A Lunar Eclipse Over Time
During last week's lunar eclipse, our Moon appeared to disappear. As the Earth moved between the Moon and the Sun, the Earth's shadow fell on the moon, making it quite dark. In the above photograph, the Earth's rotation caused the Moon and ...
A Lunar Eclipse in Three Exposures
Our Moon turned red last week. The reason was that during the night of January 20, a total lunar eclipse occurred. The above digitally superimposed photographs captured the Moon three times during this lunar eclipse, once just as the Moon ...
The Eskimo Nebula from the Newly...
In 1787, astronomer William Herschel discovered the Eskimo Nebula. From the ground, NGC 2392 resembles a person's head surrounded by a parka hood. In 2000, just after being fixed, the Hubble Space Telescope imaged the Eskimo Nebula. From ...
A Message From Earth
What are these Earthlings trying to tell us? The above message was broadcast from Earth towards the globular star cluster M13 in 1974. During the dedication of the Arecibo Observatory - still the largest radio telescope in the world - a string ...
Magnetar In The Sky
Indicated on this infrared image of the galactic center region is the position of SGR 1900+14 - the strongest known magnet in the galaxy. SGR 1900+14 is believed to be a city-sized, spinning, super-magnetic neutron star, or Magnetar. How strong ...
X For Andromeda
A big beautiful spiral galaxy 2 million light-years away, Andromeda (M31) has long been touted as an analog to the Milky Way, a distant mirror of our own galaxy. The popular 1960s British sci-fi series, A For Andromeda, even postulated that it ...
X-Rays From The Galactic Center
ring quasars and active galaxies in the distant universe, astronomers have come to believe that most galaxies have massive black holes at their centers. Swirling stars and a strong, variable radio source offer convincing evidence that even our ...
A Big Black Hole Floats By
A black hole glides silently through space. Is there any way to know it's there? Until last week, all objects that might be black holes in our Galaxy were part of binary star systems. There, gas from the companion star was hypothesized to ...
NGC 7635: The Bubble Nebula
What created this huge space bubble? A massive star that is not only bright and blue, but also emitting a fast stellar wind of ionized gas. The Bubble Nebula is actually the smallest of three bubbles surrounding massive star BD+602522, and part ...
V4641 Sgr: The Closest Black Hole...
An object many astronomers believe is a black hole has been found only 1500 light-years from Earth, making it the closest black hole candidate. Although dramatic explosions emanate from the object, it is far enough away so that we are in no ...
