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The Hubble Space Telescope has found a UFO, but this one is filled with stars instead of little green men. The iconic space telescope snapped an amazing new photo of the "UFO Galaxy" — a galaxy 35 million light-years from Earth that is officially known as NGC 2683. "NGC 2683 is a spiral galaxy seen almost edge-on, giving it the shape of a classic science fiction spaceship," NASA officials wrote in a recent image description. The galaxy was originally discovered on Feb. 5, 1788 by famed astronomer William Herschel. It is located in the Lynx constellation in the northern sky....

I am looking to buy my husband a telescope for his birthday and would appreciate any guidance from Freeper Friends. I want to spend less than $500 - he is a novice so looking for ease of set-up and use. Thanks in advance!

Explanation: Bright planets Venus and Jupiter are framed by the National Solar Observatory's McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope in this very astronomical scene. The photo was taken at Kitt Peak National Observatory on March 9. A heliostat sits atop the 100 foot high solar telescope tower to focus the Sun's rays down a long diagonal shaft that reaches underground to the telescope's primary mirror. Of course, after sunset shadows were cast and the structure illuminated by light from the nearly full rising Moon. Opened to begin the night's work, the dome housing Kitt Peak's 2.1 meter reflector is included in the frame,...

Explanation: Comet Lovejoy (C/2011 W3) survived its close encounter with the Sun earlier this month, taking its place among wonders of the southern skies just in time for Christmas. Seen here before sunrise from Paranal Observatory in Chile, the sungrazing comet's tails stretch far above the eastern horizon. Spanning over 20 degrees they rise alongside the plane of the our Milky Way galaxy. A breathtaking spectacle in itself, Lovejoy performs on this celestial stage with southern stars and nebulae, including the Large and Small Magellanic clouds right of the telescope dome, and the glow of zodiacal light along the left...

He was too weak to travel to California last week for the announcement of the mission's first big success -- the discovery of planet Kepler-22b, a rock with similarities to Earth and a sweet-spot distance from its star that creates temperatures and other conditions that could support life. "From what we have measured so far, we say water could exist. We don't say it's there," Koch said, tempering my excitement over when we get to meet our new neighbors... Doctors made the ALS diagnosis in March 2009, the same month a rocket carried the Kepler telescope into space to begin...

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has detected signs of icy bodies raining down in an alien solar system. The downpour resembles our own solar system several billion years ago during a period known as the "Late Heavy Bombardment," which may have brought water and other life-forming ingredients to Earth. During this epoch, comets and other frosty objects that were flung from the outer solar system pummeled the inner planets. The barrage scarred our moon and produced large amounts of dust. Now Spitzer has spotted a band of dust around a nearby bright star in the northern sky called Eta Corvi that...

NASA has unveiled a flood of photos showing millions galaxies, stars and asteroids photographed by a prolific sky-mapping telescope that ended its mission earlier this year. For the first time, the space agency publicly released more than half of the 2.7 million images taken by its Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope during its mission to map the entire sky. WISE launched in December 2009 and spent 14 months scanning the heavens in infrared light before shutting down this past February. The $320 million space telescope hunted for asteroids and comets, as well as more distant cosmic objects revealed by...

DARPA-developed Space Surveillance Telescope is supposed to see objects in deep space like no ground-based system before itYou can bet that if there are little red aliens running around on Mars or spaceships patrolling other planet in our solar system for that matter, a recently powered-up telescope built by the researchers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency might just be able to see them. The Air Force, which operates the DARPA-developed Space Surveillance Telescope (SST) says the telescope's design, featuring unique image-capturing technology known as a curved charge coupled device (CCD) system, as well as very wide field-of-view, large-aperture...

The first spacecraft ever to circle Mercury has beamed home the first-ever photo taken of the small rocky planet from orbit, showing a stark landscape peppered with craters. NASA's Messenger spacecraft snapped the new Mercury photo today (March 29) at 5:20 a.m. EDT (0920 GMT). The photo shows the stark gray landscape of southern Mercury, a view that is dominated by a huge impact crater. "This image is the first ever obtained from a spacecraft in orbit about the solar system's innermost planet," Messenger mission scientists explained in a statement. The new Mercury photo shows a region around the south...

HONOLULU – Hawaii has moved a step closer to the construction of the world's largest telescope on the summit of Mauna Kea. The state Board of Land and Natural Resources unanimously approved the plan Friday. A consortium of California and Canadian universities had applied for a permit to build the Thirty Meter Telescope on conservation land.

An international team of astronomers led by Mary Williams from the Astrophysical Institute Potsdam (AIP) has discovered a new stream of stars in our Milky Way: the "Aquarius Stream," named after the constellation of Aquarius. The stream of stars is a remnant of a smaller galaxy in our cosmic neighbourhood, which has been pulled apart by the gravitational pull of the Milky Way about 700 million years ago. The discovery is a result of the measurement of the velocities of 250,000 stars with the RAVE Survey based at the Australian Astronomical Observatory's UK Schmidt Telescope at Siding Spring Observatory, NSW,...

NASA is expected to announce a new discovery by researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope on Wednesday (Jan. 26). The space agency has scheduled a teleconference with reporters for 1 p.m. EST (1800 GMT) on Wednesday to announce and discuss the finding, which will also be published that day in the journal Nature. "Astronomers have pushed the Hubble Space Telescope to its limits and have seen further back in time than ever before," NASA said in an announcement posted on its website today (Jan. 21). Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live on the space agency's website, according to...

The world's largest neutrino telescope – made from a giant cube of ice at the South Pole – aimed at detecting subatomic particles traveling near the speed of light has been completed, researchers announced today (Dec. 20). http://www.livescience.com/environment/south-pole-neutrino-observatory-construction-finished-101220.html

Like exploding stars, black holes, dark matter? How about cosmic intrigue, deep space astronomy , or origins of the universe? Then you’re gonna love this. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin are putting the finishing touches on a giant underground telescope buried beneath the South Pole to help understand said phenomenon.

A FOCAL Mission into the Oort Cloud by Paul Gilster on November 15, 2010 After all this time, IÂ’m still trying to wrap my head around the idea of massive objects in space as lenses, their distortion of spacetime offering the ability to see distant objects at huge magnification. On Friday we saw how the lensing effect caused by galactic clusters can be used to study dark energy. And consider the early results from the Herschel-ATLAS project, conducted by ESAÂ’s Herschel Space Observatory. Herschel is scanning large areas of the sky in far-infrared and sub-millimeter light. Many of its...

- NASA Announces Televised Chandra News Conference - NASA will hold a news conference at 12:30 p.m. EST on Monday, Nov. 15, to discuss the Chandra X-ray Observatory's discovery of an exceptional object in our cosmic neighborhood.

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 July 12 X-Ray Milky Way Credit: D. Wang (UMass) et al., CXC, NASA Explanation: If you had x-ray vision, the center regions of our Galaxy would not be hidden from view by the immense cosmic dust clouds opaque to visible light. Instead, the Milky Way toward Sagittarius might look something like this stunning mosaic of images from the orbiting Chandra Observatory. Pleasing to look at, the gorgeous...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 August 12 X-Rays from Stephan's Quintet Credit: X-ray: G.Trinchieri (INAF-Brera) et al., CXC, NASAOptical: Palomar Digital Sky Survey Explanation: Stephan's Quintet is a picturesque but clearly troubled grouping of galaxies about 300 million light-years away toward the high-flying constellation Pegasus. Spanning over 200,000 light-years at that distance, this composite false-color image illustrates the powerful nature of this multiple galaxy collision, showing x-ray data from the Chandra Observatory...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2004 February 3 X-Rays From Antennae Galaxies Credit: G. Fabbiano (CfA) et al., CXC, SAO, NASA Explanation: A bevy of black holes and neutron stars shine as bright, point-like sources against bubbles of million degree gas in this false-color x-ray image from the orbiting Chandra Observatory. The striking picture spans about 80 thousand light-years across the central regions of two galaxies, NGC 4038 and NGC 4039, locked in...

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has captured the largest data set yet of Jupiter's colorful lights called aurora, yielding a pretty picture that could help solve some mysteries about the phenomenon. The phenomenon is similar to the Northern Lights seen on Earth, thought on a much larger scale. "Jupiter has auroras bigger than our entire planet," said Randy Gladstone of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. In a NASA statement today, Gladstone called the purple rings in a new colorized image "Northern Lights on steroids. They're hundreds of times more energetic than auroras on Earth." Unlike Earth's auroras, Jupiter's...