Dark matter is one of the Universe’s most mysterious and yet ubiquitous components. Humans, the Earth, the Sun, and everything that emits or absorbs light in space are all formed of ordinary matter, which includes protons, neutrons, and electrons. However, ordinary matter only accounts for one-sixth of the total mass in the … Read more
Man’s curiosity is as vast as the Universe. People have endless questions about the different phenomena and the existence of things on Earth and beyond. The study about our favorite Milky Way Galaxy and some other galaxies has been around since the 17th century. Besides our Milky Way, billions of other galaxies … Read more
While a famed French astronomer Charles Messier was hunting for celestial objects during the 18th century, he noticed several “nebulous objects” while surveying the night sky. He decided to catalog those commonly mistaken objects as comets so others would not make the same mistake. The resulting list, known as Messier Catalog, now … Read more
There’s no more significant investment than a good set of binoculars if you’re learning the constellations and want to investigate the nebulae, star clusters, and planets hiding inside them. Stargazing with binoculars, which may give you a close-up view of deep-sky objects that are undetectable to the naked eye and frequently impossible … Read more
On October 13, 1773, while Charles Messier was hunting for celestial objects, he found this spiral galaxy full of beauty with its graceful and winding arms appearing like a grand spiral staircase sweeping through space. It was called M51 or known as Whirlpool galaxy. Its arms are actually stars and gas laced … Read more
Large Magellanic Cloud Named after the explorer, and Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan, whose crew discovered these companion galaxies to the Milky Way during the first voyage worldwide (1519–22). It is called the Large Magellanic Cloud or LMC for short. It is not a cloud but a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way … Read more
The Milky Way is perhaps the most famous galaxy people know, and even preschool kids can name it. But little did we learn and hear about other galaxies and that there are hundreds of billions of them scattered in the universe. We can see some galaxies with our naked eyes, especially under … Read more
Tadpole galaxy also known as UGC 10214 or Arp 188is a disrupted barred spiral galaxy located 420 million light-years from Earth toward the northern constellation Draco. Its most spectacular feature is a massive trail of bright blue star clusters approximately 280,000 light-years long, reflecting the essence of our dynamic, restless, and violent … Read more
Hercules Globular Cluster is Messier 13 or designated NGC 6205, a globular cluster of several hundred thousand stars in the Hercules constellation. For many stargazers, M13 is the finest globular cluster in the northern half of the heavens. It is in a star pattern Keystone– an asymmetrical square in the constellation Hercules … Read more
Located 12 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major, Messier 81 is one of the brightest galaxies in the night sky. Messier 81 was discovered along with the nearby Cigar Galaxy (Messier 82) by the German astronomer Johann Elert Bode on December 31, 1774. It has an apparent magnitude of … Read more