SUNSET: 
Bob's World of Astronomy with Robert Naeye
Time to Make a Decision
The debate about planets continues . . .
Bob's World of Astronomy with Robert Naeye
A New Type of Cosmic Explosion
A cool, nearby gamma-ray burst.
Bob's World of Astronomy with Robert Naeye
Pluto: 9 + 1 = 10, not 8
Do we need to learn New Math when counting planets?
Bob's World of Astronomy with Robert Naeye
Copernicus Would Not Be Proud
Why we haven't yet heard the end of the Pluto/planet controversy.
Bob's World of Astronomy with Robert Naeye
Bob's World of Astronomy
S&T senior editor Bob Naeye explains why we have not heard the end of the Pluto/planet controversy.
Bob's World of Astronomy with Robert Naeye
The "Missing" Young Astronomers
Young amateur astronomers might drift away for awhile, but we can get a lot of them back.
Bob's World of Astronomy with Robert Naeye
Greetings Astronomy Aficionados!
Senior editor Robert Naeye separates astronomical fact from fiction.
Why are there two peaks in the light curve on page 97 of the October 2005 issue?
Why are there two peaks in the light curve on page 97 of the October 2005 issue? One might imagine that a planet of the star would produce only one sharp peak on the rounded dashed line. But why two? This is an insightful question, because astronomers who use the…
Agreement Reached on Yerkes Sale
The Yerkes Observatory has been sold, but the venerable institution will continue operations as a scientific and educational facility. The University of Chicago has reached an $8 million sale agreement with a private developer to preserve the venerable Yerkes Observatory, one of the world's great astronomical landmarks. Under the terms…
Galaxy Merger Movies
A color view from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the Antennae, two spiral galaxies in Corvus in the process of merging. This system gets its nickname from the long tidal tails visible in the accompanying ground-based, black-and-white image. The Antennae give us a sneak preview of what will happen when…
A Supernova's Backwash May Form Planets
Astronomer-artist Robert Hurt depicts the disk around the neutron star 4U 0142+61. The disk contains about 10 Earth masses of material and orbits very close to the star. Click on the image for a larger view.Courtesy NASA / JPL / Caltech / R. Hurt (SSC). For many years astronomers have…
Cosmic Explosion Mystery Deepens
Artist Dana Berry depicts the short gamma-ray burst (GRB) that occurs when a neutron star falls into a black hole. Astronomers are beginning to realize that other violent events can also cause short GRBs.Courtesy NASA / GSFC / Dana Berry. Just when astronomers thought they had solved one of astronomy's…
Astronomers Agog Over Stellar Explosion
This artist's conception depicts the violent pair of jets emitted by a typical gamma-ray burst (GRB). Astronomers now think that some supernovae channel some of their energy into jets of material traveling at near light speed. The GRB arises from shock waves within the jets. Click on the image for…
A Stripped-Down Globular
The Very Large Telescope (VLT) captures the central region of globular cluster M12 (also known as NGC 6218). VLT observations show that the cluster is extremely deficient in low-mass stars. The image covers an area of sky 3.5 arcminutes on each side, which translates to a physical size of 23…
Asteroids from the Kuiper Belt
Artist Lynette Cook depicts the Trojan asteroid 617 Patroclus and its companion, which has been tentatively named Menoetius. The two bodies are 122 and 112 kilometers (76 and 70 miles) wide, respectively, and orbit each other every 4.3 days. They are separated by about 680 km. Click on the image…
Surprise! Most Star Systems Are Single
An artist's conception of the outer giant planet orbiting the red-dwarf star Gliese 876. The inner planet is the tiny dot close to the star. Though redder and dimmer than the Sun, red dwarfs still have temperatures and surface brightnesses great enough to make them appear as dazzlingly white as…
Going Deep in Virgo
Astronomers found the boxed dwarf galaxy in the Virgo IntraCluster Stars (VICS) deep field. The image was taken by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys over the course of 37 orbits. The box is about 3,000 light-years across. The small red objects are background galaxies. You can click on all of…
Low-Mass Exoplanet
Astronomers have no direct information about the composition of the newly discovered exoplanet OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb. But based on its low temperature and its mass, the planet probably consists mostly of ice and rock with a thin atmosphere. This artist's rendering depicts the planet as an overgrown version of Pluto. Click on…
Spinning Pulsar Smashes Record
New pulsar picks-up first place as the fastest spinning object yet.
Vega Mystery Solved; Red Dwarf Mystery Grows
Hidden in plain sight. Familiar Vega, one of the brightest stars in the sky, has just yielded up a surprising secret about its true nature.Photo by Akira Fujii. Astronomers have finally figured out the long-standing mystery of why Vega, the fifth-brightest star in the night sky, is brighter than it…
