The Claw and Bubble NebulaeWhat unexpected things do you see when you look up at the night sky? Today’s image resembles an abstract painting, with large swaths of color strewn across a cosmic canvas seemingly without design. Despite the image’s abstract nature, the human mind finds patterns, identifying a large claw reaching up towards a f…Read More

Uranus’s Largest Moon: TitaniaTitania’s tortured terrain is a mix of canyons, cliffs, and craters. NASA’s interplanetary robot spacecraft Voyager 2 passed the largest moon of Uranus in 1986 and took the feature picture. That the trenches of Titania resemble those on another moon of Uranus, Ariel, indicate that Titania underwent some violent…Read More

Peculiar Elliptical Galaxy Centaurus AWhat’s happened to the center of this galaxy? Dramatic dust lanes run across the center of unusual elliptical galaxy Centaurus A. These dust lanes are so thick they almost completely obscure the galaxy’s center in visible light. This is particularly unusual as Cen A’s older stars and oval shape are…Read More

A Message from EarthWhat are these Earthlings trying to tell us? The featured message was broadcast from Earth towards the globular star cluster M13 in 1974. During the dedication of an upgrade to the Arecibo Observatory – then the largest single radio telescope in the world – a string of 1’s and 0’s representing the diagram was sent. This…Read More

Robert Goddard and NellRobert H. Goddard, considered the father of modern rocketry, was born in Worcester Massachusetts in 1882. As a 16 year old, Goddard read H.G. Wells’ science fiction classic “War Of The Worlds” and dreamed of space flight. By 1926 he had designed, built, and flown the world’s first liquid fuel rocket. Launched 100 years ago,…Read More