About twenty years ago, Voyager 1 looked back toward it’s launching point and took the now famous “Pale Blue Dot” photograph. The arrow points to us. That’s Earth… from about 3.7 billion miles away, which is just a little bit outside our solar system. In the grand scale of the universe, that’s hardly any distance [...]

NASA’s equipment is some pretty powerful stuff. But astronomy also depends on the curiosity and contribution of amateur astronomers. [...] If they can discover something great, so can any of you other students who are here tonight. All you need is a passion for science. - President Barack Obama during the White House Star Party (via)

The Cassini spacecraft took this (these?) picture of Saturn on August 12th. It’s actually 75 separate pictures stitched together. Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy has more info. If you check out an uber-sized version, you can see four of Saturn’s moons, too. The image below links to the 1-meg JPG version. There are higher resolution images [...]

Last night was the first time I got to use my new telescope that I got from Telescopes.com. It was delivered on July 17th and, with one exception, the sky has been cloudy every… single… night! Finally, last night, there were enough clear spots that I could get a nice view of the moon [...]

While perusing Tom’s Astronomy Blog, I saw a post about the Arches Cluster, which is near the center of our galaxy, a mere 25,000 light years away. Pictures of space always fascinate me, but this picture comes with information that takes “fascinate” to a whole new level. The Arches Cluster is a small (relatively speaking), dense [...]

I came across this video this weekend and wanted to share it. I’ve seen static images with size comparisons of the planets in our solar system, our sun, and other starts in our galaxy, but this video makes it significantly more dramatic. It also uses the music from Disney’s movie The Black Hole, which, despite it’s [...]

I found this article on DiscoverMagazine.com today about how fast our universe is expanding… and how astronomers figure this kind of thing out. After reading the whole thing, I was in awe… for two reasons. First, the size and content of our universe is just completely mind-blowing. Carl Sagan’s “billions and billions” quote seems to understate [...]

Yesterday, I read that astronomers had actually photographed planets outside our solar system for the first time. Planets had been detected before, but always by methods other than direct visuals. This is the first time they’ve actually seen an object this cool (temperature-wise) and this small outside our own solar system, according to aBBC article [...]