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Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
Shuttle Engine Blast
26.01.2002
The Space Shuttle Discovery's orbital maneuvering system (OMS) engine firing produced this dramatic flare as it cruised "upside down" in low Earth orbit. Discovery was named for a ship commanded by Captain James Cook RN, the 18th Century English astronomer and navigator.
The Spiral Arms of NGC 4622
25.01.2002
While stirring a morning cup of coffee and thinking cosmic thoughts many astronomers would glance at this Hubble Space Telescope image of spiral galaxy NGC 4622 and assume that the galaxy was rotating counterclockwise in the picture.
Ski Enceladus
24.01.2002
A small inner moon of Saturn, Enceladus is only about 500 kilometers in diameter. But the cold, distant world does reflect over 90 percent of the sunlight it receives, giving its surface about the same reflectivity as new-fallen snow.
Local Group Galaxy NGC 6822
23.01.2002
Nearby galaxy NGC 6822 is irregular in several ways. First, the galaxy's star distribution merits a formal classification of dwarf irregular, and from our vantage-point the small galaxy appears nearly rectangular. What strikes...
Quantum Gravity Claimed Detected on Earth
22.01.2002
Does gravity come in chucks? A theory known as Quantum Mechanics tells us about how the universe works on the smallest scales, while Einstein's General Theory of Relativity tells us about how gravity and the universe works on the largest scales. So far, no complete theory has been able to encompass them both.
Volcano and Aurora in Iceland
21.01.2002
Sometimes both heaven and Earth erupt. In Iceland in 1991, the volcano Hekla erupted at the same time that auroras were visible overhead. Hekla, one of the most famous volcanoes in the world, has erupted at least 20 times over the past millennium, sometimes causing great destruction.
Callisto Full Face
20.01.2002
Callisto's surface shows its age. While probably formed at the same time as Io, the difference between the surfaces of these two moons of Jupiter could hardly be greater. Io's surface is young, shows practically no impact craters, and is continually being repaved by the lava exploding from its many large volcanoes
Stars Without Galaxies
19.01.2002
Galaxies are made up of stars, but are all stars found within galaxies? Using the Hubble Space Telescope, researchers exploring the Virgo Cluster of galaxies have found about 600 red giant stars adrift in intergalactic space. Above is an artist's vision of the sky from a hypothetical planet of such a lonely sun.
Saturn and Vesta in Taurus
18.01.2002
Last November, while skygazing toward the constellation Taurus, astrophotographer Joe Orman arranged this time exposure to include the lovely Hyades and Pleiades star clusters in the field of his telephoto lens. A distance...
Pick a Galaxy Any Galaxy
17.01.2002
Pick a galaxy, any galaxy. In the top panel you can choose from a myriad of distant galaxies revealed in a deep Hubble Space Telescope image of a narrow slice of the cosmos toward the constellation Hercules.
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