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1 January 2005: Like the annual New Year’s fireworks display, astronomers at Gemini Observatory are ushering in 2005 with a striking image that dazzles the eye with stellar pyrotechnics.

25 May 2004: This image of Comet C/2001 Q4 (NEAT) was taken at the WIYN 0.9-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, AZ, on May 7, 2004.

6 October 2003: This image of the clouds of gas and dust next to the “neck” and “body” of the Pelican Nebula was taken by the National Science Foundation’s Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, AZ.

30 June 2003: Gemini Observatory's new imaging spectrograph, without the help of adaptive optics, recently captured images that are among the sharpest ever obtained of astronomical objects from the ground.

2 June 2003: A razor-sharp image was released today revealing new details at the heart of a famous star cluster. The thousands of swarming stars at the cluster's core were made visible by an innovative adaptive optics system called Altair that is currently being commissioned on the Frederick C. Gillett Gemini Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawai'i.

10 May 2003: In one of the largest and most detailed celestial images ever made, the coil-shaped Helix Nebula is being unveiled today in celebration of Astronomy Day. The resulting composite picture is a seamless blend of ultra-sharp NASA Hubble Space Telescope images combined with the wide view of the Mosaic Camera on the WIYN 0.9-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona. The image shows a fine web of filamentary “bicycle-spoke” features embedded in the colorful red and blue gas ring, which is one of the nearest planetary nebulae to Earth.

10 January 2002: A new color image of the nearby irregular galaxy NGC 6822 shows a myriad of hot blue massive stars and several famous nebulae in impressive detail.

30 December 2001:

2 October 2001: After seven years of design and construction but only two weeks of commissioning, a remarkable first light image was obtained with a new state-of the-art instrument at the Gemini North Telescope on Hawaii's Mauna Kea. The image of the large galaxy in Pisces called NGC 628 (or Messier 74) has been called the "Perfect Spiral Galaxy" due to its nearly ideal form, which is clearly revealed in this new image.

23 July 2001: A dramatic infrared image released today by the Gemini Observatory sheds new light on the early stages of the formation of giant stars in our galaxy. The image, taken by the Gemini North telescope on Hawaii's Mauna Kea, reveals remarkable details in a nebula of gas and dust expelled from a young star named AFGL 2591. This expulsion is a common feature in the formation of stars similar in size to the Sun, but it is far less common in their massive counterparts.

28 February 2001: Using an off-the-shelf camera set for a long exposure and satellite data freely available on the Internet, solar scientist Bill Livingston has developed a dependable method for taking pictures of commercial communications satellites hovering high above Earth.

11 January 2001: A sharply detailed image of the northwest portion of the Andromeda galaxy, M31, demonstrates the power of an on-going sky survey project sponsored by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO).

8 January 2001: The National Optical Astronomy Observatory's Deep Wide-Field Survey marks its first release of data today with a large, exhibit-sized image of 300,000 faint galaxies and stars at the opening of the 197th meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

31 May 1999: Dr. Samuel Barden, astronomer at the National Science Foundation's National Optical Astronomy Observatories in Tucson, Arizona, has partnered with Mr. Willis Colburn and Mr. James Arns at Kaiser Optical Systems, Inc. (KOSI), Ann Arbor, Michigan for the development of large format spectroscopic gratings using holographic technology for astronomical applications funded by the National Science Foundation through the Advanced Technologies and Instrumentation Program in the division of Astronomy. These new technology gratings can provide information at multiple regions of the spectrum simultaneously, with higher efficiency, less cost, and greater durability than the conventional grating technology that astronomers have relied on for over a hundred years.