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Astronomy can be like a professional sport. Keeping up with it can be a lot of fun. There’s breaking news every day. This includes new discoveries in tools and techniques for astronomy, as well as interesting images of all the objects and phenomena in the sky.

NASA’s website contains a lot of this information. NASA stays on top of all the latest events, and even makes a lot of the news itself. Here are just some of the current events shown in mid November of 2008.

One of the most important current events in astronomy NASA discussed in November was the late month launch of the shuttle Endeavour. Refueling the International Space Station was its goal. This included a number of space walks to perform routine maintenance on the outside of the station. Such space walks aren’t only immediately important for the goals they accomplish, but important in the development of techniques and experiences that apply to future missions. The space station is very important for furthering the science of astronomy.

Another of the current events in astronomy discussed by NASA in November was a staggering discovery made by the Hubble Telescope. For the first time in history, a telescope took a visible light image of a planet orbiting another star. It all began in the 1980s when IRAS, a NASA satellite telescope, used infrared to discover dust around the star. Scientists knew this was a sure sign that planets might circle the sun.

Current and events in astronomy can also be about what happened a long time ago. Images of the moon taken in 1966 and 1967 are being restored in the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project. This data was taken from tape drives. NASA has already released some of these restored historic images.

Astronomy is a huge field. Also large is a list of current events in astronomy. Keep looking into the universe!