A Hale-Bopp Holiday
Seen from the Pik Terskol Observatory in the northern Caucasus mountains, comet Hale-Bopp and the bright stars of the constellation Perseus hang above the snowy, moon-lit landscape. Although it reminds Northern Hemisphere dwellers of an idyllic ...
30 Doradus Across the Spectrum
30 Doradus is lit up like a Christmas tree. Shining in light across the electromagnetic spectrum, 30 Doradus glows because of all the energetic processes that go on there. A distinctive region visible in a Milky Way satellite galaxy called the ...
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 ...
David N. Schramm 1945-1997
David N. Schramm effectively combined the very big with the very small. Among his many scientific achievements, Schramm and collaborators successfully used Big Bang cosmology to predict that only three families of elementary particles exist in ...
A Winter Solstice
Today is the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. The yearly cycle of Seasons on planet Earth once again finds the Sun at its lowest point in the Northern Sky. The Sun's own 11 year cycle of activity is ...
Apollo 16: Exploring Plum Crater
Apollo 16 spent three days on Earth's Moon in April 1972. The fifth lunar landing mission out of six, Apollo 16 was famous for deploying and using an ultraviolet telescope as the first lunar observatory, and for collecting rocks and data on the ...
NGC 6826: The Blinking Eye
The colorful planetary nebula phase of a sun-like star's life is brief. Almost in the "blink of an eye" - cosmically speaking - the star's outer layers are cast off, forming an expanding emission nebula. This nebula lasts perhaps 10 thousand ...
Gamma-Ray Burster
Gamma-ray bursts seem to be the most powerful explosions in the Universe. Yet their sources continue to elude researchers who stand in awe and frustration at the bursts' transient, enigmatic behavior. The blinking gif above illustrates the latest ...
Stonehenge: Ancient Monument to the Sun
Stonehenge consists of large carved stones assembled about 4000 years ago. Long before modern England was established, ancient inhabitants somehow moved 25 ton rocks nearly 20 miles to complete it. From similar constructs of the era, people ...
Night Lightning on Jupiter
Why is there lightning on Jupiter? Lightning is a sudden rush of electrically charged particles from one location to another. To create lightning, charges must first separate inside a cloud. On Earth, drafts of colliding ice and water droplets ...
