Muon Wobble Possible Door to...
How fast do fundamental particles wobble? A surprising answer to this seemingly inconsequential question is coming out of Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, USA and may not only indicate that the Standard Model of Particle Physics is ...
Rays from an Unexpected Aurora
This aurora was a bit of a surprise. For starters, last Friday morning, no intense auroral activity was expected at all. Possibly more surprising, however, the aurora appeared to show an usual structure of green rays from some locations. In ...
Spiral Galaxy NGC 2997 from VLT
NGC 2997 is a grand design spiral galaxy. Its small nucleus and sprawling spiral arms give it a type Sc designation. NGC 2997, pictured above, is speeding away from us at about 1100 kilometers per second, which would place it at about 55 ...
The Galactic Center - A Radio Mystery
Tuning in to the center of our Milky Way galaxy, radio astronomers explore a complex, mysterious place. A premier high resolution view, this startlingly beautiful picture covers a 4x4 degree region around the galactic center. It was constructed ...
Comet 57P Falls to Pieces
Comet 57P has fallen to pieces, at least 19 of them. Orbiting the Sun every 6 years or so this faint comet - also christened Comet 57P/du Toit-Neujmin-Delporte for its three 1941 co-discoverers - is simply 57th on the list of comets known to be ...
Sunspots and Solar Active Regions
July was a good month for sunspots ... really big sunspots. In fact, the full disk and inset pictures above show three large groups of spots, photographed only a few days ago on July 28. Together the sunspots span a region about thirty times the ...
Henize 3-401: An Elongated Planetary...
How do dying stars eject their outer layers? Stars that create elegant planetary nebulas like Henize 3-401, pictured above, are not unusual, causing speculation that, one day, our own Sun may look like this. Henize 3-401 is one of the most ...
A Star Cluster in Motion
Star clusters are a swarm of complex motions. The stars that compose globular clusters and many open clusters all orbit the cluster center, occasionally interacting, gravitationally, with a close-passing star. The orbits of stars around the ...
A Setting Sun Trail
The Sun appears to move on the sky because the Earth rotates. The extreme brightness of the Sun, however, makes it difficult to capture a sun-trail -- the path the Sun traces on the sky. To capture the above picture, a very dark filter covered ...
An Anomalous SETI Signal
No one knows for sure what caused this signal. There is a slight possibility that it just might originate from an extraterrestrial intelligence. The bright colors on the blue background indicate that an anomalous signal was received here on ...
