Space and astronomy news
Monday, May 14 – No galactic tour through Coma Berenices would be complete without visiting one of the most incredible “things that Messier missed.” You’ll find NGC 4565 located less than two degrees east of 17 Comae… Residing at a distance of around 30 million light-years, this large 10th magnitude galaxy is probably one of …
Continue reading “What’s Up this Week: May 14 – May 20, 2007”
This beautiful picture is of a distant collection of galaxies called the Abell S0740 galaxy cluster, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. It’s located more than 450 million light years away in the constellation Centaurus.
This photograph of galaxy NGC 908 was taken with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. This spiral galaxy was first discovered in 1786 by William Herschel, and is considered a starburst galaxy. Clusters of young, massive stars pepper its spiral arms indicating regions of furious star formation. NGC 908 must have had a recent …
Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! Welcome to a land of all sight and no sound… A land where shadow meets substance. Welcome to the “X” zone! Caught in a time warp? Not this week. Be sure to enjoy some of the best observing of the year as we head towards the center of our galaxy, walk on …
Continue reading “What’s Up this Week: July 24 – July 30, 2006”
Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! The Moon starts off the week, but be sure to watch for aurora activity despite its bright influence. There will be plenty of objects to study, and take the time to check Heaven’s Above for visible passes of Discovery and the ISS. Now, grab your binoculars or scopes, because… Here’s what’s up!
Scientists have known the universe is expanding for over eight decades. During this period, many speculated that gravity would eventually slow and halt the expansion then the universe would probably start to contract. This common view held that the universe repeatedly oscillated between Big Bang and Big Crunch. Then, in the late 1990’s, some scientists …
M63: “The Sunflower Galaxy”. Image credit: N.A. Sharp/NOAO/AURA/NSF. Click to enlarge Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! It may be raining all over the world, but when the skies do clear there will be plenty to explore as we take a look at bright star systems, distant galaxies, globular clusters and astronomy history. So turn your eyes to …
Continue reading “What’s Up This Week – May 15 – May 21, 2006”
Omega Centauri by Bernd Flach-Wilken and Volker Wendel For thousands of years, we saw ourselves as the focal point of the Universe and the center of all things. Then, in the early 16th century, Copernicus revealed that this was not the case; humanity’s home was a huge globe spinning once every 24 hours circling the …
Continue reading “Astrophoto: Omega Centauri by Bernd Flach-Wilken and Volker Wendel”
Eleven teams competed in two competitions over the weekend to test technologies for space elevators: beam-powered climbers and new ribbon materials. The climbers needed to scale a 61-metre (200 foot) ribbon within a time limit. Although one climber reached 12 metres (40 feet), it wasn’t enough to win the $50,000 prize. In the ribbon competition, competitors needed to create a material that was 50% stronger than the house tether. One team came close, but it wasn’t enough. Tougher challenges will be back next year with bigger prizes.
The Hubble Space Telescope used its Advanced Camera for Surveys to capture this beautiful photograph of the Boomerang Nebula. This cloud of dust and gas has two nearly symmetric cones of material coming out of it. It was created through a process called bipolar outflow, where a dying star ejects material as it spins. It could be that the star is surrounded by a disk of dust, so only the top and bottom material can escape, or a powerful magnetic field is shaping it as it escapes.