Looking down on the Perseid meteor shower from space

Looking down on the Perseid meteor shower from space

CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION / Ron Garan, ISS Expedition 28 Crew, NASA [People on] planet Earth typically watch meteor showers by looking up. But this remarkable view, captured on August 13, 2011 by astronaut Ron Garan, caught a Perseid meteor by looking down. From Garan’s perspective onboard the International Space Station orbiting at […]

Wanted: Reusable spaceplane to launch satellites

Wanted: Reusable spaceplane to launch satellites

So DARPA wants a reusable spaceplane. I mean, who doesn’t? For decades, space experts have tried to design quick-turnover, reusable launch systems. So far, however, no one has made one that works. “There really isn’t any kind of vehicle today that does exactly what they’re asking people to do,” Micah Walter-Range, director of research and […]

Moon over Saturn

Moon over Saturn

[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Carlos Di Nallo] What happened to half of Saturn? Nothing other than Earth’s Moon getting in the way. As pictured above on the far right, Saturn is partly eclipsed by a dark edge of a Moon itself only partly illuminated by the Sun. This year the orbits of the […]

NASA: Astronomers think every star in Milky Way ‘has at least one planet’

NASA: Astronomers think every star in Milky Way ‘has at least one planet’

Cambridge, Mass – NASA predicts that 100 million worlds in our own Milky Way galaxy may host alien life, and space program scientists estimate that humans will be able to find life within two decades. Speaking at NASA’s Washington headquarters on Monday, the space agency outlined a plan to search for alien life using current […]

The Hercules cluster offers clues about galaxy interactions

The Hercules cluster offers clues about galaxy interactions

[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Image Credit & Copyright: Ken Crawford These are galaxies of the Hercules Cluster, an archipelago of island universes a mere 500 million light-years away. Also known as Abell 2151, this cluster is loaded with gas and dust rich, star-forming spiral galaxies but has relatively few elliptical galaxies, which lack […]

Hubble image add the ultraviolet dimension

Hubble image add the ultraviolet dimension

[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION] NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope … has been snapping photos of deep space, giving us stunning views of stars and galaxies far beyond our reach. This week NASA released the telescope’s most recent composite image: the Hubble Ultra Deep Field 2014. Like the deep field images before it, this latest […]

Dying, nearby dwarf star is 12 time hotter than our sun

Dying, nearby dwarf star is 12 time hotter than our sun

[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Adam Block, Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter, Univ. Arizona] The gorgeous, gaseous shroud of a dying sun-like star, planetary nebula Abell 36 lies a mere 800 light-years away in the constellation of Virgo. Shrugging off its outer layers, the nebula’s central star is contracting and becoming hotter, evolving towards a final […]

Astronauts snag care package, get set to monitor crises below from on high

Astronauts snag care package, get set to monitor crises below from on high

[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION , Steve Swanson, Expedition 39 Crew, NASA] In mid-April, the International Space Station captured the unmanned SpaceX Dragon capsule sent to resupply the orbiting outpost. Pictured above, the station’s Canadarm2 had just grabbed the commercial spaceship. The Dragon capsule was filled with over 5000 lbs (2260 kilos) of supplies […]

Cluster of 10 million stars: Part of Milky Way or its own galaxy?

Cluster of 10 million stars: Part of Milky Way or its own galaxy?

[FOR HIGH RESOLUTION CLICK ON IMAGE,CEDIC Team, Processing – Christoph Kaltseis] Globular star cluster Omega Centauri, also known as NGC 5139, is some 15,000 light-years away. The cluster is packed with about 10 million stars much older than the Sun within a volume about 150 light-years in diameter, the largest and brightest of 200 or […]

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