SUNSET: 
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…
Vega's Clumpy Dust May Reveal Hidden Planet
Millimeter-wavelength observations reveal that a member of the Summer Triangle may have a planet orbiting it.
Griffith Observatory to Close for Three Years
Beginning January 6th, Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles will be closed to the public while it undergoes a $66 million facelift and expansion.Courtesy Gary Seronik. On January 6th, at 10 p.m, the venerable Griffith Observatory and planetarium in Los Angeles, California, will close its doors to the public for more…
Chandra Snaps Superbubbles in Galaxy Cluster
This false-color image from the Chandra observatory depicts X-rays emanating from multimillion-degree gas within Abell 2597. The central hot spot marks the heart of the cluster's dominant galaxy, which contains a supermassive black hole. New research suggests that the dark void near the cluster's edge is a long-lived bubble that…
Arecibo Radar Gets 11th-Hour Reprieve
The 305-meter (1,000-foot) radio telescope near Arecibo, Puerto Rico, has been used for radar probing of solar-system objects since the early 1960s. The facility underwent a $27 million upgrade in the mid-1990s.Photograph by David Parker (Science Photo Library); courtesy NAIC/Arecibo Observatory Facing tight budgets for its space-science activities, last week…
Was Mars All Wet?
NASA artist Greg Shirah depicts Mars as it might have looked some 4 billion years ago, with much of its northern hemisphere submerged under water.Courtesy NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. Future astronauts roaming the surface of Mars will be hard-pressed to find sources of water, but the red planet was not…
Mars's Active Snow and Ice
These eroded pits in Mars's south polar cap widened noticeably from October 1999 (left) to August 2001 (right). Their walls, several meters high, retreated by about 3 meters during one Martian year. Such rapid change indicates that the material here is frozen carbon dioxide — dry ice — rather than…
A Probe for Pluto
With luck and another $260 million in funding, the New Horizons spacecraft will be skimming past distant, enigmatic Pluto (foreground) and its moon, Charon, 15 years from now. Selected by NASA last week, the spacecraft features four instruments, a plutonium-fueled powerplant, and a radio dish 2.5 meters (8 feet) across.Courtesy…
Aurora Lights Up the Sky
Left: Tony and Daphne Hallas photographed Monday night's brilliant aurora from Foresthill, California. Right: Kansas amateurs Vic and Jen Winter captured the northern lights from Bonner Springs. The Sun's current sunspot cycle may be on the decline but our nearest star still continues to pack a lot of punch —…
Martian Gullies Illuminated?
The rim of this Martian scarp near the south pole bears features that appear to be recent erosion by liquid water. A study announced last week suggests that these features are due to surface melting of ground ices and subsequent debris flows during a time when Mars's tilt angle to…
Comet LINEAR in Binoculars
This color-composite view of Comet LINEAR (C/2000 WM1) was taken on the night of November 10-11 by Arizona astrophotographer Tim Hunter using a Meade 12-inch LX200 telescope and an Apogee AP7 CCD camera. Crossing Perseus and picking up speed during November, Comet LINEAR (C/2000 WM1) should now be an easy…
Two Amateurs Share Comet Award
Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams (CBAT) gives awards to comet hunters.
Comet Borrelly: Black and Bent
Deep Space 1 took this picture of Comet Borrelly's nucleus from 3,400 kilometers away. Astronomers now believe that Borrelly is the darkest object ever seen in the solar system.Courtesy NASA/JPL. In the two months since NASA’s Deep Space 1 craft zipped past the nucleus of Comet 15P/Borrelly, mission scientists have…
Novel Telescope Array Achieves Milestone
Historic Mt. Wilson is once again at the forefront of astronomical research.
Deep Space 1 Mission Ends
When launched, the Deep Space 1 spacecraft weighed 486 kg, including 82 kg of xenon to fuel its ion-drive engine. Its solar-cell 'wings' measure 11.8 meters (38.6 feet) from tip to tip.Courtesy NASA/JPL. At noon today (Pacific time), engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, officially concluded the…
Eight New Extrasolar Planets Found
The number of known extrasolar planets keeps on rising.
September 11th Asteroid Memorials
Astronomy and all of science, at their best, embody the finest aspects of the human race — and its grandest hopes for an enlightened future. Guided by such thoughts, a committee of the International Astronomical Union has announced its memorial of the events of September 11th. Sky & Telescope senior…
