Orange Moon, Red Flash
This remarkable telescopic image highlights the deep orange cast of a waning gibbous Moon seen very close to the eastern horizon earlier this week, on September 19. In fact, today's equinox at 22:23 UT marks the beginning of Fall in the Northern ...
Shoreline Terrain on Saturn's Titan
What could have created this unusual terrain on Saturn's moon Titan? The robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn swooped once again, earlier this month, past the Solar System's most enigmatic moon and radar imaged a rich but unusual ...
M1: The Crab Nebula from NOT
This is the mess that is left when a star explodes. The Crab Nebula, the result of a supernova seen in 1054 AD, is filled with mysterious filaments. The filaments are not only tremendously complex, but appear to have less mass than expelled in ...
Approaching Asteroid Itokawa
What are asteroids made of? To help find out, Japan's JAXA space agency launched the Hayabusa mission to rendezvous with asteroid Itokawa. Last week, the small robotic Hayabusa spacecraft arrived at asteroid Itokawa and stationed itself only 20 ...
M42: Wisps of the Orion Nebula
The Great Nebula in Orion, an immense, nearby starbirth region, is probably the most famous of all astronomical nebulas. Here, glowing gas surrounds hot young stars at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud only 1500 light-years ...
Northern Lights, September Skies
So far, the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights have made some remarkable visits to September's skies. The reason, of course, is the not-so-quiet Sun. In particular, a large solar active region now crossing the Sun's disk has produced multiple, ...
The Nucleus of Comet Tempel 1
Approaching the nucleus of comet Tempel 1 at ten kilometers per second, the Deep Impact probe's targeting camera recorded a truly dramatic series of images. Successive pictures improve in resolution and have been composited here at a scale of 5 ...
The Boomerang Nebula in Polarized Light
Why did the Boomerang Nebula form? The symmetric cloud dubbed the Boomerang appears to have been created by a high-speed wind of gas and dust blowing from an aging central star at speeds of nearly 600,000 kilometers per hour. What confines the ...
A Quadruple Sky Over Great Salt Lake
This was a sky to show the kids. All in all, three children, three planets, the Moon, a star, an airplane and a mom were all captured in one image near Great Salt Lake in Utah, USA on September 6. Minus the airplane and the quadruple on the ...
