Technological advances over the years have made astrophotography & CCD imaging more accessible than ever to interested amateurs. Those willing to sacrifice the time, effort, capital (and sleep), while maintaining the necessary intestinal fortitude to tackle a substantially long learning curve inevitably reap the sweet fruits of their labor by producing breathtaking imagery. As if […]

If I didn’t know better, I’d swear the fine folks at Cassini were determined to keep me jumping through hoops. It’s proving quite a challenge to stay on top of the magnificent imagery returned with such an impressive degree of frequency.
In Time for Saturn, I’d already selected my favorite Cassini releases for 2005. After that […]

Image Credit: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute (JHUAPL/SwRI)

Artist’s concept of the New Horizons spacecraft during a planned encounter with Pluto and its moon, Charon. The craft’s miniature cameras, radio science experiment, ultraviolet and infrared spectrometers and space plasma experiments would characterize the global geology and geomorphology of Pluto and Charon, map […]

What an intriguing landscape! Saturn’s moon Tethys is relatively small, a mere 659 miles in diameter, and orbits the ringed gas giant at a distance of over 180,000 mi. As evidenced by an increasing number of similar fantastic images though, great things do indeed come in small packages.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Image details are in […]

Now this came as a welcome surprise to me.

On February 15, 2004, Chandra observed X-rays produced by an aurora in the north-polar region of Earth. The X-rays, superimposed on a model of Earth, are seen as the violet-yellow-red arc stretching from northern Canada on the upper left to the Hudson Bay on the lower right. […]

Gorgeous central Texas sunset photographed by yours truly, December 28th. This lovely sequence ended a relatively persistent bout of bland twilit evenings. All images taken manually with Canon 20D and EF 17-40mm f/4L lens @ f/5.6, ISO 100.

1/80″; 23mm

1/100″, 23mm

1/125″, 40mm

1/125″, 40mm

1/80″, 27mm

1/80″, 40mm

1/40″, 40mm
If you haven’t guessed by now, I’m a huge sucker for […]

Bad media alert!

Illustration Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)
This press release from last week (which I posted about here) details the Hubble Telescope’s discovery of two new Uranian moons as well as a pair of newly observed rings around the distant gas giant. Unfortunately, a syndicated news story has circulated and been reproduced without […]