For thousands of years, astronomers wrestled with basic questions about the size and age of the universe. Does the universe go on forever, or does it have an edge somewhere? Has it always existed, or did it come to being some time in the past? In 1929, Edwin Hubble, an astronomer at Caltech, made a critical discovery that soon led to scientific answers for these questions: he discovered that the universe is expanding.
In 1787, astronomer William Herschel discovered the Eskimo Nebula. From the ground, NGC 2392 resembles a person’s head surrounded by a parka hood. In 2000, the Hubble Space Telescope imaged the Eskimo Nebula in visible light, while the nebula was imaged in X-rays by the Chandra X-ray Observatory in 2007. The above combined visible-X ray image, with X-rays emitted by central hot gas and shown in pink, was released last week.
Asteroid hitting the earth is one of the most popular themes in the movies about the end of the world. We are sure that you wondered if this is truth and could we stop an asteroid on a collision course for Earth?
The image above features brilliant Venus and the zodiacal light as viewed from the Kalkalpen National Park nearReichraming, Austria. On this cold and very clear autumn morning, nearby city lights are concealed under a layer offog (lower center). As a result, the sky was almost as dark as would be expected in remote Namibia. This area of Austria is one of the last locales in central Europe with relatively little light pollution.
What is the shape of the Universe? According to the Italian astrophysicist Margherita Hack, who recently died at the age of 91, our universe is flat since it obeys the Euclidean geometry. The deduction is made from the way in which light propagates, by certain measurements that can be taken on the structures observed in the early universe.
Using images taken from the High-Resolution Stereo Camera aboard ESA’s Mars Express, this fly-through was created. It is located in the northernmost part of Valles Marineris.