Asteroid Itokawa. Credit: JAXA
ASTEROIDS
If you look at a model of the Solar System there is a large gap between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. That gap puzzled astronomers centuries ago. In 1596 Johannes…
ORION THE HUNTER – THROUGH ASTRO TOURS GREECE TELESCOPES
Once you spot Orion the Hunter, you are never going to miss it again in the night sky. In fact Orion is one of the oldest recognizable constellations – an ivory…
CLOSE-UP OF THE NIGHTSIDE OF VENUS
This is the nightside of Venus (!) but how you can capture the nightside? The Parker Solar Probe can with the WISPR camera at near-infrared wavelengths. This stunning image was…
LANDING ON MARS – WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT?
Today, NASA will try to land Perseverance Mars Rover on the Red Planed. The success rate is 40% – more than half of the missions that tried failed. Why is…
PLUTO – A UNIQUE WORLD
Pluto is the biggest Dwarf Planet. The largest object beyond Neptune in the Kuiper Belt. Though Kuiper Belt contains hundreds of thousands of objects over 100 kilometers in diameter, their total mass is…
BLUE JETS – LIGHTNING THAT SHOOT UP TO SPACE
Thunderstorms produce some amazing effects known as blue jets, red sprites and elves. Lightnings that shoot up to space, electrical discharges from the top of the clouds to the outer…
AIRGLOW – ATMOSPHERE’S FAINT LIGHT EMISSION
Have you noticed a characteristic green glow at Earth’s limp seen from space? That’s light emitted from exited atoms in the upper atmosphere. Green colour comes from oxygen atoms and…
SPRITE LIGHTNING
There is a strange kind of lightning, only discovered in 1989, that is purely understood. It is called SPRITE* – lightning that shoot up to space. Εlectrical discharges from the top…
CARTWEEL GALAXY – STARRY RING BORN IN A HEAD ON-COLLISION
Lying about 500 million light-years away in the constellation of Sculptor, the cartwheel shape of this galaxy is the result of a violent galactic collision. A smaller galaxy has passed…
CRAB NEBULA SUPERNOVA REMNANT
In the year 1054, Chinese astronomers saw what they called a “guest star” appear in the constellation now known as Taurus the Bull. The star quickly became so bright it…