Astronomy

Sometimes objects in the sky that appear strange, or different from normal, have a story to tell and prove scientifically very rewarding. This was the idea behind Halton Arp’s catalogue of Peculiar Galaxies that appeared in the 1960s. One of the oddballs listed there is Arp 261, which has now been imaged in more detail [...]

On Oct. 5, 2008, just after coming within 25 kilometers (15.6 miles) of the surface of Enceladus, NASA’s Cassini captured this stunning mosaic as the spacecraft sped away from this geologically active moon of Saturn. Craters and cratered terrains are rare in this view of the southern region of the moon’s Saturn-facing hemisphere. Instead, the surface [...]

Above is an deep new image from Helix Planetary Nebula (NGC 7293), shows a rich background of distant galaxies, usually not seen in other images of this object. This color-composite image of the Helix Nebula was created from images obtained using the the Wide Field Imager (WFI), an astronomical camera attached to the 2.2-meter Max-Planck Society/ESO [...]

Many ancient astronomical texts describe the color of Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, as red. These include works by Ptolemy and Lucius Seneca amongst others. The fact has been puzzled Astronomers for many years since Sirius is appears blue with the naked eye. In 1985, German astronomers Wolfhard Schlosser and Werner Bergmann published an [...]

A first-time visitor to the inner solar system which had already spotted with the naked eye from some locales, could make a spectacle of itself when it comes closest to Earth on February 24, 2009 at the distance of 0.41 AU. Current estimates peg the maximum brightness at 4th or 5th magnitude, which means dark [...]

Pluto and Eris now have a new counterpart. On July 11, 2008, the IAU/USGS Working Group on Planetary Nomenclature included Makemake (136472 Makemake) in the plutoid class, makes it officially both a dwarf planet and a plutoid, alongside the two previously known objects. Discovered on March 31, 2005 by the team led by Michael Brown, the [...]

Pictured here is a Hubble Space Telescope image on Stingray Nebula. Located in constellation Ara (The Altar) at the distance of 18.000 light years, this beautiful object considered as the youngest planetary nebula ever observed!

After the Cat’s Eye Nebula, we also have Cat’s Paw Nebula. Located in southern Scorpius, near NGC 6357 and the H 12 region with the IC 4628 nebula, it is actually an emission nebula with a red color that originates from an abundance of ionized hydrogen atoms. Like typical emission nebula, Cat’s Paw Nebula composed mostly [...]

This picture shows galaxy ESO 593-IG 008, or IRAS 19115-2124. The previously taken Hubble images shows that the object are colliding two galaxies — one a barred spiral, and the other is more irregular. But recent observation with ESO’s Very Large Telescope made clear identification of a third, separate component, an irregular, yet fairly massive [...]

This blog entry is about one of the most famed stars of the sky, Vega. As the luminary of the exquisite constellation Lyra, the Lyre, which represents the harp of the great mythical musician Orpheus, Vega also known as “Alpha Lyrae”. Its name derives from an Arabic phrase that means “the swooping eagle.” Vega has been [...]