[FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, CLICK ON IMAGE, Credit & Copyright: Martin Pugh] While most spiral galaxies, including our own Milky Way, have two or more spiral arms, NGC 4725 has only one. In this sharp color composite image, the solo spira mirabilis seems to wind from a prominent ring of bluish, newborn star clusters and red […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Babak Tafreshi (TWAN)] In the coming days, Venus shines near the western horizon at sunset. To find Earth’s sister planet in twilight skies just look for the brilliant evening star. Tonight very close to the Pleiades star cluster, Venus dominates this springtime night skyscape taken only a few days […]
JERUSALEM, Israel — A mystic Israeli rabbi from southern Israel has called on all Jews to repent and pray with the approach of the third blood moon of a tetrad cycle, to appear in the skies during Passover and Good Friday. The website Breaking Israel News reports that Rabbi Amram Vankin predicted years ago that […]
LONGYEARBYEN, Norway, March 20, 2015 – I’ve been interested in astronomy ever since I was a kid. Late last year I left my job as an AFP news photographer to pursue a documentary project – as well as the night sky and astronomy photography that I love. I’ll shoot any kind of event like this, […]
Early on a Saturday morning, about 60 planetary malcontents gathered in a narrow auditorium on the campus of George Washington University. They’d come to hear about a plan to build a self-sustaining colony in space, and they hoped to be among its first settlers, leaving the rest of us to live and die on Earth. […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, NASA, Bill Ingalls] Thursday, March 12, shortly after local sunrise over central Asia, this Soyuz spacecraft floated over a sea of golden clouds during its descent by parachute through planet Earth’s dense atmosphere. On board were Expedition 42 commander Barry Wilmore of NASA and Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, HiRISE, MRO, LPL (U. Arizona), NASA] It was late in the northern martian spring when the HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spied this local denizen. Tracking across the flat, dust-covered Amazonis Planitia in 2012, the core of this whirling dust devil is about 140 meters in diameter. […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, NASA, ESA, Hubble] The Coma Cluster of Galaxies pictured above is one of the densest clusters known – it contains thousands of galaxies. Each of these galaxies houses billions of stars – just as our own Milky Way Galaxy does. Although nearby when compared to most other clusters, light […]
[CLICK IN IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Kevin Bourque] Venus, named for the Roman goddess of love, and Mars, the war god’s namesake, came together by moonlight in this lovely skyview, recorded on Feb. 20 from Charleston, South Carolina, USA, planet Earth. Made in twilight with a digital camera, the three second time exposure also records […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Voyager 2, NASA] Two hours before [its] closest approach to Neptune in 1989, the Voyager 2 robot spacecraft snapped this picture. Clearly visible for the first time were long light-colored cirrus-type clouds floating high in Neptune’s atmosphere. Shadows of these clouds can even be seen on lower cloud decks. […]