The Large Cloud of Magellan
10.05.2006

Portuguese navigator Fernando de Magellan and his crew had plenty of time to study the southern sky during the first circumnavigation of planet Earth. As a result, two fuzzy cloud-like objects easily visible for southern hemisphere skygazers are known as the Clouds of Magellan.

Palomar 12
18.02.2015

Palomar 12 was not born here. The stars of the globular cluster, first identified in the Palomar Sky Survey, are younger than those in other globular star clusters that roam the halo of our Milky Way Galaxy.

The Sun in Three Dimensions
24.04.2007

What does the Sun look like in all three spatial dimensions? To find out, NASA launched two STEREO satellites to perceive three dimensions on the Sun much like two eyes allow humans to perceive three dimensions on the Earth.

An Active Sunspot Viewed Sideways
2.04.2007

Why are there dark spots on the sun? Although noted for thousands of years, sunspots have been known for decades to be regions of the Sun that are slightly depressed and cooled by the Sun's complex and changing magnetic field.

A Jet from the Sun
10.12.2007

What powers the solar wind? Our Sun is known to emit a powerful wind of particles with gusts that can even affect astronauts and satellites orbiting Earth. The cause of the solar wind...

Milky Way and Aurora over Antarctica
27.07.2015

It has been one of the better skies of this long night. In parts of Antarctica, not only is it winter, but the Sun can spend weeks below the horizon. At China's Zhongshan Station, people sometimes venture out into the cold to photograph a spectacular night sky.

Hurricane Isabel Approaches
16.09.2003

Where will Hurricane Isabel go? One of the stronger storm systems of modern times appears headed for one the more populated seaboards on planet Earth -- the east coast of the USA. Hurricane Isabel, pictured yesteday as it passed east of the Bahamas, has flirted with category 5 status, the most powerful hurricane category.

La Nina Watch
20.07.1998

Goodbye El Niño. Hello La Niña? Scientists are watching to see if an evolving pool of relatively cool water in the mid-Pacific Ocean will develop into a full "La Niña". Over the past several months, the water temperature in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean has been doing a flip-flop.

The Large Cloud of Magellan
7.09.2023

The 16th century Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan and his crew had plenty of time to study the southern sky during the first circumnavigation of planet Earth. As a result, two fuzzy cloud-like objects easily...

Swift Launches
22.11.2004

Where do gamma ray bursts occur? To help find out, NASA launched the Swift satellite on Saturday, as pictured above. What Swift is designed to do better than any previous satellite is to quickly locate these enigmatic explosions in both sky position and distance.