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  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - NGC 602: Oyster Star Cluster

    07/02/2024 12:00:36 PM PDT · by MtnClimber · 9 replies
    NASA ^ | 2 Jul, 2024 | Image Credit: X-ray: Chandra: NASA/CXC/Univ.Potsdam/L.Oskinova et al; Optical: Hubble: NASA/STScI; I
    Explanation: The clouds may look like an oyster, and the stars like pearls, but look beyond. Near the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy some 200 thousand light-years distant, lies this 5 million year old star cluster NGC 602. Surrounded by its birth shell of gas and dust, star cluster NGC 602 is featured in this stunning Hubble image, augmented in a rollover by images in the X-ray by the Chandra Observatory and in the infrared by Spitzer Telescope. Fantastic ridges and swept back gas strongly suggest that energetic radiation and shock waves from NGC 602's massive...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - Earthrise: A Video Reconstruction

    06/30/2024 12:25:18 PM PDT · by MtnClimber · 11 replies
    NASA ^ | 30 Jun, 2024 | Video Credit: NASA, SVS, Apollo 8 Crew; Lead Animator: Ernie Wright; (USRA); Music: C Major Prelude
    Explanation: About 12 seconds into this video, something unusual happens. The Earth begins to rise. Never seen by humans before, the rise of the Earth over the limb of the Moon occurred about 55.5 years ago and surprised and amazed the crew of Apollo 8. The crew immediately scrambled to take still images of the stunning vista caused by Apollo 8's orbit around the Moon. The featured video is a modern reconstruction of the event as it would have looked were it recorded with a modern movie camera. The colorful orb of our Earth stood out as a familiar icon...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - A Solstice Moon

    06/29/2024 11:49:42 AM PDT · by MtnClimber · 3 replies
    NASA ^ | 29 Jun, 2024 | Image Credit & Copyright: Tunc Tezel (TWAN)
    Explanation: Rising opposite the setting Sun, June's Full Moon occurred within about 28 hours of the solstice. The Moon stays close to the Sun's path along the ecliptic plane and so while the solstice Sun climbed high in daytime skies, June's Full Moon remained low that night as seen from northern latitudes. In fact, the Full Moon hugs the horizon in this June 21 rooftop night sky view from Bursa, Turkey, constructed from exposures made every 10 minutes between moonrise and moonset. In 2024 the Moon also reached a major lunar standstill, an extreme in the monthly north-south range of...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - Comet 13P/Olbers

    06/28/2024 5:22:28 PM PDT · by MtnClimber · 6 replies
    NASA ^ | 28 Jun, 2024 | Image Credit & Copyright: Dan Bartlett`
    Explanation: Not a paradox, Comet 13P/Olbers is returning to the inner Solar System after 68 years. The periodic, Halley-type comet will reach its next perihelion or closest approach to the Sun on June 30 and has become a target for binocular viewing low in planet Earth's northern hemisphere night skies. But this sharp telescopic image of 13P is composed of stacked exposures made on the night of June 25. It easily reveals shifting details in the bright comet's torn and tattered ion tail buffeted by the wind from an active Sun, along with a broad, fanned-out dust tail and slightly...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - Protostellar Outflows in Serpens

    06/27/2024 11:16:45 AM PDT · by MtnClimber · 5 replies
    NASA ^ | 27 Jun, 2024 | Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Klaus Pontoppidan (NASA-JPL), Joel Green (STScI)
    Explanation: Jets of material blasting from newborn stars, are captured in this James Webb Space Telescope close-up of the Serpens Nebula. The powerful protostellar outflows are bipolar, twin jets spewing in opposite directions. Their directions are perpendicular to accretion disks formed around the spinning, collapsing stellar infants. In the NIRcam image, the reddish color represents emission from molecular hydrogen and carbon monoxide produced as the jets collide with the surrounding gas and dust. The sharp image shows for the first time that individual outflows detected in the Serpens Nebula are generally aligned along the same direction. That result was expected,...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - Timelapse: Aurora, SAR, and the Milky Way

    06/26/2024 12:58:39 PM PDT · by MtnClimber · 4 replies
    NASA ^ | 26 Jun, 2024 | Video Credit & Copyright: Jeff Dai (TWAN); Music (License): Suite bergamasque by Claude Debussy
    Explanation: What's happening in the sky this unusual night? Most striking in the featured 4.5-hour 360-degree panoramic video, perhaps, is the pink and purple aurora. That's because this night, encompassing May 11, was famous for its auroral skies around the world. As the night progresses, auroral bands shimmer, the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy rises, and stars shift as the Earth rotates beneath them. Captured here simultaneously is a rare red band running above the aurora: a SAR arc, seen to change only slightly. The flashing below the horizon is caused by passing cars, while the moving spots...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - The Dark Doodad Nebula

    06/25/2024 2:00:12 PM PDT · by MtnClimber · 10 replies
    NASA ^ | 25 Jun, 2024 | Image Credit & Copyright: Martin Pugh & Rocco Sung
    Explanation: What is that strange brown ribbon on the sky? When observing the star cluster NGC 4372, observers frequently take note of an unusual dark streak nearby running about three degrees in length. The streak, actually a long molecular cloud, has become known as the Dark Doodad Nebula. (Doodad is slang for a thingy or a whatchamacallit.) Pictured here, the Dark Doodad Nebula sweeps across the center of a rich and colorful starfield. Its dark color comes from a high concentration of interstellar dust that preferentially scatters visible light. The globular star cluster NGC 4372 is visible as the fuzzy...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - JADES-GS-z14-0: A New Farthest Object

    06/24/2024 12:05:20 PM PDT · by MtnClimber · 10 replies
    NASA ^ | 24 Jun, 2024 | Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, B. Robertson (UC Santa Cruz), B. Johnson (CfA), S. Tacchella (C
    Explanation: What if we could see back to the beginning of the universe? We could see galaxies forming. But what did galaxies look like back then? These questions took a step forward recently with the release of the analysis of a James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) image that included the most distant object yet discovered. Most galaxies formed at about 3 billion years after the Big Bang, but some formed earlier. Pictured in the inset box is JADES-GS-z14-0, a faint smudge of a galaxy that formed only 300 million years after the universe started. In technical terms, this galaxy lies...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - The Colors of Saturn from Cassini

    06/23/2024 10:26:39 AM PDT · by MtnClimber · 9 replies
    NASA ^ | 23 Jun, 2024 | Image Credit: NASA, ESA, JPL, ISS, Cassini Imaging Team; Processing & License: Judy Schmidt
    Explanation: What creates Saturn's colors? The featured picture of Saturn only slightly exaggerates what a human would see if hovering close to the giant ringed world. The image was taken in 2005 by the robot Cassini spacecraft that orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017. Here Saturn's majestic rings appear directly only as a curved line, appearing brown, in part from its infrared glow. The rings best show their complex structure in the dark shadows they create across the upper part of the planet. The northern hemisphere of Saturn can appear partly blue for the same reason that Earth's skies can...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - Lynds Dark Nebula 1251

    06/22/2024 12:55:56 PM PDT · by MtnClimber · 8 replies
    NASA ^ | 22 Jun | Image Credit & Copyright: Long Xin
    Explanation: Stars are forming in Lynds Dark Nebula (LDN) 1251. About 1,000 light-years away and drifting above the plane of our Milky Way galaxy, LDN 1251 is also less appetizingly known as "The Rotten Fish Nebula." The dusty molecular cloud is part of a complex of dark nebulae mapped toward the Cepheus flare region. Across the spectrum, astronomical explorations of the obscuring interstellar clouds reveal energetic shocks and outflows associated with newborn stars, including the telltale reddish glow from scattered Herbig-Haro objects hiding in the image. Distant background galaxies also lurk in the scene, almost buried behind the dusty expanse....
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - Hubble's NGC 1546

    06/21/2024 2:05:46 PM PDT · by MtnClimber · 8 replies
    NASA ^ | 21 Jun, 2024 | Image Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, David Thilker (JHU)
    Explanation: Returning to science operations on June 14, the Hubble Space Telescope used its new pointing mode to capture this sharp image of spiral galaxy NGC 1546. A member of the Dorado galaxy group, the island universe lies a mere 50 million light-years away. The galactic disk of NGC 1546 is tilted to our line-of-sight, with the yellowish light of the old stars and bluish regions of newly formed stars shining through the galaxy's dust lanes. More distant background galaxies are scattered throughout this Hubble view. Launched in 1990, Hubble has been exploring the cosmos for more than three decades,...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - Sandy and the Moon Halo

    06/20/2024 11:56:07 AM PDT · by MtnClimber · 5 replies
    NASA ^ | 20 Jun, 2024 | Image Credit & Copyright: Marcella Giulia Pace
    Explanation: Last April's Full Moon shines through high clouds near the horizon, casting shadows in this garden-at-night skyscape. Along with canine sentinel Sandy watching the garden gate, the wide-angle snapshot also captured the bright Moon's 22 degree ice halo. But June's bright Full Moon will cast shadows too. This month, the Moon's exact full phase occurs at 01:08 UTC June 22. That's a mere 28 hours or so after today's June solstice (at 20:51 UTC June 20), the moment when the Sun reaches its maximum northern declination. Known to some as a Strawberry Moon, June's Full Moon is at its...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - NGC 6188: Dragons of Ara

    06/19/2024 12:20:25 PM PDT · by MtnClimber · 9 replies
    NASA ^ | 19 Jun, 2024 | Image Credit & Copyright: Carlos Taylor
    Explanation: Do dragons fight on the altar of the sky? Although it might appear that way, these dragons are illusions made of thin gas and dust. The emission nebula NGC 6188, home to the glowing clouds, is found about 4,000 light years away near the edge of a large molecular cloud, unseen at visible wavelengths, in the southern constellation Ara (the Altar). Massive, young stars of the embedded Ara OB1 association were formed in that region only a few million years ago, sculpting the dark shapes and powering the nebular glow with stellar winds and intense ultraviolet radiation. The recent...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - Gigantic Jets over Himalayan Mountains

    06/18/2024 11:45:47 AM PDT · by MtnClimber · 27 replies
    NASA ^ | 18 Jun, 2024 | Image Credit & Copyright: Li Xuanhua
    Explanation: Yes, but can your thunderstorm do this? Pictured here are gigantic jets shooting up from a thunderstorm last week toward the Himalayan Mountains in China and Bhutan. The composite image captured four long jets that occurred only minutes apart. Gigantic jets, documented only in this century, are a type of lightning discharge that occurs between some thunderstorms and the Earth's ionosphere high above them. They are an unusual type of lightning that is much different from regular cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning. The bottoms of gigantic jets appear similar to a cloud-to-above strike called blue jets, while the tops appear...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - Ou4: The Giant Squid Nebula

    06/17/2024 12:01:19 PM PDT · by MtnClimber · 4 replies
    NASA ^ | 17 Jun, 2024 | Image Credit & Copyright: Alex Linde
    Explanation: Squids on Earth aren't this big. This mysterious squid-like cosmic cloud spans nearly three full moons on planet Earth's sky. Discovered in 2011 by French astro-imager Nicolas Outters, the Squid Nebula's bipolar shape is distinguished here by the telltale blue emission from doubly ionized oxygen atoms. Though apparently surrounded by the reddish hydrogen emission region Sh2-129, the true distance and nature of the Squid Nebula have been difficult to determine. Still, one investigation suggests Ou4 really does lie within Sh2-129 some 2,300 light-years away. Consistent with that scenario, the cosmic squid would represent a spectacular outflow of material driven...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - Prominences and Filaments on the Active Sun

    06/15/2024 2:45:20 PM PDT · by MtnClimber · 10 replies
    NASA ^ | 15 Jun, 2024 | Image Credit & Copyright: Steen Søndergaard
    Explanation: This colorized and digitally sharpened image of the Sun is composed of frames recording emission from hydrogen atoms in the solar chromosphere on May 15. Approaching the maximum of solar cycle 25, a multitude of planet-dwarfing active regions and twisting, snake-like solar filaments are seen to sprawl across the surface of the active Sun. Suspended in the active regions' strong magnetic fields, the filaments of plasma lofted beyond the Sun's edge appear as bright solar prominences. The large prominences seen near 4 o'clock, and just before 9 o'clock around the solar limb are post flare loops from two powerful...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - RCW 85

    06/14/2024 12:15:41 PM PDT · by MtnClimber · 4 replies
    NASA ^ | 14 Jun, 2024 | Image Credit & Copyright: Martin Pugh
    Explanation: From the 1960 astronomical catalog of Rodgers, Campbell and Whiteoak, emission region RCW 85 shines in southern night skies between bright stars Alpha and Beta Centauri. About 5,000 light years distant, the hazy interstellar cloud of glowing hydrogen gas and dust is faint. But detailed structures along well-defined rims within RCW 85 are traced in this cosmic skyscape composed of 28 hours of narrow and broadband exposures. Suggestive of dramatic shapes in other stellar nurseries where natal clouds of gas and dust are sculpted by energetic winds and radiation from newborn stars, the tantalizing nebula has been called the...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - Messier 66 Close Up

    06/13/2024 11:45:28 AM PDT · by MtnClimber · 10 replies
    NASA ^ | 13 Jun, 2024 | Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration. Acknowledgement: Dav
    Explanation: Big, beautiful spiral galaxy Messier 66 lies a mere 35 million light-years away. The gorgeous island universe is about 100 thousand light-years across, similar in size to the Milky Way. This Hubble Space Telescope close-up view spans a region about 30,000 light-years wide around the galactic core. It shows the galaxy's disk dramatically inclined to our line-of-sight. Surrounding its bright core, the likely home of a supermassive black hole, obscuring dust lanes and young, blue star clusters sweep along spiral arms dotted with the tell-tale glow of pinkish star forming regions. Messier 66, also known as NGC 3627, is...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - Aurora over Karkonosze Mountains

    06/12/2024 11:13:51 AM PDT · by MtnClimber · 6 replies
    NASA ^ | 12 Jun, 2024 | Image Credit & Copyright: Daniel Koszela
    Explanation: It was the first time ever. At least, the first time this photographer had ever seen aurora from his home mountains. And what a spectacular aurora it was. The Karkonosze Mountains in Poland are usually too far south to see any auroras. But on the amazing night of May 10 - 11, purple and green colors lit up much of the night sky, a surprising spectacle that also appeared over many mid-latitude locations around the Earth. The featured image is a composite of six vertical exposures taken during the auroral peak. The futuristic buildings on the right are part...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - Colorful Stars and Clouds near Rho Ophiuchi

    06/11/2024 12:49:27 PM PDT · by MtnClimber · 7 replies
    NASA ^ | 11 Jun, 2024 | Image Credit & Copyright: Craig Stocks
    Explanation: Why is the sky near Antares and Rho Ophiuchi so colorful, yet dusty? The colors result from a mixture of objects and processes. Fine dust -- illuminated by starlight -- produces blue reflection nebulae. Gaseous clouds whose atoms are excited by ultraviolet starlight produce reddish emission nebulae. Backlit dust clouds block starlight and so appear dark. Antares, a red supergiant and one of the brighter stars in the night sky, lights up the yellow-red clouds on the upper right of the featured image. The Rho Ophiuchi star system lies at the center of the blue reflection nebula on the...