IP Pegasi: Spiral Star
Spiral arms aren't just for galaxies. A hot disk of gas surrounding a compact white dwarf star in the constellation of Pegasus has recently been revealed to be imprinted with this dramatic pattern. The white dwarf is part of the interacting ...
A Universe in a Box
Is this our universe? Possibly. It is one computerized guess of how gas in the universe was distributed billions of years ago, at redshift 3, when the universe was only a quarter of its present age. Using supercomputers at the National Center ...
Bright Meteor, Dark Sky
Has Orion the Hunter acquired a new weapon? If you turn your head sideways (counterclockwise) you might notice the familiar constellation of Orion, particularly the three consecutive bright stars that make up Orion's belt. But in addition to ...
Super Typhoon Winnie
Super Typhoon Winnie raged through parts of the Eastern Hemisphere last week. Swirling in the Pacific Ocean with winds in excess of 160 miler per hour, Winnie became one of the stronger storm systems in modern times: a Category 5 Hurricane. The ...
Io: The Prometheus Plume
Two sulfurous eruptions are visible on Jupiter's volcanic moon Io in this color composite Galileo image. On the left, over Io's limb, a new bluish plume rises about 86 miles above the surface of a volcanic caldera known as Pillan Patera. In the ...
Astro 1 In Orbit
In December of 1990, the Space Shuttle Columbia carried an array of astronomical telescopes high above the Earth's obscuring atmosphere to observe the Universe at ultraviolet and x-ray wavelengths. The telescopes, known by the acronyms UIT, HUT, ...
Pictured: An Ancient Martian?
Alien! Alien? Is this what an ancient Martian looked like? The tube-like form on the above highly magnified image is now believed by many to be a fossil of a simple Martian organism that lived over 3.6 billion years ago. If this extraordinary ...
Impact On Europa
This bull's-eye pattern marks the impact of a mountain-sized comet or asteroid on the icy surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. Recorded by the Galileo spacecraft in April of this year, the composite false color image clearly reveals the telltale ...
Mars Rocks, Sojourner Rolls
This sharp color image featuring Mars rock Yogi and the rolling Sojourner robot shows off Yogi's startling two-toned surface. Yogi appears to be leaning into the prevailing winds causing some to suggest that its color contrast may be caused by ...
Resolving Mira
Most stars appear only as points of light. Recently, Betelgeuse became the second star, after our Sun, to have it surface resolved. Now add Mira to the list. Mira A is a red giant star undergoing dramatic pulsations, causing it to become more ...
