It’s 27 October 1954. A reserve game between Fiorentina and nearby rivals Pistoiese is under way at the Stadio Artemio Franchi. A crowd of around 10,000 has gathered to watch. Among them is Gigi Boni (second left in the aboave picture) a lifelong Fiorentina fan who in later years would become the co-ordinator of the […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION / Marco Lorenzi] How do clusters of galaxies form and evolve? To help find out, astronomers continue to study the second closest cluster of galaxies to Earth: the Fornax cluster, named for the southern constellation toward which most of its galaxies can be found. Although almost 20 times more […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION / Martin Pugh] AE Aurigae is called the flaming star. The surrounding nebula IC 405 is named the Flaming Star Nebula and the region seems to harbor smoke, but there is no fire. … The bright star AE Aurigae, visible near the nebula center, is so hot it is […]
As the gift-giving season comes to an end, maybe now you’ve got a shiny new telescope to call your own. Congratulations — you’re on your way to discovering many amazing things in the night sky. Be it a long, sleek tube or a compact marvel of computerized wizardry, every new telescope surely has an owner […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION / NASA, JPL-Caltech, MSSS, MAHLI] What’s in this smooth soil on Mars? In late October, NASA’s robotic Curiosity rover stopped near a place dubbed Rocknest as it continues to explore Gale Crater on Mars. Rocknest is the group of stones seen near the top left of the above image […]
[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. … […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION / Wally Pacholka / AstroPics.com, TWAN A starry band of the Milky Way climbs over Yosemite Valley, Sierra Nevada Range, planet Earth. Jupiter is the brightest celestial beacon on the wintry scene, though. Standing nearly opposite the Sun in the constellation Taurus, the wandering planet joins yellowish Aldebaran and […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION] An international team of astronomers has used the Hubble Space Telescope to take a census of some of the universe’s earliest galaxies. The results, reported in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters, confirm that galaxies formed gradually in the early universe and not in a dramatic spurt. […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION] In front of a famous background of stars and galaxies lies some of Earth’s more unusual trees. Known as quiver trees, they are actually succulent aloe plants that can grow to tree-like proportions. … Some of the tallest quiver trees in the park are estimated to be about 300 […]
A Lieutenant Colonel and Press Officer at Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) in 1947 left a testament to the reality of fallen ET in a rare audio recording that was meant to be heard after his death. A portion of it is revealed here publicly for the first time. It is in this taped message […]
