Month: October 2020
A Night Sky Vista from Sardinia
How many famous sky objects can you find in this image? The featured dark sky composite combines over 60 exposures spanning over 220 degrees to create a veritable menagerie of night sky wonders. Visible celestial icons include the Belt of...
Saturn and Jupiter over Italian Peaks
Saturn and Jupiter are getting closer. Every night that you go out and check for the next two months, these two bright planets will be even closer together on the sky. Finally, in mid-December, a Great Conjunction will occur —...
A Flight over Jupiter Near the Great Red Spot
Are you willing to wait to see the largest and oldest known storm system in the Solar System? In the featured video, Jupiter’s Great Red Spot finally makes its appearance 2 minutes and 12 seconds into the 5-minute video. Before...
UGC 1810: Wildly Interacting Galaxy from Hubble
What’s happening to this spiral galaxy? Although details remain uncertain, it surely has to do with an ongoing battle with its smaller galactic neighbor. The featured galaxy is labelled UGC 1810 by itself, but together with its collisional partner is...
Cygnus: Bubble and Crescent
These clouds of gas and dust drift through rich star fields along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy toward the high flying constellation Cygnus. Caught within the telescopic field of view are the Soap Bubble (lower left) and the...
Planetary Nebula Abell 78
Planetary nebula Abell 78 stands out in this colorful telescopic skyscape. In fact the colors of the spiky Milky Way stars depend on their surface temperatures, both cooler (yellowish) and hotter (bluish) than the Sun. But Abell 78 shines by...
Galaxies in Pegasus
This sharp telescopic view reveals galaxies scattered beyond the stars of the Milky Way, at the northern boundary of the high-flying constellation Pegasus. Prominent at the upper right is NGC 7331. A mere 50 million light-years away, the large spiral...
The Colorful Clouds of Rho Ophiuchi
The many spectacular colors of the Rho Ophiuchi (oh’-fee-yu-kee) clouds highlight the many processes that occur there. The blue regions shine primarily by reflected light. Blue light from the Rho Ophiuchi star system and nearby stars reflects more efficiently off...
Mars, Pleiades, and Andromeda over Stone Lions
Three very different — and very famous — objects were all captured in a single frame last month. On the upper left is the bright blue Pleiades, perhaps the most famous cluster of stars on the night sky. The Pleiades...
Descending Toward Asteroid Bennu
What would it be like to land on an asteroid? Although no human has yet done it, NASA’s robotic OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is scheduled to attempt to touch the surface of asteroid 101955 Bennu next week. The goal is to collect...