News
2012's First Confirmed Supernova
The year's first confirmed
supernova, named SN 2012A, was captured in this image of the irregular galaxy
NGC 3239. The galaxy lies a mere 25
million light years away. Because of NGC
3239's peculiar shape, young blue star clusters, and star forming regions,
astronomers believe that it is the result of a galactic merger. The massive explosion was discovered earlier
this month by supernova hunters, Bob Moore, Jack Newton, and Tim Puckett. Discovering the supernova this year was amazing,
but because of the enormous distance to this faraway galaxy, it actually occurred
25 million years ago. Image Credit: Adam Block / Mount Lemmon Skycenter / University of Arizona |
LRO Team Releases "Tour of the Moon" Video
WISE Captures Infrared Image of Entire Night Sky
NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE)
released an amazing image of an infrared view of the night sky encompassing
more than a half-billion stars, galaxies, and other celestial objects on March
14th, 2012. WISE principal
investigator, Edward Wright from the University of California at Los Angeles
said, “Today, WISE delivers the fruit of 14 years of effort to the astronomical
community.” The WISE program was launched on December 14th, 2009 with the objective of cataloging the entire night sky in the infrared wavelength. Numerous discoveries have been made from the program, including the “Trojan” asteroid found to share the same path around the Sun as our Earth. -Image Credit: NASA/JPL-CalTech/UCLA |
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