SUNSET: 
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.…
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…
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…
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:…
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 /…
The Best Transiting Exoplanet Yet
Just 0.3° due east of the familiar Dumbbell Nebula, M27 in Vulpecula, shines the 7.7-magnitude star HD 189733 with a very hot Jupiter in close orbit around it. Binoculars are all you need to see the star, a pale orange K dwarf 63 light-years away. The star is at right…
Fast Cosmic Blasts Linked to Binary Mergers
Artist Dana Berry depicts the gamma-ray burst (GRB) that occurs when a black hole swallows a neutron star. Click on the image above to view an animation of a neutron star falling into a black hole, triggering a short GRB (it might take a minute or two for the movie…
Astro Image in the News:
Giant African Scope Sees First Light
Courtesy SALT. On September 1st the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) — the largest single telescope in the Southern Hemisphere — recorded its first light from the stars. Modeled after the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory in western Texas, SALT's hexagonal 10-by-11-meter mirror consists of 91 hexagonal segments and has…
Astro Image in the News:
Dragon in the Sky
Courtesy Gemini Observatory. Famous nebulae such as the North America (NGC 7000) and Swan (M17) nebulae look more or less like the objects they are named after. In keeping with that tradition, astronomers might consider assigning the moniker "the Dragon Nebula" to NGC 6559 in Sagittarius. As shown in this…
The Whirlpool's Supernova Surprises
German amateur astronomers Werner Klug and Hermann von Eiff captured SN 2005cs (arrowed) on July 9th, a little more than a week after its discovery. The supernova flared in the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51).Courtesy Werner Klug and Hermann von Eiff. On June 28th, German amateur Wolfgang Kloehr discovered a 14th-magnitude supernova…
An Asteroid with Two Moons
An artist depicts 87 Sylvia and its two known moons. The main-belt asteroid is the first minor planet known to possess two satellites. The exact shapes of the three bodies are unknown, but 87 Sylvia is elongated.Courtesy European Southern Observatory. When NASA's Galileo spacecraft flew by the asteroid 243 Ida…
Closing In on Gamma-Ray Bursts
This illustration shows two neutron stars spiraling toward each other. When the two compact objects merge, they form a black hole. According to theory, two short-lived jets shoot away from the black hole, generating a short gamma-ray burst.Courtesy NASA. Thanks to the Swift and HETE-2 satellites, astronomers have just gotten…
The Survivor Planet
A deep image of the Gliese 86 system taken at the Very Large Telescope in Chile reveals a faint white dwarf (left) about 21 astronomical units from the overexposed primary star (right). A planet orbits the primary, which proves that planets can survive a nearby star's evolution through the red-giant…
Triple-Star Planet
Artist Robert Hurt depicts the Jupiter-mass planet (upper left) in the HD 188753 system as seen from a hypothetical moon. The planet orbits the bright, yellow star that is setting behind the distant peaks on the right. Two companion stars, which form a tight binary in the far background, lie…
One Big Ball of Rock
This illustration, by exoplanet researcher Gregory Laughlin, attempts to be 'at least marginally scientifically accurate,' he says. The planet's night side should be so hot that it glows from dull red to bright orange-hot, depending on how deep we see into its expected refractory cloud layers. 'It's much hotter than,…
Amateur Detects New Transiting Exoplanet
This artist's rendition shows the size of HD 149026b as it crosses the face of its Sunlike star. It blocks only 1/300 of the star's light, barely enough to be detectable by amateur astronomers.Painting by Lynette Cook. A day before an international team announced a new transiting planet orbiting the…
Fomalhaut's Kuiper Belt
This image from the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys, taken in visible light through a red filter, reveals a belt of icy dust grains surrounding Fomalhaut. The belt extends from 133 to 158 astronomical units from the star, and appears to have a sharp cutoff at both the…
Prospecting for Martian Ice
Scientists combined several images from Mars Express to create this 3-dimensional image of a 35-kilometer-wide (22-mile-wide) unnamed crater in the far northern hemisphere. A patch of water ice sits on the crater floor. The colors are very close to natural, but the vertical relief is exaggerated three times. Due to…
Pluto Reexamined
This true-color map shows how Pluto's surface varies in reflectivity. Eliot Young and his colleagues created this map from data obtained at the McDonald Observatory in Texas during periods when Pluto was being partially eclipsed by its moon Charon. Because the two worlds are tidally locked, the map only shows…
Opportunity Unstuck
One of Opportunity's cameras acquired this image shortly after ground controllers freed the rover from a small sand dune.Courtesy NASA / JPL.
