Eclipse and Ecliptic
When a Full Moon lies near the ecliptic there can be a lunar eclipse. That cosmic alignment is well illustrated in this composite of eclipse images recorded last Saturday near Paris, France. The projection of the ecliptic plane, the plane of ...
Eclipsed Moon and Stars
This dramatic image features a dark red Moon during a total lunar eclipse -- celestial shadow play enjoyed by many denizens of planet Earth last Saturday. Recorded near Wildon, Austria, the picture is a composite of two exposures; a relatively ...
New Horizons Spacecraft Passes Jupiter
A new spacecraft is headed for the outer Solar System. Named New Horizons, this robotic explorer passed Jupiter last week after being launched only in early 2006. New Horizons is being pulled by Jupiter's gravity to a greater speed toward its ...
Saturn from Above
This image of Saturn could not have been taken from Earth. No Earth based picture could possibly view the night side of Saturn and the corresponding shadow cast across Saturn's rings. Since Earth is much closer to the Sun than Saturn, only the ...
Illusion and Evolution in Galaxy...
What's happening to the galaxies of cluster Abell 2667? On the upper left, a galaxy appears to be breaking up into small pieces, while on the far right, another galaxy appears to be stretched like taffy. To start, most of the yellowish objects ...
Triton: Neptune's Largest Moon
In October of 1846, William Lassell was observing the newly discovered planet Neptune. He was attempting to confirm his observation, made just the previous week, that Neptune had a ring. But this time he discovered that Neptune had a satellite ...
Lunar Transit from STEREO
A million miles from planet Earth, last weekend the STEREO B spacecraft found itself in the shadow of the Moon. So, looking toward the Sun, extreme ultraviolet cameras onboard STEREO B were able to record a stunning movie of a lunar transit (aka ...
Rosetta Over Mars
Panels on ESA's Rosetta spacecraft appear in the foreground of this intriguing image of Mars recorded on February 25 at a range of about 1,000 kilometers. Launched in March 2004, Rosetta was near its closest approach to the Red Planet during a ...
Stars, Dust and Nebula in NGC 2170
When stars form, pandemonium reigns. A textbook case is the star forming region NGC 2170. Visible above are red glowing emission nebulas of hydrogen, blue reflection nebulas of dust, dark absorption nebulas of dust, and the stars that formed ...
Atmospheres Detected for Two...
Do extrasolar planets have water? In an attempt to find out, the orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope made detailed observations of the atmospheres of two planets that orbit stars other than our Sun. Unfortunately, water vapor was not detected in ...
