Astronomy Picture of the Day

2001-05-01 DASI

On the frozen ice near the bottom of our world, increasingly sophisticated instruments listen for a more precise echo of how our universe started. Sunday, independent collaborations behind three such instruments announced evidence that overtones ...

2001-04-30

rlier this month the crew of the US Space Shuttle Endeavor took in this view as they approached the developing International Space Station (ISS). The Endeavor and ISS crew installed Italy's Raffaello, a Multi-Purpose Logistics Module and ...

2001-04-29 The AMANDA Collaboration

Scientists are melting holes in the bottom of the world. In fact, several holes have been melted near the South Pole, and they are now being used as astronomical observatories. Astronomers with the Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array ...

2001-04-27

A tantalizing assortment of island universes is assembled here. From top left to bottom right are the lovely but distant galaxies M61, NGC 4449, NGC 4725, NGC 5068, NGC 5247, and NGC 5775/5774. Most are spiral galaxies more or less like our own ...

2001-04-26

Difficult to see in small telescopes, the Horsehead nebula was recently selected by internet voters as a target for the Hubble Space Telescope. Above (top) is Hubble's detailed view of the dark cosmic dust cloud, released to celebrate the 11th ...

2001-04-25 U. Chicago

Some astronomers don't like stars. Bright star fluctuations can indicate how the Earth's atmosphere is changing, but many times no bright star exists in the direction where atmospheric information is needed. So rather than try to eradicate ...

2001-04-24 RSAA, ANU

The nebula surrounding bright star S Mon is filled with dark dust and glowing gas. The strange shapes that haunt this star forming region originate from fine interstellar dust reacting in complex ways to the energetic light and hot gas being ...

2001-04-23

Last Thursday, Space Shuttle Endeavor lifted off on course for the latest round of building the International Space Station (ISS) in orbit around Earth. One of the highlights of the 11-day mission promises to be the installation of Canadarm2, a ...

2001-04-22

Stars come in bunches. Of the over 200 globular star clusters that orbit the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, 47 Tucanae is the second brightest globular cluster (behind Omega Centauri). Known to some affectionately as 47 Tuc or NGC 104, it is ...

2001-04-21

This weekend's stereo picture finds Apollo 12 astronaut Pete Conrad standing on the lunar surface near the southern rim of Surveyor Crater in November of 1969. With red/blue glasses you can gaze beyond the spacesuited Conrad across the ...