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...

Astronomy contributor John Chumack was finally able to capture the Jupiter impact site with his 10-inch telescope from his backyard in Dayton, Ohio. And he was nice enough to share an image and a Jupiter rotation movie with us. Below is how he put the video together: There was an incredible amount of work that went into this movie. I captured more than 51,820 useable frames, and each full color RGB set had at least 3,900 frames. Running through all...

Astronomy magazine contributor and longtime imager John Chumack had some luck spotting the new Jupiter impact site from his home in Dayton, Ohio, July 24, and he was nice enough to share his account with us: Even though the seeing sucked, and the sky was full of thick haze, I was able to capture the impact mark on Jupiter. I shot these images with my ToUcam PRO II webcam attached to my 6-inch f/8 cave reflector from my front driveway last night. Unfortunately...