Driveway AnalemmaDoes the Sun return to the same spot on the sky every day?  No.  A more visual answer is an analemma, a composite of sky images taken at the same time and from the same place over a year.  At completion, you can see that the Sun makes a figure 8 on the sky. The featured unusual analemma does not, however, picture the Sun di…Read More

Ice Clouds over a Red PlanetIf you could stand on Mars — what might you see? You might look out over a vast orange landscape covered with rocks under a dusty orange sky, with a blue-tinted Sun setting over the horizon, and odd-shaped water clouds hovering high overhead. This was just the view captured last March by NASA’s rolling explorer,…Read More

NGC 300: A Galaxy of StarsThis galaxy is unusual for how many stars it seems that you can see. Stars are so abundantly evident in this deep exposure of the spiral galaxy NGC 300 because so many of these stars are bright blue and grouped into resolvable bright star clusters. Additionally, NGC 300 is so clear because it is one of the closest spiral…Read More

Cosmic Latte: The Average Color of the UniverseWhat color is the universe? More precisely, if the entire sky were smeared out, what color would the final mix be? This whimsical question came up when trying to determine what stars are commonplace in nearby galaxies. The answer, depicted here, is a conditionally perceived shade of beige. In…Read More

Winter and Summer on a Little PlanetWinter and summer appear to come on a single night to this stunning little planet. It’s planet Earth of course. The digitally mapped, nadir centered panorama covers 360×180 degrees and is composed of frames recorded during January and July from the Col du Galibier in the French Alps. Stars and nebulae of the…Read More