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Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
Fermi Science Playoffs
8.06.2018
NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope was launched into orbit on June 11th, 2008. Its instruments detect gamma-rays -- light that is thousands to hundreds of billions of times more energetic than what we see with our eyes.
The Clash of NGC 3256
7.06.2018
Marked by an unusually bright central region, swirling dust lanes, and far flung tidal tails, peculiar NGC 3256 is the aftermath of a truly cosmic collision. The 500 million year old clash of two separate galaxies spans some 100 thousand light-years in this sharp Hubble view.
A Sun Pillar over Norway
6.06.2018
Have you ever seen a sun pillar? When the air is cold and the Sun is rising or setting, falling ice crystals can reflect sunlight and create an unusual column of light. Ice sometimes forms flat, six-sided shaped crystals as it falls from high-level clouds.
Complex Jupiter
5.06.2018
How complex is Jupiter? NASA's Juno mission to Jupiter is finding the Jovian giant to be more complicated than expected. Jupiter's magnetic field has been discovered to be much different from our Earth's simple dipole field, showing several poles embedded in a complicated network more convoluted in the north than the south.
Moon Setting Behind Teide Volcano
4.06.2018
These people are not in danger. What is coming down from the left is just the Moon, far in the distance. Luna appears so large here because she is being photographed through a telescopic lens.
Saturns Iapetus: Painted Moon
3.06.2018
What has happened to Saturn's moon Iapetus? Vast sections of this strange world are dark as coal, while others are as bright as ice. The composition of the dark material is unknown, but infrared spectra indicate that it possibly contains some dark form of carbon.
Jupiter Season, Hawaiian Sky
2.06.2018
Volcanic activity on the Big Island of Hawaii has increased since this Hawaiian night skyscape was recorded earlier this year. Recent vents and lava flows are about 30 kilometers to the east, the direction...
Mars Approach
1.06.2018
Since the distance from Earth to Mars changes drastically as the planets orbit the Sun, Mars' appearance changes dramaticaly. Mars is bright now, and it's getting closer and brighter still as it orbits toward its 2018 opposition and closest approach to Earth in late July.
NGC 6744 Close Up
31.05.2018
Beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 6744 is nearly 175,000 light-years across, larger than our own Milky Way. It lies some 30 million light-years distant in the southern constellation Pavo, its galactic disk tilted towards our line of sight.
The Case of the Backwards Orbiting Asteroid
30.05.2018
Why does asteroid 2015 BZ509 orbit the Sun the backwards? As shown in the featured animation, Jupiter's trojan asteroids orbit the Sun in two major groups -- one just ahead of Jupiter, and one just behind -- but all orbit the Sun in the same direction as Jupiter.
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