Comet ISON was discovered in September 2012 by Russian astronomers Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok. They are part of a night sky survey program called the International Scientific Optical Network (ISON). The comet was named after this program. Comet ISON will encounter the Sun on November 28, 2013.
The Hubble Space Telescope recently captured this amazing image of a star nearing the end of it’s life. The above image is of a star known as U Camelopardalis. It is located near the North Celestial Pole and can be found in the constellation Camelopardalis – also known as The Giraffe.
About 150,000 light years away, a cosmic collision is producing a twisted galaxy with a bright smooth central core. In April of 2001, Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 was trained on a galaxy located in the southern constellation Hydra. This galaxy is known as ESO 510-G13.
Keep your eyes on the night sky tonight and tomorrow night. The annual Perseid Meteor Shower peaks on August 11 and August 12 in 2012. Expect to see around 60 meteors per hour this year. Viewing should be pretty good because the moon will not enter the picture until the early hours of the morning.
NASA announced today that the Curiosity Rover made a successful landing on Mars! This landing was the first of it’s kind for NASA. It combined a heat shield, a parachute and a rocket crane designed to hover over the landing site and lower the rover by cable to the Martian surface. Talk about some crazy great engineering!