Sylvia, Romulus and Remus
18.08.2005

Discovered in 1866, main belt asteroid 87 Sylvia lies 3.5 AU from the Sun, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Also shown in recent years to be one in a growing list...

MESSENGER s Last Day on Mercury
1.05.2015

The first to orbit Mercury, the MESSENGER spacecraft came to rest on this region of Mercury's surface yesterday. Constructed from MESSENGER image and laser altimeter data, the scene looks north over the northeastern rim of the broad, lava filled Shakespeare basin.

Star Clusters M35 and NGC 2158
10.05.2021

Clusters of stars can be near or far, young or old, diffuse or compact. The featured image shows two quite contrasting open star clusters in the same field. M35, on the lower left...

Magnetar In The Sky
2.10.1998

Indicated on this infrared image of the galactic center region is the position of SGR 1900+14 - the strongest known magnet in the galaxy. SGR 1900+14 is believed to be a city-sized, spinning, super-magnetic neutron star, or Magnetar. How strong is a Magnetar's magnetic field?

Coronal Inflow
29.11.2001

The active Sun has thrown a lot our way lately, including storms of particles streaming outward in the solar wind and clouds of plasma which triggered awesome auroral displays. Still, a growing body...

Satellites Collide in Low Earth Orbit
18.02.2009

How often do satellites collide? Although minuscule space debris may strike any satellite on occasion, the first known collision between time two full satellites occurred only last week. Even though thousands of satellites have been launched, the low collision rate is caused by the great vastness of space.

Two Tails of Comet Lulin
25.02.2009

Go outside tonight and see Comet Lulin. From a dark location, you should need only a good star map and admirable perseverance -- although wide-field binoculars might help. Yesterday, Comet Lulin passed its closest to Earth, so that the comet will remain near its brightest over the next few days.

VB 10: A Large Planet Orbiting a Small Star
3.06.2009

Can a planet be as large as the star that it orbits? Recent observations have discovered that nearby Van Biesbroeck's star might have just such a large planet. Although VB 10 lies only...

Hanny s Voorwerp
10.02.2011

Hanny's Voorwerp, Dutch for "Hanny's Object", is enormous, about the size of our own Milky Way Galaxy. Glowing strongly in the greenish light produced by ionized oxygen atoms, the mysterious voorwerp is below spiral galaxy IC 2497 in this view from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Flying Over Plutos Moon Charon
22.02.2016

Given some poetic license, there is now scientific evidence that hell has frozen over. To start, Greek mythology holds that Charon is the ferryman of the underworld. Next, recent analysis of data taken...