These stunning views of Comet McNaught (C/2006 P1) were captured by its discoverer, Rob McNaught, from the Sliding Spring Observatory in Australia (roughly 400 km Northwest of Sydney). The images were taken on January 20th after sunset. The 90-second (top) and 50-second (bottom) exposures beautifully highlight the wispy remnants of the comet’s dust tail.

Observers in […]

The ISS in its present configuration, photographed from Shuttle Discovery on December 19th, 2006 during the STS-116 mission. An incredible view from some 220 statute miles above our big blue marble.
Since construction of the ISS has resumed in full after the setbacks suffered by the Shuttle program (e.g. Columbia accident, previous issues with foam shedding […]

This phenomenal shot of Saturn was released by the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS) back on October 11th, 2006. The mosaic consists of 165 images from Cassini’s Wide Angle Camera, assembled from a three-hour observing stint on September 15th when Saturn shielded the spacecraft from the Sun’s brilliance. Visit this page to […]

No, not that kind.
The rest of the astronomical world is raving about Comet McNaught (C/2006 P1), but I’ve had to live vicariously through others for this one. A string of cloudy evenings has foiled my observing plans for the last several days, and just as the comet was reaching its visual peak for we Northern […]

(6 March 2002) — Astronaut John M. Grunsfeld, payload commander, waves at a crewmate inside Space Shuttle Columbia’s crew cabin during a brief break in work on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in the cargo bay of the shuttle during the STS-109 mission’s third space walk.
Courtesy of the New York Times I just learned that […]

When Google Earth initially debuted I viewed it as a nifty toy of sorts, in a “Cool, I can see my house from here!” sort of way. Like many, I’d played around with the program in its infancy and had some fun peeking at famous sites from a bird’s eye view, but got bored with […]

The folks at the Chandra X-Ray Observatory recently held a contest on their web site, allowing viewers to vote for their favorite Chandra imagery spanning the telescope’s observations to date. (Even though the voting has officially ended, you can still make your picks if you’re so inclined.) Of the 48 nominees, here’s the final […]