By now you may have heard the report that as many as 1/4 of all the sun-like stars in the Milky Way may have Earth-like worlds. Briefly, astronomers studied 166 stars within 80 light years of Earth, and did a survey of the planets they found orbiting them. Continue reading
This is a fairly old picture of the Sun since it has been taken on September 14, 1997 by the space-based SOHO observatory. It represents a massive solar eruption. Such a phenomenon occurs when magnetic fields arching from the solar … Continue reading
This week stargazing calendar lacks the excitement of last week (a comet and a meteor shower), but there are still a few events worth seeing: October 26, 2010: The star Aldebaran, the orange “eye” of the Taurus constellation will line … Continue reading
The Director of NASA’s Ames Center, Pete Worden has announced an initiative to move space flight to the next level. This plan, dubbed the “Hundred Year Starship,” has received $100,000 from NASA and $1 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Continue reading
Mercury looks so much like our Moon, doesn’t it? 🙂 This photo of the unusual Rembrandt impact basin was taken by the robotic MESSENGER spacecraft in 2008. The Rembrandt impact basin spans over 700 kilometers and is 4 billion years … Continue reading
This is a short calendar of this week’s major astronomical events you should witness: October 19, 2010: Jupiter will be positioned below the Moon and will remain there throughout the night. The giant planet will appear like a brilliant star. … Continue reading
This picture of cloudy Venus wast taken by the Galileo spacecraft. Venus is very similar to Earth in size and mass, so it is sometimes referred to as Earth’s sister or twin planet, but the resemblance ends there. Venus is … Continue reading
Today I downloaded the Google Sky app on my Android smartphone. So when it finally got dark today, I went out stargazing to try it out. I find this application really useful as it follows the movement of the phone … Continue reading
Some time ago, I posted an image of the Copernicus Crater for the Astronomy Picture of the Week. Now I stumbled upon an amazing painting by Marshal T. Savage depicting his vision of a future colony on the Moon. It’s the … Continue reading
Copernicus is one of the largest lunar impact craters on the visible hemisphere of the Moon. It was named after the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. The crater is estimated to have formed about 800 million years ago during the Copernican … Continue reading
