Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2006 June 5


The Road to Victoria Crater on Mars
Credit: Mars Exploration Rover Mission, Cornell, JPL, NASA
Explanation: Here is a road never traveled. To get to Victoria Crater on Mars, the rolling robotic rover Opportunity must traverse the landscape shown above. Victoria Crater lies about one kilometer ahead. The intervening terrain shows a series of light rock outcrops that appears like some sort of cobblestone road. Surrounding this naturally-occurring Martian road, is Martian sand ripples that must be navigated around. Inspection of the outcrop road shows it to be sprinkled with many small round rocks dubbed blueberries. Opportunity and its sister robot Spirit continue their third year exploring Mars. Within the next month, planetary scientists hope to maneuver Opportunity across Meridiani Planum to get a good view of 800-meter diameter Victoria Crater.

Where the real space exploration happens...

A phenomenal view, and what a performance by Opportunity, Spirit, and those fine people at JPL, huh?

Amazing stuff.

Image credit: NASA

- Delays for the Earth's Oxygen Atmosphere

Tue, 09 Aug 2005 - Our planet gained its nice, oxygen-rich atmosphere about 2.4 billion years ago thanks to early bacteria. One question that has puzzled researchers, however, is why it took at least 300 million years for oxygen to build up to large levels, even though the bacteria had been working madly to produce it. Researchers from the University of Washington have developed a model that shows how volcanic gasses could have sucked up this available oxygen. Not only that, but a large layer of iron from meteorite strikes would have used it for rusting. Not until those sinks were filled could oxygen build up.

Space is so beautiful and mysterious but the shear size makes you stop and think are we alone??? if we are that would be a really scary idea

Spiral Galaxy


Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/OCIW/GALEX

NGC 300 is a spiral galaxy in the Sculptor group of galaxies. It is located 6.5 million light years away from Earth.


Type: ScAd
Right ascension: 00h 54m 53.3s
Declination: -37° 41' 03"
Distance: 7 Mly
Apparent magnitude: (V) 8.1
Apparent dimensions: (V) n/a
Constellation Sculptor
Radius: 47,00 ly
Absolute magnitude:(V) -8

Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2006 June 7


An Alaskan Volcano Erupts
Credit: J. N. Williams, International Space Station 13 Crew, NASA
Explanation: What is happening to that volcano? It's erupting! The first person to note that the Aleutian Cleveland Volcano was spewing ash was astronaut Jeffrey N. Williams aboard the International Space Station. Looking down on the Alaskan Aleutian Islands two weeks ago, Williams noted, photographed, and reported a spectacular ash plume emanating from the Cleveland Volcano. Starting just before this image was taken, the Cleveland Volcano underwent a short eruption lasting only about two hours. The Cleveland stratovolcano is one of the most active in the Aleutian Island chain. The volcano is fueled by magma displaced by the subduction of the northwest-moving tectonic Pacific Plate under the tectonic North America Plate.


Tomorrow's picture: alien

Credit: This image was created by NASA and taken from a NASA.

Mercury is the innermost planet in our solar system, orbiting the Sun once every 88 days. It ranges in brightness from about −2.0 to 5.5 in apparent magnitude, but is not easily seen as its greatest angular separation from the Sun (greatest elongation) is only 28.3°, meaning it is only seen in twilight. The planet remains comparatively little known: the only spacecraft to approach Mercury was Mariner 10 from 1974 to 1975, which mapped only 40%–45% of the planet's surface.

Physically, Mercury is similar in appearance to the Moon as it is heavily cratered. It has no natural satellites and no atmosphere. The planet has a large iron core which generates a magnetic field about 1% as strong as that of the Earth. Surface temperatures on Mercury range from about 90 to 700 K, with the subsolar point being the hottest and the bottoms of craters near the poles being the coldest.

The Romans named the planet after the fleet-footed messenger god Mercury, probably for its fast apparent motion in the twilight sky.

Source: Wikipedia

Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2006 June 9


Infrared Andromeda
Credit: Pauline Barmby (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA) et al., JPL, Caltech, NASA
Explanation: This wide, detailed Spitzer Space Telescope view features infrared light from dust (red) and old stars (blue) in Andromeda, a massive spiral galaxy a mere 2.5 million light-years away. In fact, with over twice the diameter of our own Milky Way, Andromeda is the largest nearby galaxy. Andromeda's population of bright young stars define its sweeping spiral arms in visible light images, but here the infrared view clearly follows the lumpy dust lanes heated by the young stars as they wind even closer to the galaxy's core. Constructed to explore Andromeda's infrared brightness and stellar populations, the full mosaic image is composed of about 3,000 individual frames. Two smaller companion galaxies, NGC 205 (below) and M32 (above) are also included in the combined fields. The data confirm that Andromeda (aka M31) houses around 1 trillion stars, compared to 4 hundred billion for the Milky Way.

Image source: NASA Earth Observatory


Earth (often referred to as "The Earth") is the third planet in the solar system in terms of distance from the Sun, and the fifth in order of size. It is the largest of its planetary system's terrestrial planets and the only place in the universe currently known to support life. The Earth was formed around 4.57 billion (4.57×109)[1] years ago (see Age of the Earth) and its largest natural satellite, the Moon, was orbiting it shortly thereafter, around 4.533 billion years ago. Since it formed, the Earth has evolved through geologic and biological processes so that any traces of the original conditions have been virtually eliminated. The outer surface is divided into several tectonic plates that gradually migrate across the surface over geologic time spans. The interior of the planet remains active, with a thick layer of molten mantle and an iron core that generates a magnetic field. The atmospheric conditions have been significantly altered by the presence of life forms, which create an ecological balance that modifies the surface conditions. About 70% of the surface is presently covered in salt water oceans, and the remainder consists of continents and islands.

Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2006 June 11


Sunspot Loops in Ultraviolet
Credit: TRACE Project, NASA
Explanation: It was a quiet day on the Sun. The above image shows, however, that even during off days the Sun's surface is a busy place. Shown in ultraviolet light, the relatively cool dark regions have temperatures of thousands of degrees Celsius. Large sunspot group AR 9169 is visible as the bright area near the horizon. The bright glowing gas flowing around the sunspots has a temperature of over one million degrees Celsius. The reason for the high temperatures is unknown but thought to be related to the rapidly changing magnetic field loops that channel solar plasma. Sunspot group AR 9169 moved across the Sun during 2000 September and decayed in a few weeks.

M17: Omega Nebula Star Factory

Credit: Nasa.

In the depths of the dark clouds of dust and molecular gas known as M17, stars continue to form. The similarity to the Greek letter capital Omega gives the molecular cloud its popular name, but the nebula is also known as the Swan Nebula, the Horseshoe Nebula, and M17. The darkness of these molecular clouds results from background starlight being absorbed by thick carbon-based smoke-sized dust. As bright massive stars form, they produce intense and energetic light that slowly boils away the dark shroud. M17, pictured above, is visible with binoculars towards the constellation of Sagittarius, lies 5000 light-years away, and spans 20 light-years across.

Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2006 June 12


Edge-On Galaxy NGC 5866
Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); Acknowledgment: W. Keel (U. Alabama)
Explanation: Why is this galaxy so thin? Many disk galaxies are actually just as thin as NGC 5866, pictured above, but are not seen edge-on from our vantage point. One galaxy that is situated edge-on is our own Milky Way Galaxy. Classified as a lenticular galaxy, NGC 5866 has numerous and complex dust lanes appearing dark and red, while many of the bright stars in the disk give it a more blue underlying hue. The blue disk of young stars can be seen extending past the dust in the extremely thin galactic plane, while the bulge in the disk center appears tinged more orange from the older and redder stars that likely exist there. Although similar in mass to our Milky Way Galaxy, light takes about 60,000 years to cross NGC 5866, about 30 percent less than light takes to cross our own Galaxy. In general, many disk galaxies are very thin because the gas that formed them collided with itself as it rotated about the gravitational center. Galaxy NGC 5866 lies about 44 million light years distant toward the constellation of the Dragon (Draco).

Image: NASA/Wikipedia

A "Sunspot" is a region on the Sun's surface (photosphere) that is marked by a lower temperature than its surroundings and intense magnetic activity, which inhibits convection, forming areas of low surface temperature. Although they are blindingly bright, at temperatures of roughly 4000-4500 K, the contrast with the surrounding material at some 5700 K leaves them clearly visible as dark spots. If they were isolated from the surrounding photosphere they would be brighter than an electric arc. As of 2006, we are near a minimum (predicted for 2007) in the sunspot cycle.

Now THAT is beyond my ability to comment on.
Utterly stunning. Looks like something a very crafty movie director would create for a motion picture...except it's real.

That is mind numbing.

lol, Kak, please don't post pictures that were already posted, ESPECIALLY if they were just a few posts before
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Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2006 June 13


Driving Toward a Sun Halo
Credit & Copyright: Lauri Turtiainen
Explanation: What's happened to the Sun? Sometimes it looks like the Sun is being viewed through a large lens. In the above case, however, there are actually millions of lenses: ice crystals. As water freezes in the upper atmosphere, small, flat, six-sided, ice crystals might be formed. As these crystals flutter to the ground, much time is spent with their faces flat, parallel to the ground. An observer may pass through the same plane as many of the falling ice crystals near sunrise or sunset. During this alignment, each crystal can act like a miniature lens, refracting sunlight into our view and creating phenomena like parhelia, the technical term for sundogs. The above image was taken during early 2006 February near Helsinki, Finland with a quickly deployed cellular camera phone. Visible in the image center is the Sun, while two bright sundogs glow prominently from both the left and the right. Also visible is the 22 degree halo also created by sunlight reflecting off of atmospheric ice crystals.

Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2006 June 14


Sagittarius Triplet
Credit & Copyright: Steve Mazlin, Jim Misti
Explanation: These three bright nebulae are often featured in telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius and the crowded starfields of the central Milky Way. In fact, 18th century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged two of them; M8, the nebula below and right of center, and colorful M20 at the upper right. The third, NGC 6559, is left of M8, separated from the the larger nebula by a dark dust lane. All three are stellar nurseries about five thousand light-years or so distant. The expansive M8, over a hundred light-years across, is also known as the Lagoon Nebula while M20's popular moniker is the Trifid. This stunning digital view is actually a collaborative composite recorded by 2 cameras and 2 telescopes about 2 thousand miles apart. The deep, wide image field was captured under dark Arizona skies. Both M8 and M20 were recorded in more detail from an observatory in Pennsylvania. Glowing hydrogen gas creates the dominant red color of the emission nebulae, with contrasting blue hues, most striking in the Trifid, due to dust reflected starlight.

Don't get jelous because they comment on mine. LOL.

My bad there Froggsta. So many beautiful posts, it can tend to slip ones mind. I don't know what "swamp" your from, but this one is for you.




Credit: Florida, USA, taken from Shuttle Mission STS-95 on 31st October 1998.

Taken during the STS-95 mission from a point over Cuba, this photo shows an oblique view of the Florida Peninsula, with the light blue, shallow seafloor of both the Florida Keys (curving across the bottom of the view) and the Bahama banks (right). Cumulus cloud covers Miami and the Southern Everglades, although the built-up area from Fort Lauderdale to West Palm Beach can be discerned. Lake Okeechobee is the prominent waterbody in Florida. Cape Canaveral is shown well, half way up the peninsula. Orlando appears as the lighter patch west (left) of Cape Canaveral, near the middle of the peninsula. Cape Hatteras appears top right, with the north part of Chesapeake Bay also visible.

LOL

Beautiful picture of Florida...the Keys are some of my favorite places on earth. The fishing is just amazing, and so are the night skies.

Mammatus Clouds Over Mexico

Credit: Raymundo Aguirre

When do cloud bottoms appear like bubbles? Normal cloud bottoms are flat because moist warm air that rises and cools will condense into water droplets at a very specific temperature, which usually corresponds to a very specific height. After water droplets form that air becomes an opaque cloud. Under some conditions, however, cloud pockets can develop that contain large droplets of water or ice that fall into clear air as they evaporate. Such pockets may occur in turbulent air near a thunderstorm, being seen near the top of an anvil cloud, for example. Resulting mammatus clouds can appear especially dramatic if sunlit from the side. The above mammatus clouds were photographed last month over Monclova, Mexico.

Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2006 June 16


APOD Turns Eleven
Credit & Copyright: Herman Serrano
Explanation: The first APOD appeared eleven years ago today, on 1995 June 16. Although garnering only 14 page views on that day, we are proud to estimate that APOD has now served over 400 million space-related images over the last eleven years. That early beginning, along with a nearly unchanging format, has allowed APOD to be a consistent and familiar site on a web frequently filled with change. Many people don't know, though, that APOD is now translated daily into many major languages. We again thank our readers and NASA for their continued support, but ask that any potentially congratulatory e-mail go to the folks who created the great pictures -- many times with considerable effort -- that APOD has been fortunate enough to feature over the past year. Many can be contacted by following links found in the credit line under the image. Some of these images are featured in the above spectacular collage of a fantasy sky above Mars submitted by an enthusiastic APOD reader skilled in digital image manipulation. How many APOD images can you identify?

This isn't from the APOD gallery, but this seems the right place to post it:





This "family portrait," a composite of the Jovian system, includes the edge of Jupiter with its Great Red Spot, and Jupiter's four largest moons, known as the Galilean satellites. From top to bottom, the moons shown are Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. The Great Red Spot, a storm in Jupiter's atmosphere, is at least 300 years old. Winds blow counterclockwise around the Great Red Spot at about 250 miles an hour. The storm is larger than one Earth diameter from north to south, and more than two Earth diameters from east to west. In this oblique view, the Great Red Spot appears longer in the north-south direction.

Europa, the smallest of the four moons, is about the size of Earth's moon, while Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system.

The Solid State Imaging system aboard NASA's Galileo spacecraft obtained the Jupiter, Io and Ganymede images in June 1996, while the Europa images were obtained in September 1996. Because Galileo focused on high resolution imaging of regional areas on Callisto rather than global coverage, the portrait of Callisto is from the 1979 flyby of NASA's Voyager spacecraft.

Launched in October 1989, Galileo's mission was to conduct detailed studies of the giant planet, its largest moons and the Jovian magnetic environment.

Image credit: NASA

+ Full Resolution


Source: NASA - Multimedia - Image of the Day Gallery

Oh, btw in my previous post...Happy 11th APOD!

Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2006 June 18


Crescent Neptune and Triton
Credit: Voyager 2, NASA
Explanation: Gliding silently through the outer Solar System, the Voyager 2 spacecraft camera captured Neptune and Triton together in crescent phase in 1989. The above picture of the gas giant planet and its cloudy moon was taken from behind just after closest approach. It could not have been taken from Earth because Neptune never shows a crescent phase to sunward Earth. The unusual vantage point also robs Neptune of its familiar blue hue, as sunlight seen from here is scattered forward, and so is reddened like the setting Sun. Neptune is smaller but more massive than Uranus, has several dark rings, and emits more light than it receives from the Sun.

Image Credit: Lunar and Planetary Institute

Neptune's Interior
The atmosphere of Neptune, similar to Uranus, consists of mainly hydrogen, methane, and helium. Below it is a liquid hydrogen layer including helium and methane. The lower layer is liquid hydrogen compounds, oxygen, and nitrogen. It is believed that the planet core comprises rock and ice. Average density, as well as the greatest proportion of core per planet size, is the greatest among the gaseous planets.

Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2006 June 19


Bright Star Regulus near the Leo 1 Dwarf Galaxy
Credit & Copyright: Russell Croman
Explanation: The star on the upper left is so bright it is sometimes hard to notice the galaxy on the lower right. Both the star, Regulus, and the galaxy, Leo I, can be found within one degree of each other toward the constellation of Leo. Regulus is part of a multiple star system, with a close companion double star visible to the upper right of the young main sequence star. Leo I is a dwarf spheroidal galaxy in the Local Group of galaxies dominated by our Milky Way Galaxy and M31. Leo I is thought to be the most distant of the several known small satellite galaxies orbiting our Milky Way Galaxy. Regulus is located about 75 light years away, in contrast to Leo 1 which is located about 800,000 light years away.

WOW!^4

By Jupiter, it's like a Louvre- and even better!

In a way, the profound image of Neptune (I think so, anyway) reminds me of some
images from the Moon, with Venus and the Sun peaking around the corner.

If nothing else, it helps convey the sense of scale in the Neptune image.

Astronomy Picture of the Day



Leonids from Leo

Credit: Juraj Toth (Comenius U. Bratislava), Modra Observatory

Explanation: Is Leo leaking? Leo, the famous sky constellation visible on the left of the above all-sky photograph, appears to be the source of all the meteors seen in 1998's Leonids Meteor Shower. That Leonids point back to Leo is not a surprise - it is the reason that this November meteor shower is called the Leonids. Sand-sized debris expelled from Comet Tempel-Tuttle follows a well-defined orbit about our Sun, and the part of the orbit that approaches Earth is superposed in front of the constellation Leo. Therefore, when Earth crosses this orbit, the radiant point of falling debris appears in Leo. Over 150 meteors can be seen in the above four-hour effort. The Leonids Meteor Shower of 2003 is expected to have two peaks, the first three days ago and the second a long-duration peak covering much of November 19. Although visible meteor rates might approach one per minute, they are predicted to be much less than in the previous few years.

Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2006 June 20


Hideaway
Illustration Credit & Copyright: Inga Nielsen
Explanation: Is this a picture of a sunset from Earth's North Pole? Regardless of urban legends circulating the Internet, the answer is no. The above scene was drawn to be an imaginary celestial place that would be calm and peaceful, and therefore titled Hideaway. The scene could not exist anywhere on the Earth because from the Earth, the Moon and the Sun always have nearly the same angular size. This is particularly apparent, for example, during solar eclipses. Still, the scene drawn is quite striking, and the crescent part of the "moon" shown is approximately accurate given the location of the parent star. In reality, the North Pole of Earth looks different. Starting earlier this month, the North Pole even has a web camera returning near-live pictures.

Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2006 June 21


Sunrise Solstice at Stonehenge
Credit & Copyright: Pete Strasser (Tucson, Arizona, USA)
Explanation: Today the Sun reaches its northernmost point in the planet Earth's sky. Called a solstice, the date traditionally marks a change of seasons -- from spring to summer in Earth's Northern Hemisphere and from fall to winter in Earth's Southern Hemisphere. Pictured above is the 2005 Summer Solstice celebration at Stonehenge in England. The event was rare because Stonehenge was not always open to the public, and because recent summer solstices there had been annoyingly cloudy. In 2005, however, thousands of people gathered at sunrise to see the sun rise through the 4,000 year old solar monument. Due to the precession of the Earth's orbital axis over the millennia, the Sun no longer rises over Stonehenge in an astronomically significant way, although the photographer was able to find a good spot where the rising Sun appeared over one of Stonehenge's massive standing stones.

Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2006 June 22


Planets, Bees, and a Donkey
Credit & Copyright: Chris Schur
Explanation: The heralded alignment of wandering planets Saturn and Mars with the well-known Beehive Cluster took place last weekend on Saturday, June 17. Recorded in dark Arizona skies on that date, this view finds Mars above and right of Saturn - the brightest celestial beacons in the scene - with the Beehive cluster of stars (M44) at the lower right. The two planets appear in conjunction separated by just over half a degree. But about another half a degree along a line joining the two and continuing towards the lower left lies the third brightest object in the image, giant star Asellus Australis. Asellus Australis is also known as Delta Cancri, a middling bright star 136 light-years away in the constellation Cancer, the Crab. Of course, this star's Latin name translates to "Southern Donkey".

Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2006 June 23


East of Antares
Credit & Copyright: Johannes Schedler (Panther Observatory)
Explanation: East of Antares, dark markings seem to sprawl through the crowded star fields toward the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Cataloged in the early 20th century by astronomer E. E. Barnard, the obscuring interstellar dust clouds include B72, B77, B78, and B59, seen in silhouette against the starry background. Here, their combined shape suggests smoke rising from a pipe, and so the dark nebula's popular name is the Pipe Nebula. This gorgeous and expansive view was recorded in very dark skies over Hakos, Namibia. It covers a full 10 by 7 degrees field in the pronounceable constellation Ophiuchus

Cartwheel Galaxy (also known as ESO 350-40) is a lenticular galaxy about 500 million light-years away in the constellation Sculptor. It is about 150,000 light-years across.

The galaxy was once a normal galaxy like the Milky Way before it underwent a head-on collison with a nearby galaxy. When the nearby galaxy passed through the Cartwheel Galaxy, the force of the collison caused a powerful shock wave through the galaxy, like a rock being tossed into a sandbed.

Moving a high speed, the shock wave swept up gas and dust, creating a starburst around the galaxy's center portion that were unscathed. This explains the bluish ring around the center, brighter portion.

thanks for very nice pics

Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2006 June 25


M57: The Ring Nebula
Credit: H. Bond et al., Hubble Heritage Team (STScI / AURA), NASA
Explanation: It looked like a ring on the sky. Hundreds of years ago astronomers noticed a nebula with a most unusual shape. Now known as M57 or NGC 6720, the gas cloud became popularly known as the Ring Nebula. It is now known to be a planetary nebula, a gas cloud emitted at the end of a Sun-like star's existence. As one of the brightest planetary nebula on the sky, the Ring Nebula can be seen with a small telescope in the constellation of Lyra. The Ring Nebula lies about 4,000 light years away, and is roughly 500 times the diameter of our Solar System. In this recent picture by the Hubble Space Telescope, dust filaments and globules are visible far from the central star. This helps indicate that the Ring Nebula is not spherical, but cylindrical.

Thank you indeed. This thread is a daily habit.

Types of Galaxies


Galaxies come in three main types: ellipticals, spirals, and irregulars. A slightly more extensive description of galaxy types based on their appearance is given by the Hubble sequence. Since the Hubble sequence is entirely based upon visual morphological type, it may miss certain important characteristics of galaxies such as star formation rate (in starburst galaxies) or activity in the core (in active galaxies).

Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, sometimes simply called the Galaxy (with uppercase), is a large disk-shaped barred spiral galaxy about 30 kiloparsecs or 100,000 light years in diameter and 3,000 light years in thickness. It contains about 3×1011 (three hundred billion) stars and has a total mass of about 6×1011 (six hundred billion) times the mass of the Sun.

Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2006 June 26


Starry Night
Credit: Vincent van Gogh; Digital image courtesy of Wikipedia
Explanation: The painting Starry Night is one of the most famous icons of the night sky ever created. The scene was painted by Vincent van Gogh in southern France in 1889. The swirling style of Starry Night appears, to many, to make the night sky come alive. Although van Gogh frequently portrayed real settings in his paintings, art historians do not agree on precisely what stars and planets are being depicted in Starry Night. The style of Starry Night is post-impressionism, a popular painting style at the end of the nineteenth century. The original Starry Night painting hangs in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, New York, USA.

Nice painting frogg.

Although i think it would be better suited for "Painting of the day" thread, still nice.



The large majestic Lagoon Nebula is home for many young stars and hot gas. Spanning 100 light years across while lying only about 5000 light years distant, the Lagoon Nebulae is so big and bright that it can be seen without a telescope toward the constellation of Sagittarius. Many bright stars are visible from NGC 6530, an open cluster that formed in the nebula only several million years ago. The greater nebula, also known as M8 and NGC 6523, is named "Lagoon" for the band of dust seen to the left of the open cluster\'s center. A bright knot of gas and dust in the nebula\'s center is known as the Hourglass Nebula. The above picture is a digitally sharpened composite of exposures taken in specific colors of light emitted by sulfur (red), hydrogen (green), and oxygen (blue). Star formation continues in the Lagoon Nebula as witnessed by the many globules that exist there.

I was just wondering if you could find a close up picture of the north star

It was the APOD

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Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2006 June 27


The Moving Moons of Saturn
Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA
Explanation: The moons of Saturn never stop. A space traveler orbiting the ringed giant planet would witness a continuing silent dance where Saturn's multiple moons pass near each other in numerous combinations. Like a miniature Solar System, the innermost moons orbit Saturn the fastest. The above movie was centered on Saturn's moon Rhea, so that the moons Mimas and Enceladus appear to glide by. At 1,500 kilometers across, Rhea is over three times larger than the comparably sized Mimas and Enceladus. The Sun illuminates the scene from the lower right, giving all of the moons the same crescent phase. The above time lapse movie was created by the Saturn-orbiting robotic Cassini spacecraft over a period of about 40 minutes.

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I can't find a close up of Polaris but here's the best pic:


It's the bright star at the center (it's in a little arc)

APOD?

Well then, heres my North star pic.

JJ Swanson - The North Star

Astronomy Picture of the Day...see my first post in this thread.

OK, your lingo went swoosh, over my head. It should be APOTD.




Credit: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI), S. Smartt (IoA) & D. Richstone (U. Michigan) et al.

The Sleeping Beauty galaxy may appear peaceful at first sight but it is actually tossing and turning. In an unexpected twist, recent observations have shown that the gas in the outer regions of this photogenic spiral is rotating in the opposite direction from all of the stars! Collisions between gas in the inner and outer regions are creating many hot blue stars and pink emission nebula. The above image was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2001 and released recently. The fascinating internal motions of M64, also catalogued as NGC 4826, are thought to be the result of a collision between a small galaxy and a large galaxy where the resultant mix has not yet settled down.

These are some of the best pics I have seen. Thanks

Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2006 June 28


The Cat's Paw Nebula
Credit & Copyright: Robert Gendler & Martin Pugh
Explanation: Nebulae are perhaps as famous for being identified with familiar shapes as perhaps cats are for getting into trouble. Still, no known cat could have created the vast Cat's Paw Nebula visible in Scorpius. At 5,500 light years distant, Cat's Paw is an emission nebula with a red color that originates from an abundance of ionized hydrogen atoms. Alternatively known as the Bear Claw Nebula or NGC 6334, stars nearly ten times the mass of our Sun have been born there in only the past few million years. Pictured above, a deep wide-field image of the Cat's Paw nebula was photographed from New South Wales, Australia.

I like that one, look that the beauty! I took me a minute to find the paw for some reason.

Anyways:

AFRICA



Credit: NASA

Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2006 June 29


Old Moon and Sister Stars
Credit & Copyright: Vincent Jacques
Explanation: An old crescent Moon shares the eastern sky over Menton, France with the sister stars of the Pleiades cluster in this early morning skyscape recorded just last Friday, June 23rd. (Bright Venus was also near the eastern horizon, but is not pictured here.) Astronomical images of the well-known Pleiades often show the cluster's alluring blue reflection nebulae, but they are washed out here by the bright moonlight. Still, while the crescent Moon is overexposed, surface features can be seen on the dim lunar night side illuminated by earthshine - light from sunlit planet Earth. Of course, you can spot a young crescent Moon in the early evening sky tonight. Having left the Pleiades behind, a lovely lunar crescent now appears in the west, lining up with planets Mars, Saturn, and Mercury along the solar system's ecliptic plane.