SUNSET: 
Long-Lived SOHO Celebrates a Milestone
The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory continues to monitor the Sun night and day #151; long past its expected lifetime.
Einstein Rings
The Hubble Space Telescope snapped these images of eight newly discovered lensed galaxies that each displays what astronomers call Einstein rings. This unique type of gravitational lensing reflects the light of a distant galaxy positioned perfectly in line with the foreground galaxy so that the gravitational warping of the light…
Bursting Neutron Star Mystery
An artist depicts a neutron star. These objects are the dead cores of stars that exploded as supernovae. They cram more than a Sun's worth of mass into a ball only about 20 kilometers (12 miles) across, achieving extraordinarily high densities. Powerful magnetic field lines (blue) thread through these objects.…
Astro Image in the News:
Hubble Dissects the Crab
Astronomers have unveiled a super-sharp mosaic of this singular stellar corpse.
Astro Image in the News:
Ice Volcanoes Captured
Finally astronomers have the photographic proof they've been looking for — ice volcanoes actively erupting on Saturn's moon Enceladus.
Hayabusa Hits Paydirt
After several close calls that threatened to end the mission, a Japanese craft has landed on an asteroid and grabbed a sample of its surface.
Astro Image in the News: Massive Meteorite Found
A mammoth stony-iron meteorite, found buried on a Kansas farm, ranks among the world's largest.
Advanced Imaging Conference 2005
Astrophotographers of all experience levels convened in San Jose, California, on November 11th to attend the second-annual Advanced Imaging Conference.
Powerful Magnetar Blast from Another Galaxy
This illustration represents how a magnetar might appear if we could view it up close with X-ray vision. But this is not something you'd want to do. Magnetars are neutron stars with magnetic fields so powerful that they could kill a person from 1,000 kilometers away by warping the atoms…
Asteroid Lander Lost in Space
The Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa is ready to grab samples of asteroid Itokawa, but a tiny hopping lander failed to make it to the surface.
Copernicus's Grave Possibly Found
Click on the image to view a larger version of these reconstructions of Copernicus's possible face and profile.Copyright by Cpt. Dariusz Zajdel M.A., Central Forensic Laboratory of the Polish Police. A team of Polish archaeologists led by Jerzy Gassowski (Pultusk School of Humanities) claims that it has probably found the…
Astro News Briefs: October 10–16
No Kuiper Belt Jupiters October 11, 2005 | Astronomers have long wondered whether the solar system might have an unseen giant planet far out in the darkness beyond Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. If so, it must be very far out indeed. Nadia Zakamska and Scott Tremaine (Princeton University) have…
Dust Storms on Mars
Just as it's swinging close by Earth, Mars has spawned widenings dust storms visible in amateur telescopes.
The Universe's First Starlight?
Light from the first stars may lurk within a 10-hour Spitzer Space Telescope image of the constellation Draco.
Katrina Astronomy Fund Drive Launched
Astronomers are gathering their efforts to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Exploding Stars Explained?
The Crab Nebula (M1) is the remnant of a supernova observed in AD 1054. Like many supernova remnants, the Crab is asymmetrical.Courtesy European Southern Observatory. For years theorists have used computer simulations to try to understand exactly how massive stars explode as supernovae. But they kept running into a problem:…
The Christmas Morning Occultation of Spica
Start the holiday a special way: by watching the waning crescent Moon cover a 1st-magnitude star.
Pluto Adds Two New Moons
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have found two new moons orbiting the ninth planet. The find makes Pluto the first quadruple Kuiper-belt system.
New Signs that Monster Star Has a Neighbor
The Hubble Space Telescope captured the glory of Eta Carinae and its surrounding Homunculus Nebula. The mighty star ejected the hourglass-shaped Homunculus in vast outbursts observed in the 1800s. The star itself, and its possible companion, are buried deep within the central whitish dot.Courtesy Nathan Smith / Jon Morse /…
