Distant Galaxies in Radio Vision
8.02.2001

Radio waves, like visible light, are electromagnetic radiation and radio telescopes can "see" -- their signals translated into radio images of the cosmos. While individually even the largest radio telescopes have very blurry vision compared to their optical counterparts, networks of radio telescopes can combine signals to produce sharper pictures.

Satellites Collide in Low Earth Orbit
18.02.2009

How often do satellites collide? Although minuscule space debris may strike any satellite on occasion, the first known collision between time two full satellites occurred only last week. Even though thousands of satellites have been launched, the low collision rate is caused by the great vastness of space.

A Happy Sky over Los Angeles
12.11.2017

Sometimes, the sky may seem to smile over much of planet Earth. On this day in 2008, visible the world over, was an unusual superposition of our Moon and the planets Venus and Jupiter.

Goldilocks Zones and Stars
31.01.2020

The Goldilocks zone is the habitable zone around a star where it's not too hot and not too cold for liquid water to exist on the surface of orbiting planets. This intriguing infographic...

M51 in 255 Hours
11.08.2023

An intriguing pair of interacting galaxies, M51 is the 51st entry in Charles Messier's famous catalog. Perhaps the original spiral nebula, the large galaxy with whirlpool-like spiral structure seen nearly face-on is also cataloged as NGC 5194. Its spiral arms and dust lanes sweep in front of a companion galaxy (right), NGC 5195.

Across the Universe
28.03.2008

How far can you see? Even the faintest stars visible to the eye are merely hundreds or thousands of light-years distant, all well within our own Milky Way Galaxy. Of course, if you know where to look you can also spot the Andromeda Galaxy as a pale, fuzzy cloud, around 2.5 million light-years away.

Pluto Flyover from New Horizons
31.07.2017

What if you could fly over Pluto -- what might you see? The New Horizons spacecraft did just this in 2015 July as it shot past the distant world at a speed of about 80,000 kilometers per hour.

The Tarantula Nebula
17.11.2018

The Tarantula Nebula, also known as 30 Doradus, is more than a thousand light-years in diameter, a giant star forming region within nearby satellite galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud. About 180 thousand light-years away, it's the largest, most violent star forming region known in the whole Local Group of galaxies.

Perseverance: Seven Minutes to Mars
16.02.2021

How hard is it to land safely on Mars? So hard that many more attempts have failed than succeeded. The next attempt will be on Thursday. The main problem is that the Martian atmosphere is too thick to ignore -- or it will melt your spacecraft.

APOD: 2024 July 23 Б The Crab Nebula from Visible to X Ray
23.07.2024

What powers the Crab Nebula? A city-sized magnetized neutron star spinning around 30 times a second. Known as the Crab Pulsar, it is the bright spot in the center of the gaseous swirl at the nebula's core.