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11 August 2003: This planet has captured the public’s imagination like no other in our solar system. As it nears its closest approach to Earth in some 60,000 years, Mars offers observers spectacular views such as this one taken on August 3, 2003 at the Kitt Peak Visitor Center 20-inch telescope.

8 July 2003: This striking image of the Hickson Compact Group 87, a diverse group of galaxies located about 400 million light-years from Earth, was acquired with the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on the 8-meter Gemini South Telescope without the help of adaptive optics. NOAO provided the highly capable detector subsystem and related software for GMOS-South.

24 June 2003: A sixth magnitude globular cluster in the constellation Canes Venatici, this ball of 500,000 stars is approximately 160 light years across and 100,000 light years from Earth. The image is a combination of a B-band image and a Z-band image (Z is approximately from 8500 to 9500 A) taken at the WIYN 3.5-meter telescope with the WIYN Tip-Tilt Module (WTTM).

27 May 2003: This star cluster in Perseus is the home of at least seven extremely large dusty disks around young stars where newborn planets could be forming. These disks were detected in infrared images using the FLAMINGOS instrument at Kitt Peak.

9 May 2003: This 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.

17 April 2003: A compact spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices, this image of NGC4274 comes from the public Kitt Peak Advanced Observing Program.

1 April 2003: This wide-field image of the Crescent Nebula (NGC6888) was taken at the National Science Foundation's 0.9-meter telescope on Kitt Peak with the NOAO Mosaic CCD camera.

17 March 2003: This image of M5 comes from the public Kitt Peak Advanced Observing Program.

7 March 2003: Located in the constellation Coma Berenices, M100 (also known as NGC4321) is one of the brighter galaxies in the Virgo Cluster. The presence of many young stars give the arms of this spiral galaxy a blue appearance. This image was taken December 20, 2002 at the WIYN 0.9-meter telescope on Kitt Peak.

17 February 2003: This month’s Hubble Heritage image of the Dumbbell Nebula is superimposed onto a WIYN image of M27, highlighting the differences in the field of view of the two telescopes. The Heritage site features several other supplemental ground-based images from WIYN and the Mayall 4-meter telescope.

29 January 2003: This unusual image was created from five frames imaged with filters covering a narrow range of wavelengths. The color changes across filaments are indicative of physical changes in the bright emission nebula.

8 January 2003: Found in the harsh environment of the Carina Nebula, using the Blanco telescope.

26 December 2002: The SOAR (SOuthern Astrophysical Research) telescope dome on snow covered Cerro Pachon.

16 December 2002: Many detailed features in this spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici have been brought out by drastically compressed image mapping: an extremely bright inner region surrounded by a blue ring of young star clusters, a fainter yellowish region of older stars also surrounded by traces of young stars, and even further out, a very much fainter outer ring.

25 November 2002: his revealing image combines optical data from the 0.9-meter telescope on Kitt Peak with radio data from the Very Large Array in New Mexico and the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope in the Netherlands.

14 November 2002: Marian Gillett, right, with her children, Michael Gillett and Denuta Gessner, stand before the plaque which honors her deceased husband, Dr. Fred Gillett (inset), in a naming ceremony of the Gemini North telescope, November 13, 2002, on Mauna Kea, Hawai'i.

7 November 2002: This excellent image of M27, a planetary nebula in the constellation of Vulpecula, was taken at the 3.5-meter WIYN telescope using the Mini-Mosaic imager.

22 October 2002: An unobtrusive arc of blue stars stretching above the iconic galaxy Centaurus A represents the lingering signature of an episode of galactic cannibalism that is surprisingly recent and, astronomically speaking, quite nearby.

10 October 2002: Tucson Mayor Robert Walkup and three students from the Indian Oasis Middle School in Sells cut the ribbon at the official opening night of the Space Weather Center exhibit at the Kitt Peak Visitor Center.

27 September 2002: Instrument at the CTIO Blanco 4-meter telescope has obtained this first-light image of globular cluster 47 Tucanae taken in the infrared H-band.