Space Station Threshold

It's time to take a look back to what was happening 210 years ago on the night of September 9th. Sir William Herschel was at the eyepiece of his telescope in Slough. While he was viewing in real time, what he was viewing occurred more than 10 million years ago - the fireworks [...]

A strange Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) has been discovered orbiting the Sun in the wrong direction. The object, designated as 2008 KV42 but nicknamed Drac (after Dracula, as vampires are fabled to have the ability to walk on walls), has a highly inclined orbit of 103.5°. Drac is a rarity as very few objects in [...]

Greetings, fellow Skywatchers! The weekend has arrived at last and with it… more lunar challenge studies. Are you ready to dance with the pie-eyed piper as we seek out Piccolomini? You'll find it to the southwest of the shallow ring of Fracastorius on Mare Nectaris' southern shore. How about seeing double as we [...]

According to AAVSO Special Notice #122 prepared by M. Templeton, there's a possible new WZ Sge-type dwarf nova located in Andromeda. The alert was posted yesterday and intial observations were sent in within the last 48 hours. For more information, read on… (...)Read the rest of Observing Alert: Possible New Dwarf Nova In [...]

As the very last of the summer flowers bloom in the dusty grasses of the northern hemisphere, so a cosmic flower blooms in the dusty star fields of the northern constellations. While this image conjures up a vision of an iris delicately opening its 6 light year wide petals some 1300 light years [...]

The LSST, or the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope is a large survey telescope being constructed in northern Chile. When operational in 2015, it will be the widest, fastest, deepest eye of the new digital age, providing timelapse digital imaging across the entire night sky every three days, mapping the structure of our dynamic universe [...]

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers… It's New Moon weekend and what better way to celebrate than to fly with the Swan and the Eagle?! While we're out, we'll drop by the Trifid, check into this week's upcoming meteor shower activity and take a challenging walk into the world of dark nebula. Are you ready? [...]

Scientists studying the Crab Nebula have discovered high energy gamma rays around the rotation-powered pulsar, the neutron star at the center of this enigmatic nebula. Neutron stars accelerate particles to immense energies, typically one hundred times more than the most powerful accelerators on Earth. Scientists have been uncertain exactly how ...

Space shuttle Atlantis was rolled over the the Vehicle Assembly Building after hunkering down in the Orbiter Processing Facility at Kennedy Space Center during Tropical Storm Fay. In the VAB, Atlantis will be attached to its external fuel tank and twin solid rocket boosters. NASA announced that Atlantis will be moved out to Launch [...]

The next sample of Martian soil being grabbed for analysis is coming from a trench about three times deeper than any other trench NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has dug. On Tuesday, August 26, the scoop on the lander's robotic arm will pick up a sample of soil from the bottom of a trench called [...]