Month: November 2019

Star Trails for a Red Planet

Does Mars have a north star? In long exposures of Earth’s night sky, star trails make concentric arcs around the north celestial pole, the direction of our fair planet’s axis of rotation. Bright star Polaris is presently the Earth’s North...

Galileo s Europa Remastered

Looping through the Jovian system in the late 1990s, the Galileo spacecraft recorded stunning views of Europa and uncovered evidence that the moon’s icy surface likely hides a deep, global ocean. Galileo’s Europa image data has been remastered here, using...

Hoags Object: A Nearly Perfect Ring Galaxy

Is this one galaxy or two? This question came to light in 1950 when astronomer Arthur Hoag chanced upon this unusual extragalactic object. On the outside is a ring dominated by bright blue stars, while near the center lies a...

Venus and Jupiter on the Horizon

What are those two bright objects on the horizon? Venus and Jupiter. The two brightest planets in the night sky passed very close together — angularly — just two days ago. In real space, they were just about as far...