Summer at the South Pole
The December solstice brings the beginning of Winter to Earth's Northern Hemisphere and Summer time to the South! This view of Earth's Southern Hemisphere near the beginning of Summer was created using images from the Galileo spacecraft taken ...
Simulated Supergiant Star
Looking for that perfect holiday gift for an astronomer? Consider this "star in a box". Of course, the box is actually a computational box consisting of a three dimensional grid of points, and the star is a virtual one whose physical properties ...
Solstice And Season's Eclipse
Today the Sun reaches its southernmost point in planet Earth's sky at 13:37 UT. This celestial event is known as a solstice, marking the beginning of Summer in the Southern Hemisphere and Winter in the North. But this year, the solstice will be ...
Sgr A*: Fast Stars Near the Galactic...
Why are these stars moving so fast? Shown above is a time-lapse movie in infrared light detailing how stars in the central light-year of our Galaxy have moved over the past eight years. The yellow mark at the image center represents the ...
A Close-Up of Aurora on Jupiter
Jupiter has aurorae. Like Earth, the magnetic field of the gas giant funnels charged particles released from the Sun onto the poles. As these particles strike the atmosphere, electrons are temporarily knocked away from existing gas molecules. ...
Oceans Under Jupiter's Moon Ganymede?
The search for extraterrestrial life came back into our own Solar System last week with the announcement that there may be liquid oceans under the surface of Jupiter's moon Ganymede. Ganymede now joins Callisto and Europa as moons of Jupiter ...
M2-9: Wings of a Butterfly Nebula
Are stars better appreciated for their art after they die? Actually, stars usually create their most artistic displays as they die. In the case of low-mass stars like our Sun and M2-9 pictured above, the stars transform themselves from normal ...
Degas Ray Crater on Mercury
Like the Earth's Moon, Mercury is scarred with craters testifying to an intense bombardment during the early history of the Solar System. In 1974, the Mariner 10 spacecraft surveyed this innermost planet up close, producing the only detailed ...
IC443's Neutron Star
Using x-ray data from the orbiting Chandra Observatory along with radio data from the Very Large Array, a team of researchers has discovered evidence for a new example of one of the most bizarre objects known to modern astrophysics -- a neutron ...
International Space Station Trail
Still under construction, the International Space Station is becoming one of the brightest, fastest moving "stars" in the heavens. Despite illuminated clouds and bright light from a nearly full moon (lower left), this 5 minute time exposure ...
