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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. 2002 July 19 Counting Stars in the Infrared Sky Credit: J. Carpenter, M. Skrutskie, R. Hurt, 2MASS Project, NSF, NASA Explanation: The bulging center of our Milky Way Galaxy, dark cosmic clouds, the thin galactic plane, and even nearby galaxies are easy to spot in this sky view. But each pixel in the digital image is actually based on star counts alone -- as derived from the Two...

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. 2002 July 17 Star Forming Region RCW38 from 2MASS Credit: R. Hurt, 2MASS Project, UMass, IPAC/Caltech, NSF, NASA Explanation: The star cluster in RCW38 was hiding. Looking at the star forming region RCW38 will not normally reveal most of the stars in this cluster. The reason is that the open cluster is so young that it is still shrouded in thick dust that absorbs visible light. This dust...

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. 2002 July 7 The Galactic Center Across the Infrared Credit: 2MASS Project, UMass, IPAC/Caltech, NSF, NASA Explanation: The center of our Galaxy is obscured in visible light by dark dust that rotates with the stars in the Galactic Plane. In this century, however, sensors have been developed that can detect light more red that humans can see - light called infrared. The above picture shows what the Galactic...