WR 25 And Tr16-244: Previously Unseen Mammoth Stars Get The Hubble Treatment.
posted by homunculus on Nov 27, 2008 - 10 comments

Five years and 800,000 images went into producing a 4 gigapixel mosaic image of the galactic plane, which when printed out is 180 feet long. But it has been made browser-sized by GLIMPSE, the Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire, the research group which, along with MIPSGAL, created the image: A Glimpse of the Milky Way.
posted by Kronos_to_Earth on Jun 5, 2008 - 14 comments

Bad Astronomy's Top Ten Astronomy Pictures of 2007.
posted by homunculus on Dec 13, 2007 - 36 comments

Billions and Billions astrophotography CCD gallery / film gallery / equipment / tutorials
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Sep 14, 2007 - 7 comments

Time lapse animations of planets and satellites. See what an amateur digital astrophotographer could do a decade ago. This is what the animated gif was designed to do.
posted by dkg on Aug 6, 2007 - 20 comments

It's like Google Maps...for space. Wikisky is a draggable, zoomable, web-based star map. And if you click on a star or other object, it brings up a page with all the information you could want on it, including recent articles and astrophotos that contain that object. And it does lots more. Go explore.
posted by Jimbob on Mar 22, 2007 - 25 comments

Missouri Skies: The show me state .
posted by hortense on Apr 2, 2006 - 18 comments

"Naked Eye" Comet Machholz (binoculars recommended) nears maximum brightness in the coming days ( starchart here and here). How to photograph a comet and other objects. The story of its discovery (his 10th). Comet hunters are an interesting breed. Now you can discover comets from your 'puter with SOHO imagery. If stargazing interests you, you may also like the Wunderground astronomy web application (based on U.S. zip codes).
posted by spock on Jan 4, 2005 - 7 comments

Chasing Venus Transits of Venus occur every 130 years or so when Venus can be observed passing across the face of the sun. Chasing Venus is an online exhibition by Smithsonian Institution Libraries that tells the story of how the transit has been observed since the 17th century, with early observations in England, illustrated accounts of expeditions by 18th century astronomers to various parts of the world, and early uses of photography to record observations in the 19th century. Includes links to animations of transits reconstructed from Victorian photographs, and details of a lecture series on Thursdays in April and May (first one April 8). The first transit since 1882 is this year.
posted by carter on Apr 4, 2004 - 5 comments

The first images from the Spitzer Space Telescope, formerly known as the Space Infrared Telescope Facility and renamed after astrophysicist Lyman Spitzer, Jr., were released on Thursday. Launched on August 25, it obtains images by detecting the infrared energy radiated by objects in space, and it will drift behind the Earth as the planet orbits the sun.
posted by homunculus on Dec 20, 2003 - 3 comments

The Best of Hubble Its mission will end in 2010. Four years later it will re-enter the atmosphere and burn up. Many astronomers are calling for Hubble to be refurbished and its mission extended to 2020. Here are some of it's best pictures.
posted by reverendX on Dec 10, 2003 - 14 comments

planetary photojournal
posted by crunchland on Nov 18, 2003 - 1 comment

Breathtaking Hubble picture of the Sombrero Galaxy (also identified as M104). The Hubble Heritage team took the original images during May and June of this year using the Advanced Camera for Surveys and multiple color filters. They then stitched 6 images together to make the final composite image.
posted by Irontom on Oct 10, 2003 - 39 comments

Pale Blue Dot: The Earth and Moon as photographed from Mars. Just in case you needed a bit of perspective.
posted by aladfar on May 22, 2003 - 14 comments

The Two Micron All Sky Survey at IPAC has been completed after 4 years and 5 million images. Detailed infrared images have been mapped into beautiful false color images. Be sure to check out the 2MASS home page at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. So, what's your favorite astronomy related site or image? (via CNN)
posted by onhazier on Mar 28, 2003 - 5 comments

Coolest sun picture ever - sunspot closeup... The Swedish Institute for Solar Physics web site has some other cool pictures. (As an aside, I wonder what equivalent shutter speed, aperture, and focal length would be?)
posted by notsnot on Nov 15, 2002 - 15 comments

A very well designed site on the Analemma. Don't be scared off by the math, as there are excellent diagrams and quicktime movies on this difficult to visualize phenomena. Difficult, but not impossible, to photograph (probably less than 10 photos are in existence) Ulrich Bienert came close, and has a gallery and some tips if you're so inclined.
posted by quercus on Aug 6, 2002 - 12 comments

Reflections on a Mote of Dust "We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam." Carl Sagan "Pale Blue Dot"
posted by crasspastor on Sep 11, 2001 - 15 comments

A neat use for webcams, digital astronomy.
via APOD
posted by lagado on Jul 17, 2001 - 1 comment

The stars in the core of our galaxy are moving damned fast. [more]
posted by Steven Den Beste on Dec 20, 2000 - 20 comments

The World at Night. This amazing image (warning 500K) is actually a composite of hundreds of pictures made by the orbiting DMSP satellites over regions of the world at night. You can clearly see the Nile river, Hong Kong, Hawaii and probably, if you look close enough, the town you are in right now. From Astronomy Picture of the Day
posted by lagado on Nov 27, 2000 - 18 comments

Putting it all in perspective -- this is one of my daily links, reminding me that there is always a bigger picture to consider.
posted by fpatrick on Nov 22, 2000 - 8 comments

A striking photo of The Sigma Orionis star cluster where the astronomers have found 18 "planets" which are not orbiting around any central star. On the same note, you may want to visit the new planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. My mother was not impressed by the New Hayden Planetarium when she visited NY this summer. I thought the Rose Center was a real life version of the Hawking book, The Illustrated A Brief History of Time. The book was a much better experience.
posted by tamim on Oct 7, 2000 - 0 comments

This reminded me of one of the stupidest things I've ever seen. Once on vacation in Eastern Oregon, there was a total eclipse of the moon, just like this one. And some people nearby were taking photographs of it. Flash photographs. The round-trip time to the moon at the speed of light is 3 seconds and I wouldn't even want to calculate the attenuation caused by 320,000 miles of range. Sometimes it seems as if some people are completely and totally clueless about what they're doing.
posted by Steven Den Beste on Jul 25, 2000 - 12 comments