As they soar above Planet Earth on the International Space Station, astronauts regularly point their cameras toward home, and their images are stored on a massive archive of astronaut photos. Science educator James Drake took 600 such images and stitched them together into a movie, which you can see below.
The movie starts in the Pacific Ocean and flies over … Read the rest of this article
Idle home computers are being sought to help search through tons of astronomical data. The Skynet project involves using the spare processing capacity of computers as a giant, distributed supercomputer. PCs joining Skynet will scour the data for sources of radiation that reveal stars, galaxies along with other cosmic structures.
People who process the most data could win a visit … Read the rest of this article
A new video from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft takes us on a flyover journey above the surface of the giant asteroid Vesta.
This image obtained by the framing camera on NASA’s Dawn spacecraft shows the south pole of the giant asteroid Vesta. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
The data obtained by Dawn’s framing camera, used to produce the visualizations, will help scientists determine … Read the rest of this article
The existence of a world with a double sunset, as portrayed in the film Star Wars more than 30 years ago, is now scientific fact. NASA’s Kepler mission has made the first unambiguous detection of a circumbinary planet — a planet orbiting two stars — 200 light-years from Earth.
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An artist’s concept of Kepler-16b, the first planet known to definitively …
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has reached a major milestone in its development. The mirrors that will fly aboard the telescope have completed the coating process at Quantum Coating Inc. in Moorestown, N.J.
The telescope’s mirrors have been coated with a microscopically thin layer of gold, selected for its ability to properly reflect infrared light from the mirrors into the … Read the rest of this article
Dr. Paula Szkody (University of Washington) has requested the help of AAVSO observers in monitoring the WZ Sge-type cataclysmic variable V455 And in support of Hubble Space Telescope ultraviolet spectroscopic observations scheduled for 11:31:18-15:07:25 2011 September 25 UT (the night of Saturday, … Read the rest of this article
Event: Nova in Scorpius
Nova Sco 2011 No. 2 = PNV J16364440-4132340 = PNV J16364300-4132460
Discovered Independently by:
– John Seach (Chatsworth Island, NSW, Australia)
– Yuji Nakamura (Kameyama, Mie, Japan)
Discovery Date: Read the rest of this article
– Seach: 2011 Sep. 06.37 UT (JD 2455810.87)
– …
Take a look at some of the winning photos with two of the judges from the Royal Observatory Greenwich, astronomy programmes manager Olivia Johnson and public astronomer Marek Kukula.
From giant oval storms on the surface of Jupiter to colourful wispy remnants from a supernova explosion and the dazzling green curtain of the Northern Lights – nearly 800 images were … Read the rest of this article
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) captured the sharpest images ever taken from space of the Apollo 12, 14 and 17 landing sites. Images show the twists and turns of the paths made when the astronauts explored the lunar surface.
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Two LRO images of the Apollo 17 landing site. The top image was released on Sep. 6, 2011; the bottom image |
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The Sun Now (Visible light)
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The Sun Now (H-Alpha light)
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Aurora Oval
(Northern Hemisphere) |
Aurora Oval
(Southern Hemisphere) |
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