SUNSET: 
Comet NEAT Outward Bound
Comet NEAT put on a fine show as it rounded the Sun. Now Southern Hemisphere observers wait for it to reappear in the west after sunset.
A Mistaken Case of Ring Around the Collar
The European Southern Obsevratory's Very Large Telescope Antu captured this view of the ringed ice giant Uranus.
Rosetta Grounded by Rocket Worries
Europe's Rosetta spacecraft was supposed to be on its way to Comet Wirtanen by now &$151; but a failure of its launch vehicle last month may keep this spacecraft grounded for years.
Astro News Briefs: January 13–19
Planet-Hunting Auction Opens for Bids January 14, 2003 | Ever wanted to spend a night at the controls of one of the world's largest telescopes, searching for planets orbiting distant stars? Now you can join University of California, Berkeley, astronomer Geoffrey Marcy and his team for a night at the…
A Star Prepares to Blow Its Top
Easily found with the naked eye, 4th-magnitude Rho Cassiopeiae may be getting ready for an enormous mass ejection in the next few months.
Astro News Briefs: January 6–12
A Not-So-Hot Jupiter? January 9, 2003 | Hot Jupiters may not be so hot after all. These giant planets, orbiting sunlike stars at extremely close distances, ought to be strong infrared emitters because of their high temperatures. But a team led by Drake Deming (Goddard Space Flight Center) failed to…
Interstellar Reflections
New images from the Hubble Space Telescope reveal unprecedented detail in a light echo expanding around an explosive variable star in Monoceros.
Did Pluto Take a Punch?
A Hubble Space Telescope image snapped in 1994 easily resolves Pluto and its moon, just 0.9 arcsecond apart. Charon's orbit is about 39,300 kilometers in diameter — but astronomers are surprised that it's not a perfect circle.Courtesy R. Albrecht (ESA/ESTEC) and NASA. If David J. Tholen (University of Hawaii) is…
Aussie Fires Destroy Mount Stromlo Observatory
One of Australia's premier astronomy facilities has been virtually wiped out by the worst wildfires in Australian history.
Bending Light
Hubble's new camera has taken the deepest-ever look through a gravitational lens, getting a fun-house view of the early universe.
A New Way to Find Planets
Astronomers announce the first confirmation of a "hot Jupiter" discovered by its silhouette crossing the face of its star.
Comet Kudo-Fujikawa Near the Sun
The comet passes through perihelion on January 29th. Although it will be impossible to observe, there's another way to follow its progress.
Looking for HEROs
The light from a very distant Hyper-Extremely Red Object, designated HERO1, has been redshifted so much that it can be seen in the near-infrared (right) but not at visible wavelengths (left). HERO1 is located in the sky very close to a radio source, known as 53W002, that is more than…
Coolest Star Ever
A super-dim brown dwarf in Eridanus glows in the infrared at a temperature of only 410° Celsius.
Belly of the Beast
The center of our Milky Way galaxy swarms with gas clouds and millions of stars and is anchored by a supermassive black hole. Only objects that emit X-rays appear in this new image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory satellite. The black hole is embedded in the brightest point at center.…
Ring Around the Galaxy
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is being carried out with a 2.5-meter (100-inch) telescope in New Mexico, seen here at sunset with project director John Peoples. When finished, the SDSS will be a fundamental resource used by astronomers worldwide for many years to come. The newly discovered ring around…
Io's Salty Secret
Volcanic activity on the Jovian moon Io stains the surface with red and yellow allotropes of sulfur. Recent observations show that the moon's frequent outpourings are seasoned with a little salt.Courtesy University of Arizona and NASA. It might not seem surprising that Io, the Jovian moon famous for its vigorous…
Astronomy Stories Dominate Prestigious List
2002 was an action-packed year for astronomy aficionados.
Astro News Briefs: December 30–January 5, 2003
Radio pioneer dies; Jupiter gains a 40th moon
Astro News Briefs: December 23–29
Silent Nights for NEAR and Contour December 24, 2002 | Two teams from Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) have made unsuccessful attempts to regain contact with two silenced spacecraft. On December 10th, engineers spent 12 hours trying to communicate with the NEAR Shoemaker probe, which has sat on…