Astronomy Magazine: Space News, Observing, Planets, Galaxies

Picture of the Day

A long, tilted galaxy sits in the center of the frame, a glowing pale-yellow band crossed lengthwise by a dark, rusty-red streak, with a hazy bluish-white glow flaring at both ends. A very faint gray trail stretches from its right end down toward the lower-right corner. Hundreds of small white, gold, and orange stars and tiny distant galaxies fill the black background, with one bright blue star near the top.

A hamburger with a tail

Dave Doctor from Las Cruces, New Mexico

The Hamburger Galaxy (NGC 3628) is an edge-on spiral in Leo, some 30 million light-years away, and a member of the Leo Triplet along with M65 and M66. Tidal interactions with those neighbors has extracted a faint tidal tail about 300,000 light-years long, part of which trails off at lower right. The imager took 40 hours of exposure in LRGB filters with a 14-inch f/3.8 astrograph.

In the Sky

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$Photograph of the spiral galaxy NGC 7331, tilted diagonally at center with a bright golden core, dark dust lanes, and blue spiral arms. Several smaller, fainter galaxies lie below it, and numerous stars, some with diffraction spikes, are scattered across the black background.$

Observing

The Sky Today on Tuesday, October 20: Lovely spiral NGC 7331

What’s Launching This Week

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What’s Launching This Week

Japan sends MMX toward the martian moons

Today in the History of Astronomy

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A multi-part white spacecraft floats in the center against a black space background filled with faint stars. Large, dark solar panel wings extend outward to the sides, while a long thin boom projects to the left. The craft's metallic white body features a conical upper shade, textured insulation layers, and two glowing blue thruster plumes at the bottom.

Robotic Spaceflight, Today in the History of Astronomy

Oct. 20, 2018: BepiColombo launches

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Observing Basics

Understanding celestial coordinates

Composite photograph of a deep blue night sky above a grove of dark pine and deciduous trees beside a small pond on a grassy, golf-course-like landscape. Nearly a dozen thin green-teal Orionid meteors streak across the sky, most angled diagonally from upper left to lower right. The constellation Orion, including its Belt and the glowing Orion Nebula, appears at left of center. A pale glow of light pollution along the horizon, with a few orange and white lights reflecting on the pond, brightens the sky behind the trees.

Sky This Week, The Sky This Week

The Sky This Week from October 16 to 23: The Orionid meteor shower peaks

$Photograph of a spiral galaxy tilted diagonally across the frame, with a glowing golden-tan core threaded with brown dust lanes and pink star-forming regions. Blue-white spiral arms and clusters of young stars extend outward from the core toward the upper right and lower left. A bright blue-white star with prominent diffraction spikes sits just below the core, and several other foreground stars with spikes are scattered across the dark background, along with a few small orange background galaxies.$

Galaxies, Science