Comet Between Fireworks and Lightning
Sometimes the sky itself is the best show in town. On January 26, people from Perth, Australia gathered on a local beach to watch a sky light up with delights near and far. Nearby, fireworks exploded as part of Australia Day celebrations. On ...
Shadow of a Martian Robot
What if you saw your shadow on Mars and it wasn't human? Then you might be the Opportunity rover currently exploring Mars. Opportunity and sister robot Spirit have been probing the red planet since early 2004, finding evidence of ancient water, ...
Flame Nebula Close-Up
Of course, the Flame Nebula is not on fire. Also known as NGC 2024, the nebula's suggestive reddish color is due to the glow of hydrogen atoms at the edge of the giant Orion molecular cloud complex some 1,500 light-years away. The hydrogen atoms ...
A Tail of Two Hemispheres
By January 19/20 Comet McNaught's magnificent dust tail stretched for about 150 million kilometers (~1 AU), requiring images from both southern and northern hemispheres of planet Earth to take it all in. Two such views - from Cerro Paranal in ...
Movie: Cassini Crosses Saturn's Ring...
What would the rings of Saturn look like if you passed right through the ring plane? To find out, NASA aimed cameras from the Cassini spacecraft right at Saturn's rings as the robotic explorer passed from the sunlit side of the rings to the ...
Thor's Helmet from CFHT
NGC 2359 is a striking emission nebula with an impressive popular name - Thor's Helmet Sure, its suggestive winged appearance might lead some to refer to it as the "duck nebula", but if you were a nebula which name would you choose? By any name ...
Movie: A Green Flash Over Italy
How could the Sun turn green? Difficult to observe, the momentary green flash above the rising or setting sun has been documented as a phenomenon caused by the atmospheric bending or refraction of sunlight. Like a weak prism, the Earth's ...
Saturn's Hyperion: A Moon with Odd...
What lies at the bottom of Hyperion's strange craters? Nobody knows. To help find out, the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn swooped past the sponge-textured moon in late 2005 and took an image of unprecedented detail. That image, ...
Castle and Sky
While Comet McNaught ruled southern skies, last week's conjunction of the Moon and Venus could be enjoyed by denizens of both hemispheres of planet Earth. The two more commonly viewed celestial beacons produced this lovely twilight scene, ...
The Star Clusters of NGC 1313
Like grains of sand on a cosmic beach, individual stars of barred spiral galaxy NGC 1313 are resolved in this sharp composite from the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). The inner region of the galaxy is pictured, ...
