A couple of years ago Universe Today writer John Williams created a card game called Hubble Star Cards, and the game won a Hubble Gold Star award in 2010 from NASA and the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies for its inspiring use of the amazing imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope. As the description says, “the vivid, stunning images motivate and engage children of all ages to learn about objects in space. Now, thanks to John, U...

I’m a last minute shopper, and luckily there’s a lot of spacey gifts and greetings that you can still take advantage of. For example in the greeting card department, the Hubble Holiday Cards are fabulous, with loads of imagery from everyone’s favorite space telescope — such as the one above — that can be printed out and sent as cards, or its easy to nab one of their holiday greeting images to send via email, as I...

This beautiful image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory provides a view of our Sun on the solstice (winter solstice for the northern hemisphere and summer solstice for the southern hemisphere,) at 11:12 UTC, December 21, 2012. No killer solar flares, no apocalypse, just pure beauty and the life-giving light and warmth from Old Sol.

Happy solstice to all!

Via @Camilla_SDO

© nancy for Universe Today, 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments |
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40 years ago on December 19, 1972, Apollo 17 splashed down on Earth, marking the end of the manned moon missions. The astronauts came back with a treasure trove of rocks collected in 22 hours of extra-vehicular activity on the lunar surface, including...

Raw Cassini image acquired on Dec. 18, 2012 (NASA/JPL/SSI)

Two of Saturn’s shepherd moons face off across the icy strand of the F ring in this image, acquired by the Cassini spacecraft on December 18, 2012.

In the left corner is Pandora, external shepherd of the ropy ring, and in the right is Prometheus, whose gravity is responsible for the subtle tug on the wispy ring material. (Please don’t blame the moon for any recent unsatisfying...

Despite countless articles published over the course of several years to the contrary, despite videos and interviews with some of the world’s most prominent and well-respected astronomers, despite new archaeological discoveries and well-established knowledge, despite the laws of physics, for crying out loud (and, curiously enough, even despite the fact that parts of the world are, at the time of this writing, already well within the...

ESA’s Proba-1 satellite imaged the French-Italian Concordia base on November 21, 2012 (ESA)

Located in one of the loneliest locations on Earth, the French-Italian Concordia station was captured on high-resolution camera by ESA’s Proba-1 microsatellite last month, showing the snow-covered base and 25 square kilometers of the virtually featureless expanse of Antarctic ice surrounding it.

A cluster of scientific research buildings...

MESSENGER targeted-observation image of the interior of Eminescu crater

A recent image acquired by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft shows the interior of Eminescu, a youngish 130-km (80 mile) wide crater just north of Mercury’s equator. Eminescu made science headlines last year with MESSENGER’s discovery of curious eroded blotches called “hollows” scattered across its interior and surrounding its central peak, and now it...