Early spring sees the return of the galaxies, monumental rotating structures of many millions of gravitationally bound stars amid interstellar dust and gas that span tens of thousands or more light years in diameter.
This year sees the launch of new astrophotographic technologies spearheaded by StarAid, an eyepiece-sized autonomous autoguider, easy polar-alignment tool and platesolver. How does it work? Impressively, writes Ade Ashford.
The Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard the Hubble Space Telescope has provided many of the observatory’s most spectacular – and scientifically valuable – images. NASA and ESA present samples of its work in a 20th anniversary collection.
