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Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
A Whale of an Aurora over Swedish Forest
21.03.2022
What's that in the sky? An aurora. A large coronal mass ejection occurred on our Sun earlier this month, throwing a cloud of fast-moving electrons, protons, and ions toward the Earth. Part...
The Sky in 2021
20.03.2022
What if you could see the entire sky -- all at once -- for an entire year? That, very nearly, is what is pictured here. Every 15 minutes during 2021, an all-sky camera took an image of the sky over the Netherlands.
A Picturesque Equinox Sunset
19.03.2022
What's that at the end of the road? The Sun. Many towns have roads that run east - west, and on two days each year, the Sun rises and sets right down the middle. Today is one of those days: an equinox.
2MASS J17554042 6551277
18.03.2022
2MASS J17554042+6551277 doesn't exactly roll off the tongue but that's the name, a coordinate-based catalog designation, of the star centered in this sharp field of view. Fans of the distant universe should get used to its spiky appearance though.
A Filament in Monoceros
17.03.2022
Bluish reflection nebulae seem to fill this dusty expanse. The sharp telescopic frame spans over 1 degree on the sky toward the faint but fanciful constellation Monoceros, the Unicorn. Seen within the Monoceros...
Centaurus A
16.03.2022
A mere 11 million light-years away, Centaurus A is the closest active galaxy to planet Earth. Spanning over 60,000 light-years, the peculiar elliptical galaxy also known as NGC 5128, is featured in this sharp telescopic view.
The Observable Universe
15.03.2022
How far can you see? Everything you can see, and everything you could possibly see, right now, assuming your eyes could detect all types of radiations around you -- is the observable universe. In light...
A Road to the Stars
14.03.2022
Pictured -- a very scenic road to the stars. The road approaches La Silla Observatory in Chile, with the ESO's 3.6-meter telescope just up ahead. To the left are some futuristic-looking support structures...
Star Formation in the Eagle Nebula
13.03.2022
Where do stars form? One place, star forming regions known as "EGGs", are being uncovered at the end of this giant pillar of gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula (M16). Short for evaporating gaseous globules, EGGs are dense regions of mostly molecular hydrogen gas that fragment and gravitationally collapse to form stars.
Colorful Airglow Bands Surround Milky Way
12.03.2022
Why would the sky glow like a giant repeating rainbow? Airglow. Now air glows all of the time, but it is usually hard to see. A disturbance however -- like an approaching storm -- may cause noticeable rippling in the Earth's atmosphere.
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