Past and Current Front Page Pictures

A total lunar eclipse can be a spectacular sight. Perhaps you caught a glimpse of the total eclipse that occurred in the late summer of 2007. This image was captured using a basic digital camera through the eye piece of a small 16" telescope. Go here to learn more about lunar eclipses.

This picture shows one of the strangest moons in our solar system: the crater-pocked Hyperion. Hyperion orbits Saturn once every few weeks and measures a couple hundred kilometers across (similar in size to South Carolina). Unlike our Moon, which always keeps the same side facing Earth, Hyperion rotates in an unpredictable fashion. The craters of Hyperion are filled with a mysterious dark material, and the interior of the moon might be full of caverns. This picture was taken by the Cassini spacecraft, which is currently in orbit around Saturn.

This all sky map shows galaxies detected in the 2MASS survey colour coded by their distance from us, with blue being the nearest sources, through green to the most distance sources shown in red. Particularly prominent are the Virgo cluster (at top right, and the plane of the local supercluster; as well as the Pisces-Perseus supercluster at far left. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, blocks the view of external galaxies across the middle of the image.

On October 9th 1604 a new star was noticed in the sky which was brighter than all the other stars. This new star (nova in Greek) was actually a supernova explosion - the last stage of life for a star much more massive than our Sun. The astronomer Johannes Kepler first saw it on October 17th, and inspired by Tycho's work on SN 1572 began a study of the phenomena. 400 years later we can still see the remains of Kepler's supernova. This image shows a composite of observations from three of NASA's Great Observatories. Visible light from Hubble is shown in yellow. Red shows the infrared view from Spitzer, while blue and green show two different views from the Chandra observatory (harder and softer X-ray radiation respectively).

This image of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, was taken by the Huygens Probe after its descent through the thick nitrogen/methane atmosphere of the moon on January 14th 2005. The probe transmitted information for about 90 minutes before its batteries died and has given us a unique view of the landscape of Titan, which was previously obscured by the thick atmosphere.

Saturn, the second largest planet in our solar system, is currently being explored by the Cassini-Huygens mission. The spacecraft was launched in October 1997. The Huygens Probe will begin its journey to the moon Titan in December 2004. View more spectacular images of Saturn and its rings here.

The Very Large Array is a radio telescope inteferometer on the plains of San Augustin in New Mexico, USA. The Y shaped configuration of 27 telescopes allows astronomers to synthesize a telescope up to 36 kilometers in diameter at frequencies from 74 MHz to 86 GHz. Each telescope is 25 meters across, and weighs 230 tons! Read more about the VLA and its amazing discoveries.

Comet NEAT (C/2001 Q4) is currently visible with the naked eye under very dark sky conditions. Check out the sky maps to locate it: Map 1, Map 2. More great comet pictures are available at the NASA/JPL Comet Observation Home Page and at Cometography.com. The comet was found as part of the Near Earth Asteroid Tracking Program.

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field provides us the deepest image of the universe ever taken in visible light. It took over 11 days of continuous observing using the Hubble Space Telescope. In this image alone there are nearly 10,000 galaxies, yet it covers only about 1/10th the area of the full moon. If Astronomers wanted to survey the whole sky to this depth it would take almost 1 million years of continuous observations!

This tiny reproduction does not do the HUDF credit! Look at a larger image, or use this Java Based viewer to navigate through the field.

Once the 2nd of the Mars Rovers, Opportunity, climbed out of the small crater it settled in after landing, it was able to look around the plains and take this picture of its own backshell (left) and parachute (right). These parts of the lander were jettisoned, just before the rover bounced to a standstill on the surface of Mars on January 25th 2004. For more images, check out the Mars Exploration Rover website.

The first of two NASA Mars rovers has landed safely in Gusev crater! The rover, called Spirit, will use a suite of instruments to study the composition of the Martian surface and look for evidence of past water. This color image was taken by the panoramic camera (Pancam), which sits at the top of the rover's tall mast. Pancam is the highest resolution camera ever sent to the surface of Mars: it is equivalent to a human eye with 20/20 vision and has an angular resolution over three times higher than the Mars Pathfinder cameras. For more images, check out the Mars Exploration Rover website.

On October 28, 2003, one of the largest solar flares ever recorded sent a stream of high energy particles directly toward Earth, resulting in auroras that could be seen at low latitudes. A second flare led to auroras on the night of the 30th. This picture of the aurora was taken on Oct. 30, 2003 by Brian Kent, one of the Ask an Astronomer team members, at the Hartung-Boothroyd Observatory outside Ithaca. The Space Weather website has information about recent solar activity and can give you advance notice on when the aurora might be visible at your location.

This image shows the launch of the Shenzhou 5 spacecraft which took China's first taikonaut into space on Oct 15 2003. With this launch China became only the 3rd nation (after the Soviet Union and the US) to independently launch a human into space. To find out more check out the space.com coverage.

The Hubble Space Telescope took this image of Mars during its opposition in 2001. At this time Mars was the closest it had been to Earth since 1988. Opposition happens roughly every two Earth years, when the Earth, Mars and the Sun line up as Earth overtakes Mars. This year's opposition happened on August 28th 2003, and this time Mars was even closer - in fact the closest it has been for almost 60,000 years! There is now a fleet of spacecraft on the way to Mars, taking advantage of this close pass, and Earth based observers will get the best view of Mars for years to come.

This image of the Earth was put together using data from several satellites (GOES, SeaWiFS and POES) along with a USGS elevation model. The vertical relief has been increased by 50 times to make it visible, while the colors have been enhanced to show heavy vegetation as green and sparse vegetation as yellow. The image of the Moon (top left) was also reconstructed from GOES data and is shown as it might look in the background of a real image of the Earth.

This image of the Tadpole Galaxy, taken with the Hubble Space Telescope's new Advanced Camera for Surveys, shows what can happen when galaxies collide. The gravitational forces of a collision pulled gas off the Tadpole into a tidal tail that stretches for 280,000 light-years. Blue areas in the tail are regions of new star formation. Perhaps the most remarkable thing is that there are thousands of other, more distant, galaxies visible in the image! Be sure to check out the full sized version at the HST site.

Galaxies are the building blocks of the universe. M100 is a particularly beautiful specimen, a grand design spiral galaxy similar to our own.