Cosmic Tribune

How our sun looks from the dwarf planet Makemake

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[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION / credit: European Southern Observatory] Makemake is one of the largest objects known in the outer Solar System. Pronounced MAH-kay MAH-kay, this Kuiper belt object is about two-thirds the size of Pluto, orbits the Sun only slightly further out than Pluto, and appears only slightly dimmer than Pluto. … [...]

Eclipse reveals planet size flares on sun’s surface

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This month’s New Moon brought a total solar eclipse to parts of planet Earth on Nov. 13 (UT). Most of the total eclipse track fell across the southern Pacific, but the Moon’s dark umbral shadow began its journey in northern Australia on Wednesday morning, local time. From along the track, this telescopic snapshot captures the [...]

What will happen when the sun burns through its core hydrogen?

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[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION] Is this what will become of our Sun? Quite possibly. The bubble of expanding gas pictured above is the planetary nebula PK 164 +31.1, the remnants of the atmosphere of a Sun-like star expelled as its supply of fusion-able core hydrogen became depleted. Visible near the center of the [...]

Venus rises with the sun over the Black Sea

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This dramatic telephoto view across the Black Sea on June 6 finds Venus rising with the Sun, the planet in silhouette against a ruddy and ragged solar disk. Of course, the reddened light is due to scattering in planet Earth’s atmosphere and the rare transit of Venus didn’t influence the strangely shaped and distorted Sun. [...]

Transit of Venus today, June 5, is last until 2117

Venus transits across the sun as seen over Hong Kong June 8, 2004.

We’re not supposed to look directly at the sun and surprisingly, the Hubble space telescope can’t either. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland manages the telescope. An exciting event is about to occur: “the transit of Venus,” [...]

Texas: The May 20, 2012 partial eclipse of the sun

20 miles west of Sundown, Texas on May 20, 2012

It was a typical Texas sunset except that most of the Sun was missing. The location of the missing piece of the Sun was not a mystery — it was behind the Moon. Sunday night’s partial eclipse of the Sun by the Moon turned into one of the best photographed astronomical events in history. Gallery [...]

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field in 3D

NASA’s Alien Anomalies caught on film

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