Wednesday, February 1st, 2012
Time-lapse footage by Douglas Koke taken at the Very Large Array in Socorro, New Mexico; one of the largest Radio Astronomy Observatories in the world.
The VLA really is a legitimately amazing thing to see in person. If you’ve ever considered making a visit, you should.
It’s an awe-inspiring feat of human engineering, and the surroundings are [...]
Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
NASA’s Cassini mission has been orbiting Saturn for five Earth years as of June 30, 2009. That’s about one sixth of a Saturnian year, enough time for the spacecraft to have observed seasonal changes in the planet, its moons and sunlight’s angle on the dramatic rings.
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the [...]
This mosaic combines 30 images—10 each of red, green and blue light—taken over the course of approximately two hours as Cassini panned its wide-angle camera across the entire planet and ring system on July 23, 2008, from a southerly elevation of 6 degrees.
Six moons complete this constructed panorama: Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles, across), Janus (179 kilometers, or 111 miles, across), Mimas (396 kilometers, or 246 miles, across), Pandora (81 kilometers, or 50 miles, across), Epimetheus (113 kilometers, or 70 miles, across) and Enceladus (504 kilometers, or 313 miles, across).
NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured these images at a distance of approximately 1.1 million kilometers (690,000 miles) from Saturn and at a sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 20 degrees. Image scale is 70 kilometers (43.6 miles) per pixel. Credit
NASA/JPL/Space Science InstituteMore photos ›
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is two and a half times as massive as all of the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant, along with Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Together, these four planets are sometimes [...]
This true color mosaic of Jupiter was constructed from images taken by the narrow angle camera onboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft starting at 5:31 Universal time on December 29, 2000, as the spacecraft neared Jupiter during its flyby of the giant planet. It is the most detailed global color portrait of Jupiter ever produced; the smallest visible features are ~ 60 km (37 miles) across. Credit
CICLOPS / University of Arizona.More photos ›
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009
The last post of this gallery that will include all Messier objects, 110.
Charles Messier (June 26, 1730 – April 12, 1817) was a French astronomer most notable for publishing an astronomical catalogue consisting of deep sky objects such as nebulae and star clusters that came to be known as the 103 “Messier objects”. The purpose [...]
Messier 100 (also known as NGC 4321) is a spiral galaxy about 52.5 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices. It was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1781. It is one of the brightest galaxies in the Virgo cluster. Five supernovae have been identified in M100: SN 1901B, SN 1914A, SN 1959E, SN 1979C and SN 2006X. M100 also has a satellite galaxy named NGC 4323. Credit
N.A.Sharp/NOAO/AURA/NSFMore photos ›
The 9th post of this gallery that will include all Messier objects, 110.
This post contains popular space objects like Owl Nebula (M97) and the great Coma Pinwheel Galaxy (M99) among many spiral galaxies.
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If you have missed the previous objects please also visit the other The [...]
Messier 89 (M89 for short, also known as NGC 4552) is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo. It was discovered by Charles Messier on March 18, 1781. M89 is a member of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies. Credit
FriendlystarMore photos ›
The 8th post of this gallery (distributed in 10 posts) that will include all Messier objects, 110.
This post contains popular space objects like Bode’s Galaxy (M81), Cigar Galaxy (M82) – how it was obtained , Southern Pinwheel Galaxy (M83) and the great Radio galaxy Virgo A (M87) – read its caption.
Enjoy The Big Foto complete [...]
The nebula Messier 78 (also known as M 78 or NGC 2068) is a reflection nebula in the constellation Orion. It was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1780 and included by Charles Messier in his catalog of comet-like objects that same year.
M78 is the brightest diffuse reflection nebula of a group of nebulae that include NGC 2064, NGC 2067 and NGC 2071. This group belongs to the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex and is about 1,600 light years distant from Earth. M78 is easily found in small telescopes as a hazy patch and involves two stars of 10th magnitude. These two stars, HD 38563A and HD 38563B, are responsible for making the cloud of dust in M78 visible by reflecting their light. Credit
T. A. Rector/University of Alaska Anchorage, H. Schweiker/WIYN and NOAO/AURA/NSFMore photos ›
Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun. Its diameter is 40% smaller than Earth and 40% larger than the Moon. It is even smaller than Jupiter’s moon Ganymede and Saturn’s moon Titan.
In Roman mythology Mercury is the god of commerce, travel and thievery, the Roman counterpart of the Greek god Hermes, the messenger of [...]
Mercury Shows Its True Colors to MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemitry, and Ranging) . 30 January 2008. Credit
NASA/JHUAPLMore photos ›
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