Tag Archives | space

The far side of the moon, often mistakenly called the “dark side” though it receives just as much sunlight as the near side, as imaged by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University Sunday’s rare “supermoon” total lunar eclipse has prompted greater discussion of the moon — and those discussions sometimes involve persistent lunar myths. […]

This image of Mars was captured by India’s Mangalyaan orbiter, which arrived at the Red Planet in September 2014.Credit: Indian Space Research Organisation India’s first-ever Mars probe is now one year into its historic mission, and it’s still going strong. The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) spacecraft, also known as Mangalyaan, arrived at the Red Planet […]

NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft, shown here in an artist’s illustration, celebrated one year in Mars orbit on Sept. 21, 2015.Credit: NASA/Goddard NASA’s newest Mars probe has now been circling the Red Planet for a year. The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft arrived in orbit around the Red Planet on Sept. 21, 2014, 10 months […]

Luc Jamet (France) captured the total solar eclipse of March 20, 2015, from Svalbard, Norway — one of only two habitable locations able to witness totality — just 16 seconds after it began.Credit: © Luc Jamet The winning images from the Royal Observatory Greenwich’s Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition were announced last week, […]

Sebastian Voltmer (Germany) snapped a close encounter between our neighbor Mars and Comet C/2013 A1, AKA Siding Spring, as it passed through the night…Read More » sky on Oct. 22, 2014. To obtained Voltmer used the SBIG STL11000M camera at Siding Spring Observatory, Coonabarabran, New South Wales, Australia.   Less « To source

The rare “supermoon” total lunar eclipse on Sunday (Sept. 27) will mark the end of a great eclipse-viewing era. The Sunday evening eclipse is the last in a “tetrad” — a term for four total lunar eclipses happening at six-month intervals — that has been stunning skywatchers across the United States for the past 18 […]

Cislunar Explorer, a 3U cubesat a team at Cornell University is developing for a NASA-funded Lunar Derby.Credit: Cislunar Explorer WASHINGTON — Five teams, ranging from university students to a group of engineers dispersed across the country, received $20,000 each from NASA in the first milestone of a competition to develop deep space cubesat technologies. The […]

This image shows the gas density distribution of one instance in time of the model starburst galaxy, spanning approximately 650,000 light-years across. Extreme star formation in the central galaxy is fueled by significant gas inflows, rendering it extremely bright.Credit: Desika Narayanan The mystery of how the brightest galaxies in the universe form may soon be […]

This Sunday night moon observers have the chance to see a lunar triple treat, weather permitting. First, the moon will be full, as it always must be for a lunar eclipse to occur. This is a special full moon, because this is the Harvest Moon. Because the angle of the ecliptic —the path the moon […]