Watch Jupiter Rotate
12.03.2007

What would it be like to coast by Jupiter and watch it rotate? This was just the experience of the New Horizons spacecraft as it approached and flew by Jupiter earlier this year. Clicking on the image will bring up a movie of what the robotic spacecraft saw.

NGC 7293: The Helix Nebula
8.01.2011

A mere seven hundred light years from Earth, in the constellation Aquarius, a sun-like star is dying. Its last few thousand years have produced the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293), a well studied and nearby example of a Planetary Nebula, typical of this final phase of stellar evolution.

Black Sun and Inverted Starfield
15.10.2012

Does this strange dark ball look somehow familiar? If so, that might be because it is our Sun. In the above image, a detailed solar view was captured originally in a very specific color of red light, then rendered in black and white, and then color inverted.

The Fornax Cluster of Galaxies
11.01.2013

How do clusters of galaxies form and evolve? To help find out, astronomers continue to study the second closest cluster of galaxies to Earth: the Fornax cluster, named for the southern constellation toward which most of its galaxies can be found.

Blue Sun Bursting
20.05.2013

Our Sun is not a giant blueberry. Our Sun can be made to appear similar to the diminutive fruit, however, by imaging it in a specific color of extreme violet light called CaK that is emitted by the very slight abundance of ionized Calcium in the Sun's atmosphere, and then false color-inverting the image.

Space Station Robot Forgets Key Again
1.04.2014

Space station robot AFJ013 has forgotten her space lock key again. The frustrated robot was reduced to tapping on a space station window and asking for a human to let her back in -- for the third time this week.

Laniakea: Our Home Supercluster of Galaxies
10.09.2014

It is not only one of the largest structures known -- it is our home. The just-identified Laniakea Supercluster of galaxies contains thousands of galaxies that includes our Milky Way Galaxy, the Local Group of galaxies, and the entire nearby Virgo Cluster of Galaxies.

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar 1910-1995
1.09.1995

On August 21, 1995 one of the greatest astrophysicists of modern times passed away. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was a creative, prolific genius whose ability to combine mathematical precision with physical insight changed humanity's view of stellar physics.

Moon Shadow Moves Over Africa
9.12.2002

When the Moon's shadow reached out and touched the Earth last week, the result was a solar eclipse. Such an eclipse is total only for observers located along a narrow path corresponding to the ground track of the shadow's dark central portion or umbra.

Barnacle Bill And Sojourner
8.07.1997

Deployed on a pop-up mast to its full height, the Sagan Memorial Station's IMP camera now stands about 5 feet above the surface of Ares Vallis - on Mars. This is one of the first images from its new vantage point, showing the rover Sojourner near a rock named Barnacle Bill.