Fountains Discovered on Saturn's...

2005-12-05

Fountains of ice shoot out from Saturn's moon Enceladus. Clear discovery images of the fountains were made using observations from the robot Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn. During a recent pass, Cassini was programmed to look back ...

Astro 1 In Orbit

2005-12-03

Fifteen years ago, in December of 1990, the Space Shuttle Orbiter Columbia carried an array of astronomical telescopes high above the Earth's obscuring atmosphere to explore the Universe at ultraviolet and x-ray wavelengths. The telescopes, known ...

Crab Nebula Mosaic from HST

2005-12-02

The Crab Nebula is cataloged as M1, the first object on Charles Messier's famous list of things which are not comets. In fact, the cosmic Crab is now known to be a supernova remnant, an expanding cloud of debris from the death explosion of a ...

SOHO's Uninterrupted View of the Sun

2005-12-01

Launched ten years ago this week, SOHO (the SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory) still enjoys an uninterrupted view of the Sun. Twelve sungazing instruments on board the spacecraft have explored the Sun's internal structure, the extensive solar ...

Reflections on the Horsehead Nebula

2005-11-30 Antilhue Observatory

Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud by chance has assumed this recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is some 1,500 light-years distant, embedded in the vast Orion cloud complex. ...

Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant from...

2005-11-29

It's easy to get lost following the intricate filaments in this detailed image of faint supernova remnant Simeis 147. Seen towards the constellation Taurus it covers nearly 3 degrees (6 full moons) on the sky corresponding to a width of 150 ...

Vista Inside Gusev Crater on Mars

2005-11-28

What is the geologic history of Mars? To help find out, the robot Spirit rover explored the terrain on the way up to the top of Husband Hill and took pictures along the way. Earth-bound team members later combined images from one camera with ...

Light Echoes from V838 Mon

2005-11-27

What caused this outburst of V838 Mon? For reasons unknown, star V838 Mon's outer surface suddenly greatly expanded with the result that it became the brightest star in the entire Milky Way Galaxy in January 2002. Then, just as suddenly, it ...

A Stereo Sun

2005-11-26 Greg Piepol

A stereo view of the closest star, this creatively composited image was constructed from an extensive archive of pictures taken between March 2004 and April 2005. When viewed with red/blue glasses, the Sun's disk and surface features, including ...

Moon Over Antarctica

2005-11-25 James Behrens

Last week, the nearly Full Moon set along the northern horizon - as seen from Davis Station, Antarctica. The squashed orange pumpkin shape just silhouettes the peak of a distant iceberg in this stunning view. The Moon's apparently squashed ...