All of Mars
From pole to pole, from east to west, this is all of Mars. The above picture was digitally reconstructed from over 200 million laser altimeter measurements taken by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft currently orbiting Mars. The image strips ...
A Brighter Comet LINEAR
Brighter than ever expected, comet LINEAR -- you know, the one designated C/2001 A2 -- is a sight to see in southern skies. This comet LINEAR first brightened impressively in late March as its active nucleus began to fragment, prompting some ...
NGC 3132: The Eight Burst Nebula
It's the dim star, not the bright one, near the center of NGC 3132 that created this odd but beautiful planetary nebula. Nicknamed the Eight-Burst Nebula and the Southern Ring Nebula, the glowing gas originated in the outer layers of a star like ...
The Cygnus Loop
The shockwave from a 20,000 year-old supernova explosion in the constellation of Cygnus is still expanding into interstellar space. The collision of this fast moving wall of gas with a stationary cloud has heated it causing it to glow in visible ...
Eclipse in African Skies
Yesterday, for a brief few minutes, a total eclipse of the Sun brought darkness to southern Africa's daytime skies. During this first total solar eclipse of the third millennium webcast sites were swamped, but sun-watchers along the eclipse path ...
Diamond Ring in the Sun
Today, earthbound skygazers can celebrate a solstice, a new Moon, the closest approach of planet Mars since 1988 ... oh yes, and a total eclipse of the Sun, the first total solar eclipse of the third millennium. Of course for some, today's most ...
Total Eclipse of the Active Sun
A total eclipse of the Sun is that special geocentric celestial event where the Moon passes exactly in front of the solar disk. During a fleeting few minutes of totality, fortunate earthdwellers located within the path of the Moon's dark shadow ...
Crescent Neptune and Triton
Gliding silently through the outer Solar System, the Voyager 2 spacecraft camera captured Neptune and Triton together in crescent phase in 1989. The above picture of the gas giant planet and its cloudy moon was taken from behind just after ...
NGC 4755: A Jewel Box of Stars
The great variety of star colors in this open cluster underlies its name: The Jewel Box. One of the bright central stars is a red supergiant, in contrast to the many blue stars that surround it. The cluster, also known as Kappa Crucis contains ...
Colorful Clouds Of Carina
Tumultuous clouds of the Carina Nebula, 8000 light-years away, glow in planet Earth's southern sky. Striking and detailed, this close-up of a portion of the famous nebula is a combination of exposures through six different filters taken with the ...
