Longtime astroimager and Astronomy magazine contributor Tony Hallas thinks about his upcoming acceptance speech. The Advanced Imaging Conference committee awarded Hallas its most prestigious award, the Hubble Award, for his service and the advances he brought to astroimaging. Michael E. Bakich photo In my previous blog, I described the first day at the 2009 Advanced Imaging Conference (AIC), which occurred October 30 through November 1 at the San...

Renowned astroimager Adam Block of the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter presented a pair of workshops at the 2009 Advanced Imaging Conference. Michael E. Bakich photo As part of my duties as photo editor for the world’s most popular astronomy publication, I attended the sixth annual Advanced Imaging Conference (AIC) October 30 through November 1 at the San Jose, California, Doubletree Hotel. If you’re one of our many readers who love the “eye candy” that top...

This 5-minute exposure shows Stuart Parker’s latest supernova discovery in spiral galaxy PGC 17517. Stuart Parker photo New Zealand amateur astronomer Stuart Parker just sent me an e-mail in which he announced his fourth supernova discovery. Parker routinely surveys numerous galaxies as part of a regular search program. He discovered the magnitude 17.1 object October 18 in PGC 17517, a magnitude 13.6 galaxy in Pictor. PGC is an acronym that designates...

On October 3, the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) dedicated the world’s largest solar telescope at Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) in California. BBSO, located on the north shore of Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains of southern California, is one of the world’s leading solar observatories. It sits at an altitude of 6,780 feet (2,067 meters). The telescope, which has an aperture of 63 inches (1.6 meters), took 5 years to construct...

During Halloween weekend, when most people are worrying about ghosts, goblins, and what candy to give away, some 300 avid astroimagers from around the world will meet in San Jose, California, for the 2009 Advanced Imaging Conference (AIC). And, guess what? I’ll be there, too. AIC’s board of directors once again invited me to the conference because Astronomy is important to astroimagers. Our magazine represents the largest audience available to photographers...

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present the best-ever ultraviolet picture (at right) of our galactic neighbor, M31, aka the Andromeda Galaxy. Taken by NASA’s Swift satellite, which normally scans the skies for far-off gamma-ray bursts, this picture represents a total exposure time of just 24 hours, taken during late spring 2008. It merges 330 images taken by the satellite, showing a region 200,000 light-years wide by 100,000 light-years high (or...

Longtime Astronomy contributor John Chumack of Dayton, Ohio, sent us a video we had to share with you. It shows 3 nights of Perseid meteor activity beginning with the evening of August 11 and continuing through the morning hours of August 14. During that time, Chumack recorded more than 240 meteors. He condensed the videos into a movie that runs just under 1 minute. During that minute, you’ll see the stars advance as Earth rotates. The Moon rises...

I’m a big fan of anything that brings people face to face with amazing science, and it looks like that’s exactly what’s happening in The World At Night (TWAN) , an international program to display beautiful images of the night sky in American malls. Exhibiting these pictures in 24 shopping malls across the United States, in cities big and small, is part of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 , which celebrates astronomy and its greatness on the...

Holy cow, what an amazing picture! Thierry Legault , a well-known astrophotographer, recently captured this literally (in my case) breathtaking image of the space shuttle Endeavor docked with the International Space Station (ISS) as the two vehicles passed in front of the Sun . Another of Legault’s recent shots captured the shuttle Atlantis and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) as they transited across the Sun . I particularly like how the perspective...

The European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO) just released a striking set of images focused on an unusual star, HD 87643, near the constellation Carina the Keel . The main image (to the right) centers 87643 within its backdrop of bright stars of every color; it’s the expansive kind of star field that’s just soothing to look at. But, even more impressively, ESO also obtained much closer images of 87643, zooming...