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The article presents information on the Hubble Space Telescope. Topics include details on the orchestral piece "Cosmic Dust" written by composer Russell Steinberg and inspired by Hubble, details on Hubble's role in capturing images of items such as newborn stars and galaxies, and details on the advancements of Hubble throughout the years including an addition of an infrared camera.

The article reports on space images captured in 2019. It includes an image by the New Horizons spacecraft of the trans-Neptunian object Arrokoth, images of exoplanets, and the retrieval of material from the asteroid Ryugu by the Japanese spacecrraft Hayabusa2.

Comments on images of Pluto from the Hubble Space Telescope that indicate that the planet has both light and dark regions on its surface. The pictures that were unveiled at the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference; The question of whether ices cover Pluto's south pole; Ice on Europa, one of Jupiter's larger moons; More.

Comments on the new images from photographs of Saturn's moon Rhea which were seen by Paul Schenk. The special viewer that merged two images into a three-dimensional view; Photographs taken by the Voyager spacecraft; Schenk's experience with the power of stereo images.

This article presents information on the study of distant comets in 1990. To capture comets in their unadulterated state, David Jewitt of the University of Hawaii at Manoa and others are looking far beyond Earth to regions where iceballs could exist free from the threat of solar melting and Jupiter's gravitational influence. Several of the new surveys will involve not just groundbased observations but also the careful tracking of two National Aeronautics and Space Administration spacecraft about to hurtle through the proposed Kuiper belt -- a region lying just beyond Neptune's orbit and believed to contain as many as 100 million comets. Another comet-hunting team relies on high-quality photographic plates at the Great Britain Schmidt telescope at Siding Springs Observatory, in New South Wales, Australia. Researchers compare sequential images spanning three consecutive nights, looking for slow-moving objects that display a distant comet's telltale path, or trajectory. Another method for seeking distant comets emerged in January at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Arlington, Virginia. Developed by Charles Alcock of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and his colleagues, the technique relies on a well-known phenomenon called stellar occultation: When comets of large enough size pass in front of a star, they momentarily block the starlight from astronomers' view. INSET: Visitor from the Oort cloud?.

The article discusses the environment of the dwarf planet Pluto, with a particular focus on data and photographic images from the spacecraft New Horizons on the planet's haze and red hue. An overview of the surface of Pluto, including the ice flow, its surface pressure and the relationship between its atmosphere and surface, is provided.

An excerpt is reprinted from the article "Craters found on Mars" which appeared in the August 7, 1965, issue of the publication, along with a brief update on the topic.

The article reports that a malfunction--possibly a short circuit--developed in a 5-volt power supply that drives moving parts in the observatory's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) on the Hubble Space Telescope. Any hope of reviving the instrument would require a repair mission to the telescope. The other three scientific instruments on Hubble remain healthy. Despite the loss of STIS, Hubble "remains a marvelous observatory and a unique facility for learning about the universe," says John Bahcall of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. NASA is now considering whether it could fix STIS as part of a proposed robotic mission to repair and upgrade Hubble some 3 years from now. The agency's decision will depend on the determination of exactly what went wrong with the power supply and whether the robotic system now under study could handle the repair.

The article discusses the passing of Venus over the face of the sun for the first time in 122 years, as seen in the United States and Greece by professional and amateur skywatchers. Among the sky watchers in Nantucket, MA, was veteran astronomer Dorrit Hoffleit, former director of the island's Maria Mitchell Observatory. Cataracts now cloud Hoffleit's vision, but the transit loomed bright enough for Hoffleit to enjoy. At age 97, she was probably the oldest astronomer to view the event, yet even she was born 25 years too late to have viewed the planet's last such passage, in 1882. Astronomers in centuries past embarked on hazardous journeys around the globe to chase the transit of Venus. Observations of a transit of Venus in the 18th century provided the first evidence for an atmosphere of a planet other than Earth. Moreover, by comparing the times that Venus entered and exited the sun's disk at far-flung locations, scientists could calculate the planet's distance to the sun and thereby determine one of the era's most sought-after cosmic details: the size of the solar system. INSET: Island Astronomy.

Discusses a photograph of dense gaseous pillars, remnants of a giant gas cloud, known as evaporating gas globules (EGG), which was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995. Way that ultraviolet light bombarding the pillars both hinders and fosters star birth; How the images were taken in visible light, which does not penetrate dust; Finding that few of the EGG contain stars.

The article presents a photograph of Typhoon Maysak, which killed five people, moving toward the Philippines in the Western Pacific ocean taken from the International Space Station by European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti in March 2015.

Focuses on the geologic history of the satellite Miranda. Analysis of the photographs of the stellite; Description of the surface of the satellite; Evidence of fracture zones.

An image of Hebes Chasma, a huge trough on Mars, taken by the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft is presented.

The article presents an image sent by the Hubble Space Telescope on June 20, 2013 of the Arp 142 pair interacting galaxies which includes the bird-shaped, distorted spiral galaxy NGC 2936 and egg-shaped galaxy NGC 2937.

The article reports that the U.S. National Aeronautics & Space Administration's (NASA's) Messenger spacecraft has returned the first-ever images of the planet Mercury, which includes images of Mercury's south polar terrain.

A photograph of a solar eruption that was captured on December 13, 2006 by an international spacecraft is presented, along with an explanation of the phenomena.

This article discusses a photograph of Saturn taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Taken from a vantage point forty degrees above the equator, the photograph captures the full breadth of Saturn's rings and the planet's shadow across them. Cassini combines views from many perspectives to indicate the ring particles' texture and density.

The article reports on the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) project STEREO or solar terrestrial relations observatory. NASA's STEREO involves two separate satellites taking simultaneous images of the sun in order to create three dimensional images of solar phenomena. The observatories were launched in October 2006.

The article reports on the crumbling of Comet 73P/Schwassman-Wachmann 3. The pieces of the comet will pass within 11.7 million kilometers of Earth--the closest any comet has come to Earth in 20 years. The ongoing breakup of the comet attests that the cores of comets are fragile. The article mentions infrared images of the comet taken with the Spitzer Space Telescope.

The article presents an image of China's Badain Jaran desert, which covers more than 40,000 square kilometers. The desert is home to some of the world's tallest stationary dunes, seen here from the International Space Station. They can stand 500 meters tall and cast immense shadows. What keeps these piles of sand immobile despite arid, windy conditions is a previously unknown source of groundwater, says Ling Li, an environmental engineer at the University of Queensland in St. Lucia, Australia. Analyses of the water suggest that it's snowmelt that flows hundreds of kilometers through fractured rocks to reach the desert. The annual flow, estimated to be 0.5 cubic kilometer, could provide an alternative to a planned $500 million river-diversion project, Li and his colleagues say.

The article examines how, over the past several decades, the glowing remains of an explosion of hot gas and dust called Cassiopeia A has become one of the most studied supernova remnants in the heavens. Trained on Cassiopeia A for viewing sessions totaling 11.5 days, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has now taken the most detailed portrait ever recorded of any supernova remnant. The image provides new evidence linking supernova explosions to gamma-ray bursts, the most energetic flashes of radiation in the cosmos, says Chandra researcher J. Martin Laming of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. The new image shows two oppositely directed jets, each about 10 light-years long, shooting out from the remnant's center. Previous images had shown only one jet. Laming's team conjectures that the jets are low-energy versions of those created by hypernovas-relatively rare and extremely powerful supernovas.

The article reports that an analysis of images taken by the Cassini spacecraft in early June 2004, several weeks before the craft settled into orbit about Saturn, has revealed two tiny moons orbiting the ringed planet. The newly detected moons, each of which takes about a day to orbit Saturn, lie between the paths of two larger satellites, Mimas and Enceladus. The moons provide new evidence that the Kuiper belt, a reservoir of icy bodies at the solar system's outer edge, might not have quite as many small, house-size comets as planetary scientists have assumed.

The article announces that after a 7-year, 3.5-billion-mile journey, the Cassini spacecraft slipped through a gap between two of the icy rings circling Saturn and became the first spacecraft to orbit the distant planet. The probe, which will tour Saturn and many of its 31 known moons for at least 4 years, has already returned stunning images of the shimmering rings and recorded the sharpest images ever taken of smog-covered Titan, Saturn's largest moon. In Cassini's snapshots, striations within the rings resemble grooves in a vinyl phonograph record. Many of the images show wavelike features that form when the gravity of a passing moon perturbs icy particles in a ring. Although most of the rings are composed of virtually pure water ice, a spectrometer on Cassini found that particles in the F ring, the sixth ring discovered, as well as those in the rings' gaps, have a small dirt component with a composition resembling that of Saturn's outlying moon, Phoebe. The similarity supports a theory in which the rings and Phoebe have a common origin.

Scientists scanning satellite images of the southern Sahara have detected trails left on the landscape by the whirlwinds commonly known as dust devils, the first such observations made from Earth orbit. Cameras on several spacecraft that have landed on Mars have spotted such whirlwinds, and some images of the Red Planet from orbit show shadows cast by dust-filled funnel clouds, says Angelo Pio Rossi of the International Research School of Planetary Sciences in Pescara, Italy. When Rossi and his colleague Lucia Marinangeli looked at satellite photos of Earth for similar tracks, they found them on images of central Niger. Repeated images of the same locale at different times indicate that the tracks last, at most, only a few weeks. Researchers suggest that the windswept tracks reflect less sunlight than normal because the dust devils whisk away dust and small sand grains.

Reports on the unveiling of photographs of the distant Universe that are the sharpest and most detailed ever recorded. Use of the Hubble Space Telescope; Role of Holland Ford in the photography; Number of galaxies detected by the telescope.

Reports on images taken of Jupiter's innermost moons Metis, Amalthea, and Thebe, while the Galileo spacecraft was examining Jupiter's volcanically active moon Io. Discovery of a 50-km-long streak called Ida on Amalthea; Suggestions as to the composition and causes that formed Ida; Discovery of a 40-km-wide crater named Zethus on Thebe.

Focuses on images of colored auroras on Jupiter's moon, Io, captured by Galileo spacecraft. Theories on the causes of the blue, green and red flashes; Details on the large electric current that flows from Io to Jupiter and how it may affect the auroras; Predictions of future images; Analysis of Paul E. Geissler and colleagues published in the August 6, 1999 issue of `Science.'

Reports on evidence gathered by the Galileo spacecraft in December 1997 that suggests a liquid ocean or partially frozen sea exists on the Europa, a satellite of the planet Jupiter. Notable areas examined, including the crater Pwyll; Interpretation of data by Robert T. Pappalardo and James Head, of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island; Comments from William B. McKinnon; Forecasts.

Reports that because of the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers may have accounted for virtually all the sources of visible light in the universe, according to Michael S. Vogeley of Princeton University. Results from his analysis of variations in the faint background glow between galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field, the tiny patch of sky that the telescope focused on for two weeks in late 1995.

Presents a photograph taken in the near-infrared with the Hubble Space Telescope of the Pistol, the star shaped like a gun. Where it is located; How it could be considered the most energetic star in the heavens.

Reports that images from a trio of radars on the space shuttle show not only the existing Great Wall of China, but also a previous edition running parallel to it. The ability of the triple-radar instrument, known as SIR-C/X-SAR, to reveal hidden structures and help map man-made features.

Reports on the picture of galaxies near the handle of the Big Dipper taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Image of galaxies of all ages; Information that can be taken from the Hubble Deep Field; Version of the picture unveiled at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society; Determination of the distances of galaxies from Earth.

Shows a false-color image of the Kliuchevskoi volcano which was captured by radar aboard the space shuttle Endeavor. Description of the image, which includes the Kamchatka River; Use of radar imaging techniques to study erupting volcanoes.

Comments on the surface of Uranus' moon Miranda. Initial proposals about the cause of the rough-hewn surface; Results of a reanalysis of Voyager images by Robert T. Pappalardo, Ronald Greeley and Stephen J. Reynolds; Images of Miranda's Arden and Inverness coronas; Details.

Reports on images recently released showing the surprise brightening of Comet Halley, first observed in February 1991. Focus on comet's coma; Previous decrease in size and brightness of cloud; Unknown reasons for outburst.

Reports on an image of sky near the constellation Sextans which appears to be empty but really contains numerous extremely faint and remote galaxies. How the image was taken by the European Southern Observatory's New Technology Telescope in Chile; Process that was used to obtain the image; What the image shows.

Describes photos recently released of the Crab nebula in both false-color, near-ultra-violet and ultraviolet images taken by the Astro Observatory. Details about location of high-energy areas and star formation; Photographs of more than 900 objects taken by one of the instruments; Astro's portrait of the Crab nebula, which depicts the ultraviolet glow produced as electrons rush out from the spinning neutron star at the nebula's center; Comparison of this image with one taken in the far-ultraviolet.

Scientists have finally received the pictures of Venus' atmosphere taken in February 1990 by the Galileo spacecraft as it whipped around the planet--one of a series of maneuvers that will give Galileo the speed needed to propel it to Jupiter, where it should arrive in 1995. Many spacecraft have looked at Venus' clouds, but Magellan both photographed the cloud tops and recorded near-infrared emissions from deeper clouds. The lower cloud patterns differ distinctly from those at the top, report Galileo scientists analyzing the images radioed to Earth from the craft. The near-infrared images revealed convection zones within clouds due to rising heat, while the cloud tops appeared fluffier--due to reflected sunlight--in the visible-light photographs.