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| Hubble's Detailed Look at Stellar Jets |
| Dec 6, 2005 - Astronomers from Rice University have created an amazing movie of jets of plasma blasting out of a newborn star. This series of images taken five years apart by the Hubble Space Telescope allow astronomers to track how material flows out of the star. Faster moving particles crash into slower moving material, and the resulting traffic jams create the spectacular shapes in space. (Full Story) |
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| Zeiss Optics in Hubble's Successor |
| Dec 6, 2005 - Germany's Carl Zeiss Optronics has signed a contract to supply the optical system for two instruments to be installed on the James Webb Space Telescope; the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. Due for launch in 2013 on board an Ariane rocket, the telescope will be stationed at a stable position in space called the Lagrangian point L2. JWST will be cooled down to -230 degrees Celsius so that it's highly sensitive infrared instruments can peer through clouds of gas and dust. (Full Story) |
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| Detailed Cloud Features on Saturn |
| Dec 6, 2005 - This image of Saturn shows the giant planet's southwest edge, and a hint of thread-like cloud features. The edge of the planet looks smooth, but right at the terminator (the edge between light and dark), it's possible to see these cloud features. The long shadows make the height differences in the clouds visible. Cassini took this image on October 30, 2005 when the spacecraft was 401,000 kilometers (249,000 miles) from Saturn. (Full Story) |
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| Newly found galaxy collisions in the nearby universe. Image credit: NOAO. Click to enlarge |
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| Galaxies Colliding All Around Us |
| Dec 6, 2005 - The history of our nearby Universe has been dominated by galactic collisions. More than half of the nearby galaxies have collided other galaxies in the last 2 billion year according to data from two comprehensive sky surveys. By processing 126 galaxies in the NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey and the Multiwavelength Survey by Yale/Chile, researchers have found that 53% of galaxies have evidence of long tails of stars trailing away from them; the result of a recent galactic collision. (Full Story) |
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| Perspective view showing the dark plains on the surface of Titan. Image credit: ESA/NASA/JPL Click to enlarge |
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| Hilly Terrain on Titan |
| Dec 5, 2005 - This perspective view shows the hilly terrain on Saturn's moon Titan. The image has been colour coded to show the altitude, with red being the highest areas, and blue the lowest. Stereo images were taken by Huygens as it descended into Titan's atmosphere earlier this year, and then the 3-D terrain was rendered in computer. (Full Story) |
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| Dione and Enceladus |
| Dec 5, 2005 - This Cassini photo shows two of Saturn's moons, Dione and Enceladus floating just beneath the ringplane. Smaller Enceladus is on the right, and measures 505 kilometers (314 miles across). Dione is further away at the top left, and measures 1,126 kilometers (700 miles across). This image was taken on October 15, 2005, when Cassini was 2.1 million kilometers (1.3 million miles) from Dione and 1.5 million kilometers (900,000 miles) from Enceladus. (Full Story) |
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