SUNSET: 
Deciding Hubble's Future
At Congress's request, an independent panel has recommended to NASA how Hubble should spend its final days.
Keck "Outriggers" Face Additional Roadblocks
A recent court asks NASA to reevaluate the impact of telescope construction atop Mauna Kea.
SOHO "Healthy" Despite Antenna Malfunction
The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft's main antenna has malfunctioned — but the craft is still transmitting to Earth 80 percent of the time.
Solving the Puzzle of Gamma-Ray Bursts
The fading afterglow of the March 29th gamma-ray burst, seen 2.6 days later by the 1.3-meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. By then the afterglow had faded to 17th magnitude — still bright enough to hide any trace of its underlying host galaxy.Courtesy Joshua Bloom et…
A Close-up Look at the Young Universe
A "supernova factory" in a giant, dense star cluster gives a look at how globular clusters formed some 12 billion years ago.
X-Raying Planetary Birthplaces
Two different types of X-ray emission indicate stars with and without protoplanetary disks.
Planet-Formation Paradox Solved?
When young suns seem to lack protoplanetary disks, the disks may just have turned invisible.
S&T Rocks!
Four more asteroids were named for Sky & Telescope staffers, bringing the total of S&T current staff and alumni with asteroids to 24.
Mount Stromlo: A Status Report
The Near-Infrared Integral-Field Spectrograph (NIFS) was only months from completion when a bush fire roared across the Mount Stromlo Observatory and destroyed the instrument as well as five major telescopes and thier buildings. The cost to reconstruct the spectrograph will be covered by insurance, and the Australian National University plans…
National Dark-Sky Week Begins
A high-school student has begun a grassroots movement to save the night sky.
Martian Gullies Revisited
The 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft captured this image showing Martian gullies and a 'pasted-on' feature that has been interpreted to be snow on the shadowed sides of the crater.Courtesy NASA/JPL/ASU. Mars Odyssey, the latest orbiter to map the red planet, is continuing to earn its stripes. In a recent paper…
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.
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.
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…
Making Moons Slowly
It seems it took Jupiter's largest moons 100,000 years or more to form. That's 100 times slower than previously believed.
Rubble-Pile Moon
One of Jupiter's moons may actually be a loosely-packed ball of broken rocks.
Darkness Falls Upon Dark Continent, Outback
December 4, 2002 brought with it yet another spectacular total solar eclipse.
