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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Looking east-northeast roughly 30 minutes before sunrise tomorrow, August 22nd. The green line in the image represents the ecliptic.
While the IAU continues to mull over what exactly it means to be a planet and whether or not Pluto will make the cut, Tuesday morning’s sky will serve up a lovely arrangement of celestial bodies whose […]

A friendly observing reminder: this week marks a good opportunity to catch a glimpse of elusive Mercury in the morning as it shares the stage with neighboring Venus. On the Thursday the 10th and Friday the 11th, Mercury will hover just below its brighter counterpart as the two reach roughly 2° of separation. (Map, […]

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has posted a nifty new slideshow highlighting imagery returned by the Spitzer Space Telescope. This is my favorite of the batch; a composite view of M82 (a.k.a. The Cigar Galaxy) which combines observations from a trio of venerable orbital observatories: Hubble, Spitzer, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Image Credits: NASA, JPL-Caltech, STScI, […]