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Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
A Mirry Christmas
23.12.1996
Thinking about spending the Holiday Season in low Earth orbit? Astronaut John Blaha and his cosmonaut colleagues Valeri Korzun and Alexander Kaleri are doing just that onboard the Russian Mir spacestation. You can e-mail them Seasons Greetings.
The Hills of Ganymede
22.12.1996
This computer generated 3D close-up view of Jupiter's large moon Ganymede was created using image data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft. Simulating stereo vision by combining two recent images recorded from different angles, 3 dimensional information was reconstructed for a section of Ganymede's surface.
18 Miles From Deimos
21.12.1996
Diminutive Deimos is the smallest of the two tiny Moons of Mars. Potato shaped and barely 6 miles wide this asteroid-like body was visited by the Viking 2 orbiter in 1977. This image was made when the spacecraft approached to within 18 miles of Deimos' surface.
Sun and Winter Solstice 1996
20.12.1996
Today is the Winter Solstice for 1996. After steadily sinking in Northern Hemisphere skies, the Sun is now at its lowest declination - marking the first day of Northern Winter (but Southern Summer!). The Earth...
The UV SMC from UIT
19.12.1996
Translated from the "acronese" the title reads - The UltraViolet Small Magellanic Cloud from the Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope. FYI, the four ultraviolet images used in this mosaic of the nearby irregular galaxy known...
Comet Hale-Bopp Inbound
18.12.1996
Headed toward the inner Solar System, the much anticipated Comet Hale-Bopp has promised to put on a big show next spring. The comet's apparent brightness is currently approaching 4th magnitude and its inbound journey has been closely followed by many observers.
A Sky Full Of Hydrogen
17.12.1996
Interstellar space is filled with extremely tenuous clouds of gas which are mostly Hydrogen. The neutral hydrogen atom (HI in astronomer's shorthand) consists of 1 proton and 1 electron. The proton and electron spin like tops but can have only two orientations; spin axes parallel or anti-parallel.
Mariner's Mercury
16.12.1996
Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, remains the most mysterious of the Solar System's inner planets. Hiding in the Sun's glare it is a difficult target for Earth bound observers.
Nebula Nova Cygni Turns On
15.12.1996
Old photographs show no evidence of the above nebula. In 1992, a white dwarf star in Cygnus blew off its outer layers in a classical nova explosion: an event called Nova Cygni 1992. Light flooded the local interstellar neighborhood, illuminated this existing gas cloud, excited the existing hydrogen, and hence caused the red emission.
Microlensing of the Einstein Cross
14.12.1996
The famous "Einstein Cross" is a case where a single object is seen four times. Here a very distant QSO happened to be placed right behind a massive galaxy. The gravitational effect...
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