telescope

NASA has just added a set of spectacular new images to its catalog of deep-sky objects named after the French astronomer Charles Messier (1730-1817). Messier's main line of work was identifying new comets. However, he was limited by the small telescopes available to him, often coming across faint ...

NASA has just released a breath-taking image of the distant Crab Nebula, captured by its signature space telescope. The stunning photo is actually composite of three pictures snapped by three different space observatories – the Hubble, Chandra and Spitzer Space Telescopes. The Hubble telescope ...

Some of the most striking views in astronomy have come from the Hubble Space Telescope. But not all of the data collected by the spacecraft comes in the form of a beautiful photo. Visual artists play an important role in creating some of the incredible artistic representations based on Hubble's observations.

NEW! Sky & Telescope's 15-cm Earth Globe. Sky and Telescope's beloved Earth Globe is now available in a smaller 6-inch size! The detailed globe includes a freestanding base and information card filled with key features. Hold the whole world in your hands today! More Products ...

We are asking that you call 731-0676 (Jerry) to reserve a “telescope expert” no later than March 21, (the day before the meeting). Your expert will then be waiting for you at 6 p.m. It is amazing how our telescope experts can quickly analyze problems, but if you need more time, we will figure out a way to get ...

The Kepler space telescope is running on empty, and there are no places to fill up when you're 94 million miles from Earth. Charlie Sobeck, an engineer for the Kepler mission, announced in an update that the end is near for the nine-year old deep space observatory. “At this rate, the hardy spacecraft may ...

Monica Young, a professional astronomer by training, is news editor of Sky & Telescope. View all posts by Monica Young →. All comments must follow the Sky & Telescope Terms of Use and will be moderated prior to posting. Please be civil in your comments. Sky & Telescope reserves the right to use the ...

These results, which both appear in The Astronomical Journal (Jupiter paper, Neptune paper), are the latest from the Hubble Space Telescope's Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program, which has NASA's most popular telescope examine each of the outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and ...

Almost a decade since its launch, and 2,245 exoplanet discoveries later, Nasa's plucky Kepler telescope is said to be on its last legs. System engineer Charlie Sobeck has announced that Kepler's fuel tank "will run dry within several months" as the agency gears up to cease flight operations and awaits the ...

NASA's Kepler space telescope has discovered a set of planets with conditions similar to that of Earth leading to theories they could one day home humans. ... The telescope, currently in the second phase of its mission dubbed K2, has identified 16 new exoplanets in the universe, making the grand totals of ...

The Laurence Lowell telescope has reopened to the public after undergoing renovations totaling about $155,000 over the past year. The telescope, also known as the Pluto Discovery Telescope, was built in 1928 for the purpose of completing the search for "Planet X," according to historians with the Lowell ...

A group of astronomers in the US has made a new and more precise measurement of the universe's rate of expansion by using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to observe miniscule shifts in the apparent position of stars known as Cepheid variables. The group's results reinforce a disagreement ...

The group's paper describing their proposal, submitted to the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific and available as a preprint, suggests that before its fuel is spent and some of the systems are shut down to conserve power, New Horizons should be repurposed as a space telescope that ...

NASA and the European Space Agency's Hubble Space Telescope has been in low Earth orbit for nearly 28 years, but with several repairs and upgrades over the decades it's still sending back beautiful images. Just a few days ago, the ESA released this Hubble image of a pair of barred spiral galaxies ...

Although manned space exploration to distant worlds is figuratively light-years away, our ability to glance across the heavens could be revolutionized with a technology that's been right in front of our noses: the Sun. Current technology has given us breathtaking imagery, but to detect what's hiding in deep ...

Peter Rosenthal, left, and Ralph Nye, right, talk about the features of the Pluto Discovery Telescope that the pair helped restore. The telescope was completely stripped down to its component parts which were cleaned, repainted and restored to their original condition before being put back together.

Researchers have created a model of the interior of a white dwarf star similar to our own sun. A telescope and instrument considered “vintage” by today's standards allowed one the researchers to succeed in making a discovery that wouldn't have been possible with only the advanced satellite instrument ...

A welcome shift in the narrative of the environmental movement has been to incorporate the human element. We are approaching conservation, mitigation and restoration of natural resources with an eye toward how they help people. We are acknowledging the effects on marginalized communities of ...

Last week, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) revealed that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is facing further delays and difficulties. The highly anticipated telescope will succeed the Hubble Telescope and expand our view of the universe further than ever before. Yet despite this ...

Maria Bergemann (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Germany) and colleagues have explored stars in two stellar populations known as the Triangulum-Andromeda (TriAnd for short) and A13 using the Keck I telescope in Hawaii and Very Large Telescope in Chile. The results are published in Nature ...

... in space, where it reflects infrared wavelengths of light and won't tarnish—ideal for blocking absorption of radiant heat. (Plus, it's super shiny!) Which is why the James Webb Space Telescope team chose the chemical element to coat a 32-foot refrigerant tube that cools the Mid-Infrared Instrument, or MIRI.

Join Miguel here as he takes us through his photograph "The Path of Light from a Super Blue Moon." Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, glows brilliantly near the tip of a telescope's antenna in this photo taken at the Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex (MDSCC) in Robledo de Chavela, ...

The world's next great space telescope is falling behind. The James Webb Space Telescope, NASA's successor to the famed Hubble, is at risk of experiencing significant delays in development, according to a new report from a government agency that audits federal programs. Webb is an $8.8 billion project ...

A non-partisan government office has issued a report warning of additional delays for the James Webb Space Telescope, which could pit the mission against its funding cap. The U.S. Government Acountability Office (GAO), a non-partisan group that investigates federal spending and performance, has ...

The River of Time Museum will sponsor a new exhibit containing Dr. Charles Juels' original telescope from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday, March 3. Known as the town's “Solar System Sleuth,” Juels was a psychiatrist and astronomer. He is credited with discovering more than 300 new asteroids from his ...

If you're in the longitudes of North America, check in on Jupiter's unusually red Great Red Spot with your telescope before dawn tomorrow morning. The GRS should cross Jupiter's central meridian around 6:12 a.m. EST (3:12 a.m. PST) Saturday morning. Features on Jupiter remain closer to the planet's ...

NASA's troubled James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is heading for more choppy water, says a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released yesterday. Problems in testing the orbiting telescope's components and integrating them together means further launch delays are likely, ...

Mar 2018 TUCSON, Ariz., March 1, 2018 — The Kitt Peak National Observatory's (KPNO) telescope, called the Mayall, has been reinvented for a mission to understand the physics of dark energy, an unknown form of energy that is believed to permeate all of space and accelerate the expansion of the universe. To prepare ...

Today, a small team of researchers is announcing that its correspondingly small telescope picked up something that theoreticians had only suggested might exist: a signal produced by the very first stars in our Universe. Their radiotelescope, only two meters across, didn't image the stars directly. Instead ...

To combat this lack of data, several teams have begun surveys particularly targeting evolved, massive stars. One of these is known as the Pan-Pacific Planet Search, a survey that uses the 3.9m Anglo-Australian Telescope in Australia to study the spectra of metal-rich subgiants in the southern hemisphere.

When the time-traveling orbital observatory known as the James Webb Space Telescope reaches its orbit around the Earth (which NASA hopes will happen sometime in mid-2019), it will radically increase how far we can peer into the past, and, scientists hope, unlock some of the greatest mysteries of our ...

Hammel will lead the telescope's observations of Mars under a Guaranteed Time Observation (GTO) project. GTO dedicates research time to scientists such as Hammel who played a key role in the telescope's development. Hammel was named an interdisciplinary scientist for the Webb project in 2003.

To people in the astronomy and education communities, Yerkes Observatory has an almost mythical quality. Built in the 1890s, it is world-famous for housing the largest refracting telescope in the world, a 40-inch diameter, 60-foot long metal behemoth that weighs over six tons. This monster of a telescope ...

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope sits inside Chamber A at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston after completed its cryogenic testing Nov. 18, 2017. This marked the telescope's final cryogenic testing, and it ensured the observatory is ready for the frigid, airless environment of space.

Light from a background galaxy is warped around a foreground galaxy, forming a spectacular view through a gravitational lens. Credit: ESA/Hubble/NASA. Paul Sutter is an astrophysicist at The Ohio State University and the chief scientist at COSI science center. Sutter is also host of "Ask a Spaceman" and ...

After an extraordinarily durable run, NASA's Kepler space telescope is finally running out of gas. The agency expects Kepler to burn the last of its fuel within the next several months, ending nine years of incredible science searching for planets beyond the solar system. Trailing behind the Earth as it orbits ...

Researchers have created a model of the interior of a white dwarf star similar to our own sun. A telescope and instrument considered “vintage” by today's standards allowed one the researchers to succeed in making a discovery that wouldn't have been possible with only the advanced satellite instrument ...

Join Miguel here as he takes us through his photograph "The Arc of Milky Way in the Twilight with the Moon and Zodiacal Light above VLT." The entire arc of the Milky Way galaxy extends across the southern sky in this lovely panoramic view from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope ...

FLAGSTAFF – An observatory telescope in Arizona used to discover the distant Pluto nearly 90 years ago will reopen for business on Saturday after a year of extensive restoration work. Nearly every part of Lowell Observatory's Pluto Discovery Telescope and accompanying dome near Flagstaff has been ...