Titan's Odd Spot
Titan's odd spot could be a cloud, but if so, it's a persistent one. Peering into the thick, hazy atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon, cameras on board the Cassini spacecraft found a bright spot at the same location during Titan encounters in ...
A Beautiful Trifid
The beautiful Trifid Nebula (aka M20), a photogenic study in cosmic contrasts, lies about 5,000 light-years away toward the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. A star forming region in the plane of our galaxy, the Trifid fittingly illustrates ...
Particle Sizes in Saturn's Rings
What size particles compose Saturn's rings? To help find out, the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn broadcast radio waves of three different wavelengths right through the rings to Earth earlier this month. The experiment was ...
Swirls and Stars in IC 4678
Swirls of gas and dust enrich this little observed starfield toward the constellation of Sagittarius. Just to the side of the more often photographed Lagoon Nebula (M8) and the Trifid Nebula (M20) lies this busy patch of sky dubbed IC 4678. ...
A Wave Maker Moon in Saturn's Rings
What causes small waves in Saturn's rings? Observations of rings bordering the Keeler gap in Saturn's rings showed unusual waves. Such waves were first noticed last July and are shown above in clear detail. The picture is a digitally ...
Snake in the Dark
Dark nebulae snake across a gorgeous expanse of stars in this wide-field view toward the pronounceable constellation Ophiuchus and the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. In fact, the central S-shape seen here is well known as the Snake Nebula. It is ...
Aurora Iowa
rly last Sunday morning stars were not the only lights in Iowa skies. The northern lights also shone from the heavens, extending across the midwestern USA and other locations not often graced with auroral displays. The wide-ranging auroral ...
X-Ray Stars in the Orion Nebula
When our middle-aged Sun was just a few million years old it was thousands of times brighter in x-rays. In fact, it was likely similar to some of the stars found in this false-color x-ray composite of the Orion Nebula region from the Chandra ...
Three Kilometers Above Titan
What did the Huygens probe see as it descended toward Saturn's Moon Titan? In January the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn released a probe through the dense cloud decks of one of the Solar System's most mysterious moons. Below the ...
A Panorama of Mars from Larry's Lookout
Scroll right to see a breathtaking panorama of Mars from Larry's Lookout. The lookout occurs near the peak of Husband Hill in the Columbia Hills. The summit of Husband Hill is visible 200 meters in the distance toward the center of the ...
