Cerro Tololo Trails
21.10.2016

Early one moonlit evening car lights left a wandering trail along the road to the Chilean Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. Setting stars left the wandering trails in the sky. The serene view toward the mountainous horizon was captured in a telephoto timelapse image and video taken from nearby Cerro Pachon, home to Gemini South.

1998 Leonid Fireball
11.11.1999

Will this be the year? Last year's Leonid meteor shower did not produce the meteor storm many had hoped for. Still, it put on a dazzling show with many bright fireball meteors. For example, this Leonid fireball, photographed through light clouds, eerily flashed across the skies of Monteromano, Italy on November 17, 1998.

Nova Over Iran
18.02.2007

A bright new nova is being studied by astronomers. The officially dubbed Nova Scorpii 2007 has become so bright in recent days that it is now visible to the unaided eye. Adventurous early morning sky enthusiasts should look in dark skies toward the constellation of the Scorpion, just below Jupiter and Antares.

Breaking Distant Light
19.09.2020

In the distant universe, time appears to run slowly. Since time-dilated light appears shifted toward the red end of the spectrum (redshifted), astronomers are able to use cosmological time-slowing to help measure vast distances in the universe.

Comet Between Fireworks and Lightning
4.02.2007

Sometimes the sky itself is the best show in town. On January 26, people from Perth, Australia gathered on a local beach to watch a sky light up with delights near and far. Nearby, fireworks exploded as part of Australia Day celebrations. On the far right, lightning from a thunderstorm flashed in the distance.

On the Origin of Gold
14.10.2017

Where did the gold in your jewelry originate? No one is completely sure. The relative average abundance in our Solar System appears higher than can be made in the early universe, in stars, and even in typical supernova explosions.

The Crab Nebula in Blue and White
11.07.2000

The Crab Nebula is a complex shell of expanding gas. The Crab Nebula formed from a star that was seen to explode in a supernova about 1000 years ago. This two color composite image taken with the WIYN 3.5-meter telescope shows in great detail filamentary structure of the glowing hydrogen gas.

Globular Cluster M2
11.06.2001

Beneath the south pole of our Milky Way Galaxy lies a ball of over 100,000 stars. M2, the second object on Charles Messier's eighteenth century list of bright diffuse sky objects...

Moon Occults Saturn
8.05.1999

On September 18, 1997, many stargazers in the U. S. were able to watch a lovely early morning lunar occultation as a bright Moon passed in front of Saturn. Using a 1.2 meter reflector, astronomer Kris Stanek had an excellent view of this dream-like event from the Whipple Observatory atop Arizona's Mount Hopkins.

Arecibo Telescope Collapse
8.12.2020

This was one great scientific instrument. Starting in 1963, the 305-meters across Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico USA reigned as the largest single-dish radio telescope in the world for over 50 years. Among numerous...