Pinnacles in...
What strange world is this? Earth. In the foreground of the featured image are the Pinnacles, unusual rock spires in Nambung National Park in Western Australia. Made of ancient sea shells (limestone), how these human-sized picturesque spires ...
Star Forming Region S106
Massive star IRS 4 is beginning to spread its wings. Born only about 100,000 years ago, material streaming out from this newborn star has formed the nebula dubbed Sharpless 2-106 Nebula (S106), featured here. A large disk of dust and gas ...
White Rock Fingers on Mars
What caused this unusual light rock formation on Mars? Intrigued by the possibility that they could be salt deposits left over as an ancient lakebed dried-up, detailed studies of these fingers now indicate a more mundane possibility: volcanic ...
A Heart Shaped Lenticular Cloud
Can a cloud love a mountain? Perhaps not, but on a Valentine's Day like today, one might be prone to seeing heart-shaped symbols where they don't actually exist. A fleeting pareidolia, the featured heart was really a lenticular cloud that ...
Yutu on a Little Planet
Tracks lead to a small robot perched near the top of this bright little planet. Of course, the planet is really the Moon. The robot is the desk-sized Yutu rover, leaving its looming Chang'e 3 lander after a mid-December 2013 touch down in the ...
Two Black Holes Merge
Just press play to watch two black holes merge. Inspired by the first direct detection of gravitational waves by LIGO, this simulation video plays in slow motion but would take about one third of a second if run in real time. Set on a cosmic ...
LIGO Detects Gravitational Waves from...
Gravitational radiation has been directly detected. The first-ever detection was made by both facilities of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in Washington and Louisiana simultaneously last September. After numerous ...
Galaxies in the River
Large galaxies grow by eating small ones. Even our own galaxy practices galactic cannibalism, absorbing small galaxies that get too close and are captured by the Milky Way's gravity. In fact, the practice is common in the universe and illustrated ...
The Rise and Fall of Supernova 2015F
Sit back and watch a star explode. The actual supernova occurred back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, but images of the spectacular event began arriving last year. Supernova 2015F was discovered in nearby spiral galaxy NGC 2442 by Berto Monard ...
