This beautiful view of Saturn was taken by Cassini when it was looking through the dark side of the planet’s rings. The diagonal slice through the photo is Saturn’s shadow falling across the rings. Cassini took this image on September 11, 2006 when it was approximately 1.1 million kilometres (700,000 miles) from Saturn.
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Dark Nebula Slithers Across the Sky
This Spitzer photograph contains several nebulae located in the galactic plane of the Milky Way. The dark, snake-like nebula at the upper left contains dozens of huge newborn stars, some with 50 times the mass of our Sun. The red sphere in the image is a supernova remnant. Before it exploded, the central star probably played a role in the creation of the dark nebulae in the region.
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Astrophoto: From the Soul Nebula by Frank Barnes III
In June of 1889, about one year before his untimely death, the brilliant Dutch post-impressionist, Vincent Van Gogh, furiously completed The Starry Night while staying at the Monastery Saint-Paul de Mausole, a mental asylum located in Southern France. The painting depicts a humble village nestled between the blue tranquility of undulating hills and a magical sky filled with comet shaped clouds and cartwheeling stars the size of Ferris wheels. Even though Van Gogh only sold one painting during his lifetime, this priceless work of art has become an icon. In it he captured a childlike wonder that adults can recognize for who has not stood outside and been swayed by twinkling stars celebrating overhead. Beautiful deep space images can elicit similar excitement from astronomical enthusiasts. However, the photographers who produce them are more interested in the stars when they are peaceful.
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Gamma Rays Pour From the Edge of a Supermassive Black Hole
Astronomers have discovered gamma rays streaming from the vicinity of the supermassive black hole at the heart of galaxy M87. These gamma rays have energy levels of more than a million million times the energy of visible light. Fortunately, these rays are stopped by our atmosphere. A special instrument called H.E.S.S., located in Namibia, can detect when these rays strike our atmosphere, and trace back the source. Astronomers have determined that a region not much larger than our Solar System around the black hole is responsible for this outpouring of gamma rays; the black hole is acting like a cosmic particle accelerator.
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Janus Poses Above Saturn
This incredible photograph shows Saturn’s potato-shaped Janus, posing above the planet’s cloudy atmosphere. Janus is only 181 kilometers (113 miles) across, and it shows the scars of many impacts with other objects in the Solar System. Like Saturn’s other smaller moons, Janus could be covered with a layer of fine, dust-sized icy material. Cassini took this photo on September 25, 2006 when it was only 145,000 kilometers (90,000 miles) from Janus.
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Echos of Light
The strange variable star V838 Monocerotis flared up nearly 5 years ago, and astronomers have been trying to figure out what’s going on ever since. As the light from the flare up propagates out from the star, it illuminates the surrounding cloud of dust. This light reflects off the dust, and we see this echo here on Earth. This latest photograph from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the changes that have happened over the last year. One interesting feature are the whorls and eddies in the dust, which could be caused by powerful magnetic fields.
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New Planet Hunter Prepares for Launch
A powerful new instrument for finding extrasolar planets is about to launch: COROT (Convection Rotation and planetary Transits). Developed by the European Space Agency, COROT will search for planets using the transit method; it will be able to detect the slight drop in brightness as a planet moves in front of its parent star. If the observatory performs as expected, it should be able to detect rocky worlds just a few times larger than the Earth. COROT is scheduled to launch in December, 2006.
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Progress 23 Docks with the Station
An unpiloted Progress 23 cargo ship docked with the International Space Station on Thursday, delivering a new load of supplies. On board the ship is more than 2 tonnes of food, air, fuel, water and additional equipment. There was a bit of a glitch with the docking, however. Flight controllers weren’t able to confirm if an antenna on the spacecraft was fully retracted before it docked. After a 3-hour delay, they finally gave the command to partially dock the spacecraft. Further latches will be closed on Friday to complete the docking operation.
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Successful Liftoff for NASA’s STEREO Spacecraft
NASA’s solar-observing STEREO spacecraft were carried into space Wednesday evening, atop a Boeing Delta II rocket. STEREO, aka the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatories, are two nearly identical observatories that will help construct 3-dimensional views of the Sun and its stormy environment. Over the next few months, the spacecraft will perform a series of maneuvers so that one travels ahead of the Earth in orbit, and another trails behind the planet. This will give a view of the Sun from two different vantage points.
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Stellar Explosion Has Many Layers
A new photograph from the Spitzer Space Telescope shows how supernova remnant Cassiopeia A evolved over time. The original star contained 15 to 20 times the mass of our Sun, and was made up of concentric shells of elements. The lightest elements, like hydrogen, were in the outermost shell, while the heaviest elements sunk to the centre. The shells of exploded material match up quite well with the original layers in the star before it detonated as a supernova.
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