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Here's the latest article from the Astronomy site at BellaOnline.com.

Cosmic Equines
Horses galloping and flying; creatures half human, half horse; dark horses invisible but for their silhouettes against the stars behind them. Find out about the cosmic equines that are features of our skies.

http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art183463.asp

*Amazing Hubble image of the evolving Universe*

The Hubble Team released a new version of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, which now includes observations in the ultraviolet. The youngest and hottest stars from the early Universe are part of the new picture. http://www.pinterest.com/pin/250090585532575733/

The telescope is like a time machine in that the farther away an object is, the farther back in time we're seeing it. There are thousands of galaxies in this image which was taken of a tiny bit of space in the constellation Fornax. Some of these galaxies existed when the Universe was only 800 million years old, so this gives us information about the evolution of the Universe. (That may not sound old, but remember the Universe is over 13 *billion* years old.)

*25 years ago*

In this week a quarter of a century ago Voyager 2 was close enough to Neptune to begin observations. They continued until the beginning of October 1989 when its primary mission ended. You can read more about “Voyager 2 – the Grand Tour” here: http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art182793.asp

*Birthdays"

(1) Charles "Pete" Conrad, Jr. (born June 2, 1930)
Conrad was a NASA astronaut with a distinguished space record. He was part of the Gemini 5 mission, commanded Gemini 11, in Apollo 12 became the third man to walk on the Moon, and commanded the Skylab 2 mission.

(2) John Couch Adams (born June 5, 1819)
Adams was an English astronomer and mathematician. He's best known for working out the existence and position of Neptune based on its effect on Uranus. But when someone finally agreed to look for it, the planet wasn't found. The credit went to Le Verrier and Galle. However Adams did calculate the path of the Leonid meteors, which coincided with the orbit of comet 55P Tempel-Tuttle. Before that, no one had suspected a relationship between meteor showers and comets.

(3) Dave Scott (born June 6, 1932)
Scott, best known as a NASA astronaut, flew the Gemini 8 mission with Neil Armstrong. He was the command module pilot aboard Apollo 9 in Earth orbit, but later walked on the Moon as commander of Apollo 15.

(4) Giovanni Domenico Cassini aka Jean-Dominique Cassini (born June 8, 1625)
Cassini was a prominent Italian-French astronomer and the first director of the Paris Observatory. He had a wide range of astronomical accomplishments, but his studies of Saturn inspired the Cassini Mission to Saturn to carry his name. Cassini discovered four of the moons of Saturn and the Cassini division in Saturn's rings. http://www.pinterest.com/pin/250090585531819222/

(5) Johann Galle (born June 9, 1812)
Galle was a German astronomer at the Berlin Observatory. Using Urbain LeVerrier's calculations for a planet perturbing the orbit of Uranus, he and an assistant found Neptune. http://www.pinterest.com/pin/250090585527911920/

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I wish you clear skies.

Mona Evans, Astronomy Editor
http://astronomy.bellaonline.com

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