All Categories
Retrieved 1 to 10 (of 832 total) images | Next Images » | Last Images »
| High-Flying Astronomy (May 4, 2009) |
|
 |
|
A balloon-borne telescope takes a look at the universe in this artist's concept. NASA launches several balloon missions per year to study cosmic rays, antimatter, the afterglow of the Big Bang, and many other objects and phenomena that are difficult to see from the surface, through Earth's atmosphere. [NASA/ARCADE/Roen Kelly] For more information, see our May 4 radio program. |
| Neptunian Discovery (May 1, 2009) |
|
|
|
|
Gerard Kuiper discovered the second known moon of the planet Neptune on May 1, 1949. Kuiper, who was director of both McDonald and Yerkes observatories, made the discovery with McDonald's 82-inch telescope. The best view of Nereid came from the Voyager 2 spacecraft, which flew past Neptune in 1989. Even its best images, though, showed only a small, fuzzy blob of lights. [McDonald Observatory (2); NASA/JPL] For more information, see our May 1 program. |
| Unexpected Nursery (April 27, 2009) |
|
|
|
|
Dozens of hot, young stars surround a supermassive black hole in the core of a galaxy in this artist's concept, mingling with many more old, red stars. Recent research with a large radio telescope reveals that stars are being born near the black hole in the center of our own Milky Way galaxy. [NASA/ESA/A. Schaller (for STScI)] For more information, see our April 27 radio program. |
| Deadly Moon (April 18, 2009) |
|
|
|
|
Patches of hot lava and sulfur-rich minerals fill a volcano known as Tupan Patera on Io, one of the moons of Jupiter. This and hundreds of other volcanoes belch gas far above Io's surface. Jupiter's powerful magnetic field sweeps up some of the gas and gives it an electric charge, adding to the giant planet's deadly radiation belts. This volcano, which was photographed by the Galileo spacecraft, is about 50 miles wide. The dark patches are actually warm molten rock, while the red and yellow contain various mixtures of sulfur, which may condense as volcanic ash and gas falls back to the surface. [NASA/JP/Univ. Arizona] For more information, see our April 18 program. |
| Neighbors (April 14, 2009) |
|
|
|
|
Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to our own, is the bright yellow-orange star at left center in this view of the southern sky. The system consists of three stars, two of which are similar to the Sun. The third star, Proxima Centauri, is much smaller and fainter than the other two, but it is the closest of the three to Earth, at just 4.2 light-years. The bluish star to the upper right of Alpha Centauri is Beta Centauri, the second-brightest star of the southern constellation Centaurus. The Southern Cross forms a kite shape at the right of the image. [Claus Madsen/European Southern Observatory] For more information, see our April 14 program. |
| A Big Shiner (April 11, 2009) |
|
|
|
|
A lane of light-absorbing dust creates a "black eye" for M64, a spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices. The dust may come from the scattered remnants of another galaxy that rammed into M64 millions of years ago. The tiny grains of dust absorb the light of the stars behind them, blocking the view of billions of the galaxy's stars. [NASA/Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI)] For more information, see our April 11 program. |
| Big Hand for a Little Star (April 6, 2009) |
|
|
|
|
'Fingers' of hot gas around a dead star are passing energy to a distant gas cloud in this X-ray image from the orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory. The entire complex is powered by a neutron star -- the corpse of an exploded star. The neutron star, known by its catalog number, PSR B1509-58, is only a few miles in diameter, but several times as massive as the Sun. The neutron star is embedded in the bright blue knot at center, but is far too small to see. It spins rapidly and generates a titanic magnetic field. These processes energize wisps of gas, forming the hand-like structure around the gas. Some of the energy flows into the more-distant gas cloud, making it glow in X-rays as well. In this image, blue represents the most powerful X-rays, while red and orange are less powerful. The structure is about 17,000 light-years away, and spans 150 light-years. [NASA/CXC/SAO/P.Slane, et al.] |
| Making Tracks (April 2, 2009) |
|
|
|
|
A stuck wheel on the Spirit rover dug a deep furrow in the Columbia Hills of Mars, revealing a white material just below the surface. The material may be rich in silica, indicating that it formed in a warm, wet environment in the distant past. Spirit has discovered that the Columbia Hills were once much like Yellowstone National Park, with geysers, hot springs, and explosions of steam from below the surface. The landscape looks distorted because this is an extreme wide-angle view from the rover's rear navigation camera. One of the rover's six wheels died months ago, so the rover now moves backwards, dragging the dead wheel through the soil. [NASA/JPL/Caltech] |
| Full Power (March 27, 2009) |
|
|
|
|
The International Space Station floats above Earth in this view from space shuttle Discovery as it departed the station on March 25. Discovery's astronauts installed a new set of solar panels, giving the station enough power to increase its crew from three members to six and to boost the amount of research the crew can perform. A Soyuz rocket lifted off from Kazakhstan soon after Discovery's departure, carrying the 19th ISS crew. [NASA] |
| Galactic Turmoil (March 23, 2009) |
|
|
|
|
Great filaments of stars and gas stream out of the center of two merging black holes in this image of the Medusa galaxies. Medusa's 'hair' streams directly above the center of the merging galaxies, shown in blue. A bright blue dot above the center of the galaxies shows a disk of superhot gas around a black hole. The image combines a visual view from Hubble Space Telescope with an X-ray image from Chandra X-Ray Observatory. The X-rays, which are produced by exceptionally hot objects, are represented in blue. The merging galaxies are about 110 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major, the great bear. [NASA/CXC/ESA/STScI/Univ of Iowa/P.Kaaret et al] |
Retrieved 1 to 10 (of 832 total) images | Next Images » | Last Images »
|
  |
Contact StarDate | About StarDate | Friends of McDonald | Sign up for Sky Tips
