Astronomy

This composite picture shows beautiful detail of G292.0+1.8. Located at a distance of 20,000 light years in constellation Centaurus, this object considered as a “textbook” case of a supernova remnant. Near the center of G292.0+1.8 is the so-called pulsar wind nebula, most easily seen in high energy X-rays. This is the magnetized bubble of high-energy particles [...]

Mars will come into its Opposition on December 24, 2007. Six days earlier, on December 18, 2007, the planet will have come to its closest distance to Earth during this apparation: 88.42 million km (55 million miles or 0.58935 AU). This is not very close, as Mars will be quite close to its aphelion at [...]

Do you know what is the brightest star in the night sky? Yes, it is Sirius. We can easily find this star by looking south and to the east from the famous Orion constellation. The name “Sirius” comes from the Greek word for “searing” or “scorching,” certainly appropriate for this star that shines at the [...]

It’s been said that astronomy is the science of extremes. Here we dealt with the biggest, farthest, oldest, hottest, coldest, densest, emptiest things known to man!

Though didn’t seem very sharp, this picture has amazing stories to reveal. The picture shows a baby star, 1,149 light-years away from our Earth, blowing two massive “bubbles”. But instead of bubble gum, this youngster, called HH 46/47, is using powerful jets of gas to make bubbles in outer space. The infant star can be seen [...]

Two galaxies perform an intricate dance in this new Hubble Space Telescope image. The galaxies, containing a vast number of stars, swing past each other in a graceful performance choreographed by gravity. The pair, known collectively as Arp 87, is one of hundreds of interacting and merging galaxies known in our nearby universe. Arp 87 was [...]

The story begins with Vesto Slipher, an astronomer from Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Arizona, who finds that far nebula shows more red spectra than it should be. Astronomer Edwin Hubble and his colleague, Milton Humason, which have know the way to calculate galactic distance discovered that the redshift in light coming from distant galaxies is proportional [...]