SUNSET: 
Comet Ikeya-Zhang Now Naked Eye
This 1-minute exposure of Comet Ikeya-Zhang was taken by Sky & Telescope senior editor Dennis di Cicco at 0 hours Universal Time on March 1, 2002. He used a CCD camera attached to a 16-inch telescope at f/3.3. The field of view is about 1/3° wide. North is up. According…
Benson Prize Winner
Amateur astronomer Leonard Amburgey recently won the Benson Prize for his discovery of asteroid 2000 NM.Courtesy Leonard Amburgey. Public-school teacher and amateur astronomer Leonard L. Amburgey of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, is receiving the Benson Prize for his discovery of Earth-approaching asteroid 2000 NM. Established by Space Development Corp. founder James W.…
Eros's Puzzling Surface
Scientists are beginning to understand the complex asteroid's surface.
A Hit-and-Miss Annular Eclipse
Only a lucky few captured Friday's annular eclipse on film. Observing from near the eclipse's southern limit at Herradura Beach on Costa Rica's Pacific coast, Kelly Beatty recorded a cloud-laced view (left) using an Orion 90-mm f/13.9 Maksutov-Cassegrain. Just 7 km farther north, Paul Maley outraced the clouds to snare…
A Comet's Brush with the Sun
The SOHO spacecraft watched as a comet swung past the Sun.
Giant Telescopes Snare Surprising Quadruple Star
An infrared ground-based view (1) of a wide binary system in the molecular cloud MBM 12. The same view using Gemini's adaptive optics system (2) reveals that the upper star is actually a close pair. In a longer exposure of the upper, close pair (3) another faint object is resolved,…
An Early Universe Teeming With Stars
By taking a 3-dementional look at the Hubble Deep Field, astronomers are learning about the earliest epochs of star formation.
Jupiter's Shrinking Red Spot
Compare the size (and color) of Jupiter's Great Red Spot as drawn by Thomas Gwyn Elger in November 1881 (left) and as imaged by Texas amateur Ed Grafton (right) 120 years later. South is up. Telescopic observers from the 19th century may not have had the technological wizardry available to…
Delta Scorpii Brighter Than Ever
A naked-eye star in the dawn continues its unexpected — and very obvious — flareup.
The Leonids' Best Home Videos
Fifteen images from a high-speed video freezes the split-second flight of a Leonid meteor at 10:48:59 Universal Time, November 18th. Inspection of several hundred images such as these has revealed the details of a meteor's glow.NASA-ARC/Image courtesy Hans Stenbaek-Nielsen, University of Alaska Fairbanks. Thanks to some high-tech videography, researchers at…
Gamma-Ray Bursts Next Door?
Astronomers have found Gamma-Ray bursts coming from closer places than ever before seen.
Yohkoh Loses Control
The Yohkoh spacecraft lost control when its Sun-acquiring system failed during an annular eclipse. Click on image to see what the craft saw as it failed to reacquire the Sun.Courtesy Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS). On December 14, 2001, the Japanese solar observatory Yohkoh began spinning out of…
Astronomers Find Extrasolar Planetary Atmosphere
Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have detected their first chemical element in the atmosphere of a planet outside the solar system. This artist's conception shows a Jupiterlike planet closely orbiting the star HD 209458.Courtesy G. Bacon (STScI/AVL). In the past six years, astronomers have found nearly 80 gas-giant planets…
199th American Astronomical Society Meeting Begins
Astronomers from across the globe have gathered in Washington, D.C. this week for the 199th meeting of the American Astronomical Society. This year's event, the second largest gathering of professional astronomers ever, includes more than 2,200 scientists and participants, presenting the latest astronomical news and findings in 154 different oral…
A Close Visitor Tumbles By
The little asteroid 1998 WT24, about 1 kilometer wide, was radar-imaged by NASA's Goldstone antenna last week when it flew within five Moon-distances of Earth. Click on image for animated movie of the asteroid's rotation.Courtesy Steve Ostro, Lance Benner, Jon Giorgini (JPL), Jean-Luc Margot (Caltech), and Mike Nolan (Arecibo Observatory).…
Wrong-Way Blobs Sink Toward Sun
An enormous cloud of ionized gas plunges toward the Sun over three hours. The cloud becomes evident by electronically subtracting one frame from another taken some minutes later. To record such faint features, the Sun itself (yellow disks) must be hidden behind an occulting mask.Courtesy LASCO consortium, ESA, and NASA.…
First Planet of a Giant Star
An artist's concept of a Jupiter-like planet eclipsing the giant star Iota Draconis, which is 13 times larger than the Sun.Courtesy JPL/NASA. About 80 planets are known to orbit main-sequence stars that are more or less like the Sun — ranging from spectral type F (a little hotter and larger…
Bush Science Policy: The View from the Top
Presidential science advisor John Marburger shares with astronomers the Bush administration's views on government funding of research.
Killer Asteroids: The Count Rises
This projection of the celestial sphere shows the sky coverage recorded by the 1-meter LINEAR telescope over three years. Bright yellow corresponds to an accumulated depth (faintness limit) of magnitude 20.8. In star-dense areas of the Milky Way (dark swath at right) and near the local horizon the survey probed…
Britain's Big Astronomical Plans
The United Kingdom's Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network (MERLIN) spans more than 200 kilometers using seven radio telescopes. Over the next few years, the array will receive a $11 million upgrade.Courtesy Jodrell Bank. More than a year ago, British radio astronomers feared that that some of their facilities were about…
