Astronomy

Celebrating fourth anniversary of the launch of Spitzer Space Telescope, NASA released newly expanded image of the Helix nebula. This spectacular object, a dying star unraveling into space, is a favorite of amateur and professional astronomers alike. Spitzer has mapped the expansive outer structure of the six-light-year-wide nebula, and probed the inner region around the […]

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This picture shows a nebula called The Cone Nebula. It lies in the southern part of NGC 2264, the Christmas tree cluster, which is a rich region with much nebulosity and many interesting objects. The Cone Nebula is actually an intense region of starbirth, a chaotic place where new stars are born inside a natal […]

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This beautiful picture shows spiral galaxy M81, tilted at an oblique angle on to our line of sight, giving a “birds-eye view” of the spiral structure. The galaxy is similar to our Milky Way, but our favorable view provides a better picture of the typical architecture of spiral galaxies.
M81 may be undergoing a surge of […]

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On new Year’s Eve 2004, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft flew past Iapetus, one of Saturn’s distinctive moon, capturing the four visible light images that were put together to form this global view. The scene is dominated by a dark, heavily-cratered region, called Cassini Regio, that covers nearly an entire hemisphere of Iapetus. Iapetus is 1,436 kilometers […]

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This picture shows one of the Saturn’s moons, Hyperion. Taken by Cassini spacecraft during its flyby in September 2005, this picture revealed for the first time surface details of Hyperion, including cup-like craters filled with hydrocarbons that may indicate more widespread presence in our solar system of basic chemicals necessary for life.
Cassini’s ultraviolet imaging spectrograph […]

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This image shows beautiful celestial object, a startlingly symmetrical nebula that christened as “The Red Square” for its color and form. This object discovered when astronomer use advanced imaging technologies known as Adaptive Optics while studying a hot star called MWC 922 located about 5000 light-years from earth in the constellation Serpens (the serpent mythologically […]

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This picture taken by Hubble Space Telescope, showing Eta Carinae and the bipolar Homunculus Nebula which surrounds the star. The Homunculus was partly created in an eruption of Eta Carinae whose light reached Earth in 1843. Eta Carinae itself appears as the white patch near the center of the image, where the 2 lobes of […]

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Canopus, the second brightness star in the night sky has many interesting stories. First, is about its name. Most stars are named after character of Greek/Roman mythology. But name Canopus itself said to be refers to a real person, though its origin is unknown.
Canopus was originally the Alpha star of the ancient constellation Argo, the […]

Popularity: 23%