Alan B. Shepard Jr. 1923-1998

1998-07-24

On another Friday (May 5, 1961), at the dawn of the space age, NASA controllers "lit the candle" and sent Alan B. Shepard Jr. arcing into space atop a Redstone rocket. The picture shows the pressure-suited Shepard before the launch in his cramped ...

X-Ray Pulsar

1998-07-23

This dramatic artist's vision shows a city-sized neutron star centered in a disk of hot plasma drawn from its enfeebled red companion star. Ravenously accreting material from the disk, the neutron star spins faster and faster emitting powerful ...

Ciemne kratery na Ganymedzie

1998-07-22

Ganymede has craters within craters within craters. The old surface of the largest moon in the Solar System shows its age by the large amount of these impact features. The above picture released last week shows two old craters with dark floors ...

Bliska spirala M33

1998-07-21 D. Malin

M33 is a prominent nearby spiral galaxy. Nicknamed the Triangulum, M33 is one of the larger members of the Local Group of Galaxies. Two massive spiral galaxies dominate the Local Group: M31 and our Milky Way Galaxy. M33 is the only other ...

La Nina Watch

1998-07-20

Goodbye El Ni?o. Hello La Ni?a? Scientists are watching to see if an evolving pool of relatively cool water in the mid-Pacific Ocean will develop into a full "La Ni?a". Over the past several months, the water temperature in the Equatorial ...

Gromada kulista M3

1998-07-19 CfA

This huge ball of stars predates our Sun. Long before mankind evolved, before dinosaurs roamed, and even before our Earth existed, ancient globs of stars condensed and orbited a young Milky Way Galaxy. Of the 250 or so globular clusters that ...

Rockets i Robert Goddard

1998-07-18

Robert H. Goddard, one of the founding fathers of modern rocketry, was born in Worcester Massachusetts in 1882. As a 16 year old, Goddard read H.G. Wells' science fiction classic "War Of The Worlds" and dreamed of spaceflight. By 1926 he had ...

Hyakutake: Stars Through A Comet's Tail

1998-07-17 R. Scott

Comets are cosmic icebergs. They follow very elongated orbits which carry them from the frozen, remote outer reaches of the Solar System to close encounters with the Sun. Heated by sunlight, they slough off layers of material as gas and dust, ...

X-Ray Triple Jet

1998-07-16

Recorded on July 7, this animation using X-ray images of the Sun shows an amazing event - three nearly simultaneous jets connected with solar active regions. The two frames were taken several hours apart by the Soft X-ray Telescope on board the ...

Galaktyka widmo NGC 2915

1998-07-15

How do you find a nearly invisible galaxy? Pictured above is the blue compact dwarf (BCD) galaxy NGC 2915. In visible light, shown above in yellow, this galaxy appears to be a normal dwarf galaxy, as indicated by the yellow smudge in the image ...