Month: July 2020

Mars 2020 from 5,000 Feet

On Thursday this snapshot from a small plane 5,000 feet above Florida’s Space Coast caught a rocket’s trail rising into the blue morning sky. It was July’s third launch of a mission from planet Earth bound for Mars. The Atlas...

The Red Planet Mars

Mars looks pretty sharp in this backyard telescope image captured on July 23 from Hoegaarden, Belgium, planet Earth. The Red Planet’s bright south polar cap is bathed in sunlight at the top of the inverted view, while the dark feature...

The Giants of Summer

As Comet NEOWISE sweeps through northern summer skies, Jupiter and Saturn are shining brightly, near opposition. With Jupiter opposite the Sun on July 14 and Saturn on July 21, the giant planets are still near their closest to planet Earth...

Normally, Steamboat Point looks cool — but not this cool. Every day, the iconic peak of the Bighorn Mountains is an interesting sight, in particular from US Highway 14 in Wyoming. On some rare days, the rocky vertical ridges look...

What would it look like to fly through the distant universe? To find out, a team of astronomers estimated the relative distances to over 5,000 galaxies in one of the most distant fields of galaxies ever imaged: the Hubble Ultra...

Tianwen 1 Mission to Mars

On July 23, this Long March 5 heavy-lift rocket rose into a blue morning sky from China’s Hainan Island Wenchang Satellite Launch Center. The rocket carried an orbiter, lander, and rover to ask Heavenly Questions on the ambitious Tianwen-1 mission...

MAGIC NEOWISE

The multi-mirror, 17 meter-diameter MAGIC telescopes reflect this starry night sky from the Roque de los Muchachos European Northern Observatory on the Canary Island of La Palma. MAGIC stands for Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov and the telescopes can see...

Fairytale NEOWISE

Comet dust falls through a twilight sky in this dream-like scene, but it’s not part of a fairytale movie. Still, Castle Neuschwanstein, nestled in the Bavarian Alps, did inspire Disneyland’s Sleeping Beauty Castle. Captured on July 20, the bright streak...

What is creating the structure in Comet NEOWISE’s tails? Of the two tails evident, the blue ion tail on the left points directly away from the Sun and is pushed out by the flowing and charged solar wind. Structure in...

Iron in the Butterfly Nebula

Can stars, like caterpillars, transform themselves into butterflies? No, but in the case of the Butterfly Nebula — it sure looks like it. Though its wingspan covers over 3 light-years and its estimated surface temperature exceeds 200,000 degrees, C, the...