SUNSET: 
Newfound Star Sparks Brown-Dwarf Debate
Can one binary star cast doubt on myriad brown dwarfs?
Catch Comet Machholz at Its Best
For observers in the northern hemisphere, all the circumstances are at their best in the first half of January for viewing this fine little comet.
Wild, Weird Titan Reveals More Secrets
The most Earthlike world in the solar system is also the strangest ever encountered.
Senator Vows to Fight for Hubble
Amid new rumors that NASA plans to abandon the Hubble Space Telescope), Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) has vowed to continue fighting to keep the observatory operating.
Opportunity Finds an Iron Meteorite
Tests have confirmed that the basketball-size Heat Shield Rock, imaged here by Opportunity's panoramic camera, is a meteorite composed primarily of iron and nickel. Note the small 'blueberries' that surround the meteorite.Courtesy NASA / JPL / Cornell University. On December 21, 2004, the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity arrived at its…
David Lunt (1942-2005)
The founder and principal designer of Coronado Technology Group brought hydrogen-alpha solar observing to the masses.
Standing on the Surface of Titan
The trimphant success of the Huygens probe will keep astronomers busy studying Saturn's largest moon for years to come.
Astro News Briefs: January 5–11
Mars Express Fails to Hear Beagle 2 January 7, 2004 | The first attempt for the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter to hear from the Beagle 2 lander was unsuccessful. The spacecraft passed over Beagle 2's landing site at about 12:15 Universal Time today (7:15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time)…
Hooray for Huygens!
As Huygens descended through the atmosphere of Titan, the probe recorded this system of stubby, interconnected channels leading to an apparent shoreline. The scene is about 5 kilometers (3 miles) wide.Courtesy ESA/NASA/University of Arizona. Move over, Mars! Saturn's large moon Titan is now the most distant world touched by the…
Call for Observations: Saturn's Moons
Advanced amateurs with CCD-equipped telescopes are encouraged to measure the "opposition effect" — a brightening expected to occur in the Saturnian system during this upcoming opposition (January 13–14).
A Ringside Seat for Huygens's Arrival
Europe's Huygens probe descends to the surface of Titan on January 14th, just as Saturn is at its closest and brightest and ideally placed for observing.
Spitzer Reveals Greedy Stellar Babies in Trifid
The Spitzer Space Telescope works in infrared light, which allows it to peer through the dusty veil of the Trifid Nebula (M20) to see 150 new objects, mostly newborn stars. This image was created from observations on March 31 and April 11, 2004. Red represents 5.8 and 8.0 micron bands,…
Galaxy Maps Reveal Nature of Universe
The latest results from two comprehensive galaxy surveys independently confirm the important role of dark matter and dark energy in the evolution of the cosmos.
Disk Demolition Derby
An artist depicts the collision of two planetesimals in the disk around Vega. Such collisions, which generate huge amounts of dust, occurred frequently in the early days of our solar system's Kuiper Belt.Courtesy NASA / JPL-Caltech / T. Pyle (SSC / Caltech). Two teams of astronomers have reported signs of…
Exoplanet Image Confirmed?
The pink dot in this Hubble Space Telescope infrared image might not look like a big deal, but in all likelihood it's a planetary-mass companion to the brown dwarf 2M 1207, whose location is marked by the gray circle.Courtesy NASA / ESA / Glenn H. Schneider, et al. Astronomers may…
Astro News Briefs: January 3-9
First light for Swift instruments and a new solar telescope.
Astro Image in the News:
Hubble Spies Twisted Spiral
unveiled this stunning image of NGC 1300, the 10th-magnitude barred spiral some 69 million light-years distant in the constellation Eridanus.
A Black Hole Swarm
In this Chandra X-ray Observatory image of the galactic center, the four labeled sources are bright and variable. They are probably binary systems consisting of a stellar-mass black hole and a normal star. The Milky Way's central black hole, known as Sagittarius A*, is the bright spot above source C.Courtesy…
Intriguing Iapetus
This Cassini image shows Iapetus's leading hemisphere, most of which is as dark as an asphalt parking lot. Scientists were amazed to find a giant ridge girdling at least one-third of the moon's circumference. The highest peaks along the ridge are about 20 kilometers (12 miles) high, which rivals Mars's…
Earth Safe from Asteroid 2004 MN4
We should know by February whether the Near Earth Asteroid 2004 MN4 is a real threat.
