Double Lobed Asteroid TorifuneWhy is this asteroid a double? Earlier this month the Japanese robotic spacecraft Hayabusa2 shot past asteroid 98943 Torifune and captured pictures. Although previous observations from distant Earth indicated that Torifune was oblong, Hayabusa2 found that Torifune actually has two joined lobes. With a length of…Read More

Swift Boost MissionSometimes we can all use a little help from a friend. NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory needs a boost to stay in orbit after almost 22 years of service. This video shows an artist’s visualization of the Swift Boost Mission: The Katalyst’s LINK spacecraft was launched aboard a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket on July 3…Read More

Dueling Bands over the Atacama DesertWhat are these two bands in the sky? The more commonly seen band is on the left and is the central band of our Milky Way galaxy. Our Sun orbits in the disk of this spiral galaxy so that from inside, it appears as a band of comparable brightness all the way around the sky. The less commonly seen band, on the…Read More

Saturn’s Iapetus: Painted MoonWhat has happened to Saturn’s moon Iapetus? Vast sections of this strange world are dark as coal, while others are as bright as snow. To help better understand this unusually tinted moon, in 2007 NASA directed the robotic Cassini spacecraft then orbiting Saturn to swoop within 2,000 kilometers. Pictured here, from…Read More

Three Galaxies in PavoSome 190 million light-years away, far beyond the bright stars and nebulae of the Milky Way, these three galaxies are drawn together by gravity in a mesmerizing cosmic dance. Clearly distorted by galactic-scale gravitational interactions, large spiral galaxies NGC6769 and NGC6770 are seen face-on, with luminous galactic disks…Read More