News

Hubble astronomers have uncovered, for the first time, a population of infant stars in the Milky Way satellite galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC, visible to the naked eye in the southern constellation Tucana), located 210,000 light-years away.

One of the largest Hubble Space Telescope images ever made of a complete galaxy is being unveiled today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in San Diego, Calif.

Comet Macholz Swings past M45 Pleiades Cluster

A supermassive black hole generated this eruption by growing at a remarkable rate. This discovery shows the enormous appetite of large black holes, and the profound impact they have on their surroundings.

In the image, the face-on spiral galaxy NGC 6946 is ablaze with colorful galactic fireworks fueled by the births and deaths of multitudes of brilliant, massive stars. Astronomers suspect that massive stellar giants have been ending their lives in supernova explosions throughout NGC 6946 in rapid-fire fashion for tens of millions of years...

80's musical references aside, this week's review contest winner takes a look at the Aries Chromacor to see what can be done about that nagging purple fringe music playing havoc with your refractor views.

Scientists have identified a water-signature mineral called goethite in bedrock that the NASA's Mars rover Spirit examined in the "Columbia Hills," one of the mission's surest indicators yet for a wet history on Spirit's side of Mars.

Commentary on a current court case by Edward J. Larson, teacher of history of science and law at the University of Georgia and author of "Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory" (Random House, 2004)

The Tarantula is situated 170 000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) in the southern sky and is clearly visible to the naked eye as a large milky patch. Astronomers believe that this smallish irregular galaxy is currently going through a violent period in its life...

When the Huygens spacecraft makes its plunge into the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan on January 14, radio telescopes of the National Science Foundation's National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) will help extract the maximum possible amount of irreplaceable information...

The European Space Agency's Huygens probe successfully detached from NASA's Cassini orbiter today to begin a three-week journey to Saturn's moon Titan...

Report by Don Yeomans, Steve Chesley and Paul Chodas, NASA's Near Earth Object Program Office December 23, 2004 with a December 24th Update...

... from all of us here on the AstroMart staff...

This Near Earth Asteroid is currently swinging past us and will be at its closest on Christmas eve at only 5 Lunar distances.

ST. LOUIS, Dec. 22, 2004 – The Boeing [NYSE: BA] Delta IV Heavy made its first flight today achieving the major test objectives despite placing its demonstration satellite in a lower than expected orbit.