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Enrico Caruso performed as Canio in Il Pagliacci the night this picture was made. As Canio, he played his signature role, a man betrayed by his beloved wife who must perform despite his pain. His ability to be both the entertainer and the tragedian…

Caruso loved to draw for his own pleasure. His caricatures of friends and other singers were first published in 1906, though this later collection dates to 1951. He was said to “throw off [the sketches] as easily as his mellifluous notes.” He often…

This image is an example visualization from Vanderbilt's Filtergraph tool applied to NASA Kepler mission data. Each point represents a star in thedataset. The horizontal axis represents the amplitude of starlight "flicker" (or "hiss"), the vertical…

This is a photo of the constellation Cassiopeia. One can see the center bar of the Milky Way Galaxy running through the middle of the image.

Giordano Bruno was born in 1548 in Italy. He was a Dominican friar, a philosopher, astronomer and mathematician. The most notable of his theories were those of an infinite universe and a multiplicity of worlds, in which he rejected the traditional…

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was a German mathematician and astronomer. A key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution, he is best known for his laws of planetary motion. This is a collection of his writings.

Segmented mirrors, used in an array configuration, are used in large telescopes in place of a single curved mirror. The smaller sizes of these mirrors make them easier to transport, install and maintain than traditional single-mirror telescopes.

Space based telescopes revolutionized the study of astronomy. The first such telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope, dramatically improved the image resolution of land based telescopes. This image shows a land based telescope photo of Jupiter (black…

In addition to transmitting images down to Earth, Hubble also transmits system reports which enable engineers to identify faults which can be corrected with orbital servicing missions. Multiple satellites are needed to bounce Hubble’s transmissions…

Spacelab was a reusable science laboratory which flew on space shuttle missions between November 1983 and April 1998. Spacelab 3 launched aboard the Challenger on April 29, 1985, and included five specialists who spent a week conducting experiments…