Andromeda Halo 仙女座大星系銀暈 (9/5/2003)
哈勃太空望遠鏡的新照片，圖中的是我們銀河系附近的仙女座大星系(M31)的外圍，稱為銀暈的地方。這張又是深空一類的圖片，用了足足84小時的曝光時間，將人眼視力的極限再暗6億倍的攝下來，拍下了30000顆星和千計的背景星系。光學技術的進步，使天文學家可以用長達多日的時間去攝影宇宙最深最遠最暗的影像，我個人喜歡宇宙深空的相片較多於其他，因為這些深空照片實在蘊含了很多宇宙遠處和早期的資料。我明天會更詳細為大家介紹。另外，這張相的 full resolution在此。

Caption:: Relying on the deepest visible-light images ever taken in space, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) have reliably measured the age of the spherical halo of stars surrounding the neighboring Andromeda galaxy (M31). To their surprise, they have discovered that approximately one-third of the stars in Andromeda's halo formed only 6 to 8 billion years ago. That's a far cry from the 11-to-13 billion-year age of the stars in the Milky Way's halo.

Credit:: NASA, ESA and T.M. Brown (STScI)

Mercury Tranist 1999 水星凌日 1999 (8/5/2003)
昨天，有一個名叫水星凌日的天文現象發生，意即水星經過太陽的表面，跟日食類似，只是今次的主角是水星並非月球，然而水星經過太陽表面時只覆蓋了一小部份而非日食般蓋著整個太陽。我今次也很幸運，雖然天氣不好，但也能看到好一陣子的凌日，多謝多謝。不過至今還未找到今次凌日的靚圖，所以暫時用了上次99年水星凌日的動畫，等找到新圖後，定會更新的。

Caption:: In 1999, just days before the peak of the Leonid meteor shower, skywatchers were offered another astronomical treat as planet Mercury crossed the face of the Sun on November 15. Viewed from planet Earth, a transit of Mercury is not all that rare. The last occurred in 1993 and the next will happen in 2003. Enjoying a mercurial transit does require an appropriately filtered telescope, still the event can be dramatic as the diminutive well-done world drifts past the dominating solar disk. This slow loading gif animation is based on images recorded by the earth-orbiting TRACE satellite. The false-color TRACE images were made in ultraviolet light and tend to show the hot gas just above the Sun's visible surface. Mercury's disk is silhouetted against the seething plasma as it follows a trajectory near the edge of the Sun.

Credit:: Brian Handy, TRACE Project

NGC 1850 (7/5/2003)
天上除了恆星外還有不同的深空天體，星團是其中一種的深空天體。相中的是NGC(New Generation Catalog)星表（雖然叫星表，但記錄的都不是星，而是深空天體）中的第1850號，他是一個擁有很多新生恆星的雙星團（雖然他的樣子很像球狀星團，但他不是）。

Caption:: These two dazzling clusters of stars, called NGC 1850, are found in one of our neighboring galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud. The photo's centerpiece is a young, "globular-like" star cluster -- a type of object unknown in our own Milky Way Galaxy. The smaller second cluster is below and to the right of the main cluster. The stars are surrounded by a filigree pattern of diffuse gas [left], which scientists believe was created by the explosion of massive stars.

Credit::NASA, ESA, and Martino Romaniello

Red-Eyed Tree Frog 紅眼樹蛙 (6/5/2003)
青BB的紅眼樹蛙是也。不詳細介紹了，請看英文的說明，不過即管說句，這隻樹蛙的顏色那麼鮮艷，一定帶有很多毒素。有些人會飼養這樹蛙作寵物，我自己無飼養青蛙的，不知道情況如何，但我始終覺得牠們生活在大自然比我們的家好。

Caption:: The Red-eyed Tree Frog is a slender, delicate frog with webbed hands and feet. The body is brilliant green with pale blue vertical bars on its side. Like most amphibians, it is dependent on water for most of its life. In the forests of Belize, it minimizes water loss by resting underneath leaves and tucking its limbs up close to its body.Breeding occurs from October to March, usually near temporary or permanent ponds. The frogs breed while in an embrace called amplexus, the male mounted and locked onto the back of the female. The male then fertilizes the 30-50 pale eggs as the female lays them on a leave over standing water. In 5 days, the tadpoles wiggle their way down the leaf to the water below. It then takes the tadpoles 75-80 days to metamorphose into a frog. The adult frog will spend most of the rest of its life in the forest canopy, often hidden among bromeliads.

Credit:: David Davis

Leonids 2002 獅子座流星雨 2002 (5/5/2003)
你有看過流星雨嗎？還是只是看到一遍雲，一顆流星也看不見？記得去年的獅子座流星雨碰上滿月，雖然上天為我由密雲下雨轉為天晴，但那月光實在太xx了，累我連一粒流星也看不見（不過已覺得運氣太好了）！那麼我們倒不如看相罷了，由30張獨立曝光時間1分鐘的相片合成的這張相片，上面有大約70粒流星，雖然比前幾年少，但己經很壯麗。獅子座流星雨的高峰真正過去了，誰也不曉得在大家的有生之年，能否再一次見到星隕如雨的竟象。

Caption:: This lovely view from northern Spain, at Cape Creus on the easternmost point of the Iberian peninsula, looks out across the Mediteranean and up into the stream of the 2002 Leonid meteor shower. The picture is a composite of thirty separate one minute exposures taken through a fisheye lens near the Leonids' first peak, about 4:00 Universal Time on November 19. Over 70 leonid meteors are visible here, some seen nearly head on, with bright Jupiter positioned just to the right of the shower's radiant in Leo. Perched on the moonlit rocks at the bottom right, the photographers' dog seems to be watching the on going celestial display and adds a surreal visual element to the scene. What's the dog's name? Leica, of course.

Credit:: Juan Carlos Casado and Isabel Graboleda