Sedna of the Outer Solar System
What is the most distant known object in our Solar System? A new answer to this centuries-old question was announced yesterday by NASA with the discovery of a dark red object dubbed Sedna. Although over twice the distance to Pluto, Sedna is ...
The Orion Nebula from CFHT
Few astronomical sights excite the imagination like the nearby stellar nursery known as the Orion Nebula. The Nebula's glowing gas surrounds hot young stars at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud only 1500 light-years away. The ...
Comet Hale-Bopp Over Val Parola Pass
Comet Hale-Bopp became much brighter than any surrounding stars. It was seen even over bright city lights. Out away from city lights, however, it put on quite a spectacular show. Here Comet Hale-Bopp was photographed above Val Parola Pass in the ...
A Cerro Tololo Sky
High atop a Chilean mountain lies one of the premier observatories of the southern sky: the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO). Pictured above is the dome surrounding one of the site's best known instruments, the 4-meter Blanco ...
X-Ray Saturn
Above, the ringed planet Saturn shines in x-rays. Otherwise beyond the range of human vision, the eerie x-ray view was created by overlaying a computer generated outline of the gas giant's disk and ring system on a false-color picture of ...
Henize 206: Cosmic Generations
Peering into a dusty nebula in nearby galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud, infrared cameras on board the Spitzer Space Telescope recorded this detailed view of stellar nursery Henize 206 filled with newborn stars. The stars appear as white spots ...
Humphrey Rock Indicates Ancient...
How prevalent was water on Mars? Results from the Spirit rover now indicate that Gusev crater likely had a wet past, a result that comes shortly after Spirit's twin rover Opportunity uncovered clear evidence of past water at Meridiani Planum on ...
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field
What did the first galaxies look like? To help answer this question, the Hubble Space Telescope has just finished taking the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), the deepest image of the universe ever taken in visible light. Pictured above, the HUDF ...
Moon and Venus over Corona Del Mar Beach
The crescent Moon passed nearly in front of Venus two weeks ago. The close conjunction of the night sky's two brightest objects created a striking pose for many viewing the evening sky just after sunset. Such a pose, shown above, was captured ...
An Anomalous SETI Signal
No one knows for sure what caused this signal. There is a slight possibility that it just might originate from an extraterrestrial intelligence. The bright colors on the blue background indicate that an anomalous signal was received here on ...
