Astronomy news, commentary, and opinions

I was just sitting on my deck a few days ago admiring the Moon when a thin layer of clouds crossed it's path, I used the binoculars to see the effect they were having on it, and it looked beautiful.

A week ago or so, I mentioned the plight of the Mars Rover Spirit.  Spirit is stuck and to make things worse the thought at the time was Spirit might be “belly hung” on a rock.Images just release confirmed that to be the case, although it doesn’t look that bad, Spirit is what, about 184 [...]

Ok I admit, they got me.  I was looking around and ran across this image of the shadow of the Saturn moon Tethys.  I exclaimed HA!. . . . then I read the caption.  It turns out not to be a goof, and instead is a pretty amazing shot and since it owes [...]

The European Southern Observatory put this excellent image of Centaurus A up on their site and they have some wallpaper sizes too, check them out here.  Be sure to click on the image and look for the areas of star formation, that will look like clusters of blue stars.This is on my list of things [...]

A little over a month ago one of the crew members aboard the International Space Station took this very interesting picture of Lake Baikal, Russia.The very intriguing pattern is explained below.Read the press release from NASA HQ here:A circle in thin ice in Lake Baikal, Russia is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition [...]

A cosmic ghost shows in X-rays and is captured by Chandra.   I’ll let them explain.The Chandra press release:This is a composite image showing a small region of the Chandra Deep Field North. Shown in blue is a deep image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and in red is an image from the Multi-Element Radio Linked [...]

While surfing through the Guardian’s collection of the 20 best Hubble images, among many that I’ve seen and used before I came across this remarkable one that was completely new to meBesides being quite stunning (and reminding me of one of the Star-Trek movies), I was struck by the caption, which reminded me thatA delicate [...]

While surfing through the Guardian’s collection of the 20 best Hubble images, among many that I’ve seen and used before I came across this remarkable one that was completely new to meBesides being quite stunning (and reminding me of one of the Star-Trek movies), I was struck by the caption, which reminded me thatA delicate [...]

"We are in the midst of millions and millions of suns-we are in the jewel house of the maker, and our soul mounts up, up to that wonderful creator, and we adore the hand that scattered the jewels of heaven so lavishly in this one vast region." Edward Emerson Barnard. There is just something about viewing our Milky Way Galaxy that invokes a sense of awe, so majestic, so huge. What can I possibly say or put into words that hasn't been already said or googled.

Cool!Rare radio supernova is nearest supernova in five yearsBy Robert Sanders, Media Relations | 27 May 2009BERKELEY — The chance discovery last month of a rare radio supernova - an exploding star seen only at radio wavelengths and undetected by optical or X-ray telescopes - underscores the promise of new, more sensitive radio surveys to [...]