If you love seeing spectacular celestial bodies getting close to one another, then get ready! Just after sunset on February 25, 2012 there will be an amazing winter planetary alignment. It really doesn’t get any easier than this my fellow space fans. Here are your instructions: when the sun goes down on February 25th, put your winter coat on (optional), go outside, take a deep breath, look to the west and say WOW!
There probably isn’t a nebula more recognizable than the Horsehead Nebula. Located in the Constellation Orion and part of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, this famous nebula has been capturing the imagination of astronomers for years. Let’s take a close up look at this nebula.
You know….NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has taken some pretty amazing pictures, but this has to be one of the best. This image, released on December 22, 2011 shows Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, almost eclipsing Saturn’s fourth-largest moon, Dione. Fantastic!
How many galaxies can you count in this picture? This image of a barred spiral galaxy (NGC 3259) was released this week by the ESA/Hubble Team. What strikes me about this image is the sheer number of galaxies that appear to be surrounding this beautiful barred spiral galaxy. It’s almost as if the barred spiral galaxy is adrift in a sea of galaxies.
I was browsing through images from the Hubble Space Telescope today and came across this beauty. Known as SNR 0509, the giant red gas bubble shown in the image above is the remnant of a violent supernova explosion. It was found in the Large Magellanic Cloud which is a small galaxy that lies about 160,000 light years away from Earth.