[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Dean Fournier; Inset: ESA/Hubble & NASA] M13 is one of the most prominent and best known globular clusters. Visible with binoculars in the constellation of Hercules, M13 is frequently one of the first objects found by curious sky gazers seeking celestials wonders beyond normal human vision. M13 is a […]
July 15, 2016 The first mission to fly around the moon was Apollo 8 in 1968. … As they successfully went into lunar orbit, astronaut William Anders snapped the famous Earthrise photo that was printed in Life Magazine. As Apollo 8’s three man crew looked down on the earth from 250,000 miles away on Christmas […]
July 6, 2016 [CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, CHART32 Team, Processing – Johannes Schedler] [This telescopic view] features a trio of interacting galaxies almost 90 million light-years away, toward the constellation Virgo. On the right, two, spiky, foreground Milky Way stars echo the trio galaxy hues, a reminder that stars in our own galaxy […]
July 4, 2016 [CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION] NASA’s Juno spacecraft was to fire its main rocket engine late Monday to slow itself down from a speed of 150,000 mph (250,000 kph) and slip into orbit around Jupiter. With Juno on autopilot, the delicately choreographed move comes without any help from ground controllers. The […]
After nearly a five-year journey, Juno enjoys a perspective on Jupiter not often seen, even by spacecraft from Earth that usually swing by closer to Jupiter’s equator. Looking down toward the ruling gas giant from a distance of 10.9 million kilometers, the spacecraft’s JunoCam captured this image with Jupiter’s nightside and orbiting entourage of four […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Laurie Hatch] A Full Moon sets as the Solstice Sun rises in this June 20 dawn skyscape. Captured from a nearby peak in central California, planet Earth, the scene looks across the summit of Mount Hamilton and Lick Observatory domes on a calendar date that marks an astronomical change […]
June 16, 2016 CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, European Southern Observatory, Aniello Grado and Luca Limatola Named for the southern constellation toward which most of its galaxies can be found, the Fornax Cluster is one of the closest clusters of galaxies. About 62 million light-years away, it is almost 20 times more distant than […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) While drifting through the cosmos, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud became sculpted by stellar winds and radiation to assume a recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is embedded in the vast and complex Orion Nebula (M42). A potentially rewarding […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, NASA, Johns Hopkins Univ./APL, Southwest Research Institute] The night side of Pluto spans this shadowy scene. The space-based view with the Sun behind the distant world was captured by New Horizons last July. The spacecraft was at a range of over 21,000 kilometers, about 19 minutes after its closest […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, NASA / GSFC / Arizona State U. / Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Fifty years ago, Surveyor 1 reached the Moon. Launched on May 30, 1966 and landed on June 2, 1966 with the Moon at full phase it became the first U.S. spacecraft to make a soft landing on another […]
