This telescope is going to create HUUUUUGE amounts of data for astronomers.

“AT FIVE tonnes and 520 megapixels, it is the biggest digital camera ever built—which is fitting, because it is designed to tackle the biggest problem in the universe. On February 20th researchers at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (pictured), which sits 2,200 metres (7,200 feet) above sea level in the Atacama desert of northern Chile, will begin installing this behemoth on a telescope called Blanco.”

The image is from http://www.science.tamu.edu/articles/779/ (Credit: T. Abbott and NOAO/AURA/NSF.)

Found the article thanks to Eric.

“Saturn’s moon Mimas peeks out from behind the night side of the larger moon Dione in this Cassini image captured during the spacecraft’s Dec. 12, 2011, flyby of Dione.”

Infrared image of the Large Magellanic Cloud.  Found at the APOD for today.

“Our Milky Way galaxy contains a minimum of 100 billion planets, according to a detailed statistical study based on the detection of three planets located outside our solar system, called exoplanets.”

I’ve never seen M27 like this before.

From Astronomy Picture Of The Day; December 27, 2011:

M27: The Dumbbell Nebula 
Bill Snyder (Bill Snyder Photography)

The first hint of what will become of our Sun was discovered inadvertently in 1764. At that time, Charles Messier was compiling a list of diffuse objects not to be confused with comets. The 27th object on Messier’s list, now known as M27 or the Dumbbell Nebula, is a planetary nebula, the type of nebula our Sun will produce when nuclear fusion stops in its core. M27 is one of the brightest planetary nebulae on the sky, and can be seen toward the constellation of the Fox (Vulpecula) with binoculars. It takes light about 1000 years to reach us from M27, shown above in colors emitted by hydrogen and oxygen. Understanding the physics and significance of M27 was well beyond 18th century science. Even today, many things remain mysterious about bipolar planetary nebula like M27, including the physical mechanism that expels a low-mass star’s gaseous outer-envelope, leaving an X-ray hot white dwarf.

(via wigmund)

This is an awesome image from Hubble. UGC 1810 “has a disk that is tidally distorted into a rose-like shape by the gravitational tidal pull of the companion galaxy below it, known as UGC 1813.”