The Busy Center of the Lagoon Nebula
Stars are battling gas and dust in the Lagoon Nebula but the photographers are winning. Also known as M8, this photogenic nebula is visible even without binoculars towards the constellation of Sagittarius. The energetic processes of star ...
A Shuttle Back Flip at the Space Station
Last week, crew members of the International Space Station (ISS) watched carefully as the Space Shuttle Discovery did a planned but unusual back flip upon approach. Discovery Commander Eileen Collins guided the shuttle through the flip, which ...
2003 UB313: A Tenth Planet?
Has a tenth planet been discovered? A newly discovered object, designated 2003 UB313 and located more than twice the distance of Pluto, is expected to be at least as large as Pluto and probably larger, given current measurements. 2003 UB313's ...
Solar System Object Larger than Pluto...
Is that a tenth planet? A faint, slowly moving dot discovered by computer shows clear signs of being a deep Solar System object at least as large as Pluto. The object, designated 2003 UB313, is currently situated nearly 100 times the Earth-Sun ...
M106 in Canes Venatici
Close to the Great Bear (Ursa Major) and surrounded by the stars of the Hunting Dogs (Canes Venatici), this celestial nebula was discovered in 1781 by the metric French astronomer Pierre Mechain. Later, it was added to the catalog of his friend ...
ISS and Discovery Transit the Sun
That large sunspot near the right edge of the Sun is actually not a sunspot at all. It's the International Space Station (ISS) and the Space Shuttle Discovery on mission STS-114. In the past, many skygazers have spotted the space station and ...
Spherical Planetary Nebula Abell 39
Ghostly in appearance, Abell 39 is a remarkably simple, spherical nebula about five light-years across. Well within our own Milky Way galaxy, the cosmic sphere is roughly 7,000 light-years distant toward the constellation Hercules. Abell 39 is a ...
America Returns to Human Space Flight
NASA's launch of the massive Space Shuttle Discovery yesterday brought a nation known for its tremendous space program back to human space flight. Shuttle flights had been suspended for over two years previously following the tragic loss of the ...
Hyperion: Sponge Moon of Saturn
Why is Saturn's moon Hyperion textured like a sponge? Recent high-resolution images from the robot Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn show Hyperion to be an even stranger place than thought before. Previously, it was known that the length of a ...
Unusual Gas Filaments Surround Galaxy...
How were the unusual gas filaments surrounding galaxy NGC 1275 created? No one is sure. Galaxy NGC 1275 is the central dominant galaxy of the Perseus Cluster of Galaxies, a cluster with many member galaxies visible in the above image. In ...
