[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Apollo 8, NASA What’s that rising over the edge of the Moon? Earth. About 47 years ago, in December of 1968, the Apollo 8 crew flew from the Earth to the Moon and back again. Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders were launched atop a Saturn V rocket […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, M31 / Robert Gendler] What is the nearest major galaxy to our own Milky Way Galaxy? Andromeda. In fact, our Galaxy is thought to look much like Andromeda. Together these two galaxies dominate the Local Group of galaxies. The diffuse light from Andromeda is caused by the hundreds of […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, NASA, ESA, H. Lee & H. Ford (Johns Hopkins U.)] Many of the brightest blue images are of a single, unusual, beaded, blue, ring-like galaxy which just happens to line-up behind a giant cluster of galaxies. Cluster galaxies here typically appear yellow and — together with the cluster’s dark […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Jared Tennant Dusty debris from periodic Comet Swift-Tuttle was swept up by planet Earth this week. Vaporized by their passage through the dense atmosphere at 59 kilometers per second, the tiny grains produced a stream of Perseid meteors. A bright, colorful Perseid meteor flash was captured during this 20 […]
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Nature abhors both vacuums and robots. The skies are already the domain of birds, who staked their claim millennia ago and have since perfected the skills and traits needed to maneuver through the air. Drones are newcomers to the air, and it turns out some birds don’t like these unmanned interlopers too much. Like this […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Apollo 17 Crew, NASA] On the Moon, it is easy to remember where you parked. In December of 1972, Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent about 75 hours on the Moon in the Taurus-Littrow valley, while colleague Ronald Evans orbited overhead. This sharp image was taken […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIS RESOLUTION, Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI /NASA)] Why does the Sombrero Galaxy look like a hat? Reasons include the Sombrero’s unusually large and extended central bulge of stars, and dark prominent dust lanes that appear in a disk that we see nearly edge-on. Billions of old stars cause the diffuse glow […]
In its final farewell to Pluto, New Horizons … [sent] an image of exotic ice across the dwarf planet’s surface, revealing signs of recent geologic activity — something scientists hoped to find but didn’t expect. ‘We’ve only seen surfaces like this on active worlds like Earth and Mars,’ said mission co-investigator John Spencer of SwRI. […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Yuri Beletsky (Las Campanas Observatory, Carnegie Institution)] A comet has brightened quickly and unexpectedly. Discovered last year, Comet C/2014 Q1 (PanSTARRS) is expected to be visible now for a few days to the unaided eye, just after sunset. The comet rounded the Sun on July 6 and apparently has […]
