Messier Objects
The spiral galaxy nearest to the Milky Way and listed as M31 in the Messier Catalog.
What is the Andromeda Galaxy?
This telescope, looking mostly at visible wavelengths, launched in 1990, named after the man who helped discover that there were galaxies beyond our own Milky Way.
What is the Hubble Space Telescope?
This is the leading theory on the origin of the universe and was championed by Georges Lemaître and backed by various scientists, including Edwin Hubble and George Gamow. Bazinga!
What is the Big Bang Theory?
The first manned observation mission targeted at the far side of the moon and first successful crewed lunar mission of the 21st century.
What is Artemis II?
In May 1961, he became the first human in space, completing a single orbit of the Earth in 108 minutes.
Who is Yuri Gagarin?
This supernova remnant was the first object added to the Messier catalog, and in the past has been mistaken for Halley’s Comet.
What is the Crab Nebula?
This humongous, hexagonal, golden space telescope captures infrared images from the Second Lagrange point, nearly 1.5 million km away from us on Earth.
What is JWST?
The astronomical theory that Copernicus, using Tycho Brahe's data, put forth that would result in Galileo's life-long house arrest and suspicion of heresy for its promotion.
What is Heliocentric Theory/Heliocentrism?
Carried by the R-7 Semyorka, launched in 1957 from Kazakhstan, it became the first artificial satellite in space.
What is Sputnik 1?
The Moon's first female visitor and a part of the NASA crew that flew farther from Earth than humans have ever gone.
Who is Christina Koch?
The Messier Catalog lists this many night sky objects that are easily visible from the Earth’s Northern Hemisphere.
What is 110?
The Observatory, located South of Main Campus at CU Boulder, where CU students can use large telescopes to look at the stars and nebulae above their heads.
What is the Sommers-Bausch Observatory (SBO)?
The famous astronomer who had to put his work on planetary motion on hold in order to defend his elderly mother in court against charges of witchcraft.
Who is (Johannes) Kepler?
The plane that took flight in 1973 and raced a solar eclipse at over Mach 2 for 74 minutes before exiting the path of totality.
What is Concorde?
This Airforce test pilot flew Columbia around the Moon in 1969, while his colleagues became the first humans to walk on the Moon.
Who is Michael Collins?
This planetary nebula was the first of its kind to be observed by humans, and is assigned M27.
What is the Dumbbell Nebula?
The Earth-shatteringly large telescope that gave us our first images of Black Holes, capturing Sag A* and Galaxy M87’s Supermassive Black Hole.
What is the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) ?
The Indian physicist who calculated the maximum mass limit for a stable white dwarf at the age of 19 while on a ship from India to England, winning the Nobel Prize for his work on stellar evolution.
Who is (Subrahmanyan) Chandrasekhar?
A heavily modified Boeing 747SP that carried a 2.7-meter reflecting telescope for infrared astronomy research.
What is SOFIA?
This Class of 1953 CU Boulder alum and former football player survived Apollo 13.
Who is John ‘Jack’ Swigert?
The galaxy classification of M32, a satellite of the Andromeda Galaxy.
What is a Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy?
A brand new observatory in Chile, named for the woman who gave the first convincing evidence for the elusive phenomenon, Dark Matter.
What is the (Vera C.) Rubin Observatory?
A New Zealand mathematician who discovered an exact solution to the Einstein Field Equations to describe the spacetime geometry around rotating black holes and compact objects.
Who is (Roy) Kerr?
The Japanese lunar lander whose thrusters failed on descent, causing it to land upside down at the final stage of its mission in the Shioli Crater.
What is SLIM?
The astronaut who holds the record for longest stay in space at 437 days; an achievement which has been used to study the effects of long-term space travel on the human mind and body.
Who is Valeri Vladimirovich Polyakov?