Carina Nebula Panorama from Hubble

2009-05-24

In one of the brightest parts of Milky Way lies a nebula where some of the oddest things occur. NGC 3372, known as the Great Nebula in Carina, is home to massive stars and changing nebulas. Eta Carinae, the most energetic star in the nebula, was ...

Apollo 12 and Surveyor 3 Stereo View

2009-05-23

Put on your red/blue glasses and gaze into this dramatic stereo view from the surface of the Moon. The 3D scene features Apollo 12 astronaut Pete Conrad visiting the Surveyor 3 spacecraft in November of 1969. The image was carefully created from ...

East of Antares

2009-05-22 Yuri Beletsky

st of Antares, dark markings sprawl through crowded star fields toward the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Cataloged in the early 20th century by astronomer E. E. Barnard, the obscuring interstellar dust clouds include B59, B72, B77 and B78, seen ...

IC 4592: A Blue Horsehead

2009-05-21 Rogelio Bernal Andreo

This complex of beautiful, dusty reflection nebulae lies in the constellation Scorpius along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy. Its overall outline suggests a horsehead in profile, though it covers a much larger region than the better known ...

Above Earth, Fixing Hubble

2009-05-20

What is that astronaut doing? Fixing the Hubble Space Telescope. During the fourth servicing mission to upgrade and fix Hubble, astronaut Michael Good can be seen attached to the shuttle's robotic arm, working in an open panel of Hubble. Far ...

Sagittarius and the Central Milky Way

2009-05-19 Robert Gendler

What does the center of our Milky Way Galaxy look like? In visible light, no one knows! It is not possible to see the Galactic center in light our eyes are sensitive to because the thick dust in the plane of our Galaxy obscures it. If one looks ...

Moon Rays Over Thurso Castle

2009-05-18 Stewart Watt

What's happening over that castle? While waiting for the Moon to rise last month in Thurso, Scotland, amateur astrophotographer Stewart Watt took a three minute exposure of the background stars. The above image was the surprising result. Patchy ...

Mimas: Small Moon with a Big Crater

2009-05-17

Whatever hit Mimas nearly destroyed it. What remains is one of the largest impact craters on one of Saturn's smallest moons. The crater, named Herschel after the 1789 discoverer of Mimas, Sir William Herschel, spans about 130 kilometers and is ...

Atlantis and Hubble Side by Side

2009-05-16 Thierry Legault

On Wednesday, May 13, two, tiny, fast moving spots crossed an otherwise featureless solar disk. Not sunspots though, the dark blemishes were silhouettes of the shuttle orbiter Atlantis and the Hubble Space Telescope side by side. To record this ...

M97: The Owl Nebula

2009-05-15 Keith Quattrocchi

The Owl Nebula is perched in the sky about 2,600 light-years away toward the bottom of the Big Dipper's bowl. Also cataloged as M97, the 97th object in Messier's well-known list, its round shape along with the placement of two large, dark "eyes" ...