2023 October 15

Wed. 7/31: We'll be closed tonight due to clouds. Stay tuned for updates about August!

Wed. Aug. 14 - The weather looks good! We'll be open tonight 8:30-9:30 pm.

Pumpkin space latte, anyone? ☕

Hubble captured this festive array of stars, Terzan 12, found in the Milky Way about 15,000 light-years from Earth. The stars in this cluster are bound together by gravity in a sphere-like shape and are shrouded in gas and dust. As the starlight travels through that gas and dust to Earth, blue light scatters, leaving the redder wavelengths to come through.

Download the full-resolution image here.

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2023 October 10

Hidden Orion from Webb Image Credit & License: NASA, ESA, CSA, JWST; Processing: M. McCaughrean & S. Pearson

Explanation: The Great Nebula in Orion has hidden stars. To the unaided eye in visible light, it appears as a small fuzzy patch in the constellation of Orion. But this image was taken by the Webb Space Telescope in a representative-color composite of red and very near infrared light. It confirms with impressive detail that the Orion Nebula is a busy neighborhood of young stars, hot gas, and dark dust. The rollover image shows the same image in representative colors further into the near infrared. The power behind much of the Orion Nebula (M42) is the Trapezium - a cluster of bright stars near the nebula’s center. The diffuse and filamentary glow surrounding the bright stars is mostly heated interstellar dust. Detailed inspection of these images shows an unexpectedly large number of Jupiter-Mass Binary Objects (JuMBOs), pairs of Jupiter-mass objects which might give a clue to how stars are forming. The whole Orion Nebula cloud complex, which includes the Horsehead Nebula, will slowly disperse over the next few million years.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap231010.html

Wed. 11/20 - We'll be closed tonight due to clouds.

Wed. Oct. 25: The observatory will be closed tonight due to clouds. We'll try to run our Halloween event tomorrow instead, 7:00 - 8:30 pm.

NASA Science

What is Dark Energy? Inside our accelerating, expanding Universe - NASA Science

Some 13.8 billion years ago, the universe began with a rapid expansion we call the big bang. After this initial expansion, which lasted a fr

Article of the Day!

"What is Dark Energy? Inside our accelerating, expanding Universe" by Chelsea Gohd

Video of the Day!

NASA's Parker Solar Probe broke a record! It got within 3.8 million miles of the Sun's surface - closer than any human-made object before! Not only that, it's the fastest human-made object, reaching a speed of about 435,000 mph.

We're not yet sure about tonight's weather - it depends on whether these clouds move north or south. Check back in a few hours!