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Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
Sputnik: Traveling Companion
7.10.2000
Sputnik means "traveling companion". Despite the innocuous sounding name, the launch of the Earth's first "artificial moon", Sputnik 1, by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957 shocked the free world, setting in motion events which resulted in the creation of NASA and the race to the Moon.
X-Rays From Sirius B
6.10.2000
In visible light Sirius A (Alpha Canis Majoris) is the brightest star in the night sky, a closely watched celestial beacon throughout recorded history. Part of a binary star system only 8 light-years away, it was known in modern times to have a small companion star, Sirius B.
N81: Star Cradle in the SMC
5.10.2000
This dramatic Hubble Space Telescope image captures the birth of a cluster of massive stars. The newborn stars are seen just as they emerge from their natal nebula. Only 12 light-years across, the nebula...
Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1300
4.10.2000
NGC 1300 is a large spiral galaxy that appears as a flattened figure eight. A huge bar that spans over 150,000 light-years across the galaxy center dominates its appearance. The picturesque galaxy lies about 75 million light-years distant, so that light that we see now left during the age of the dinosaurs.
Saturn Rotates
3.10.2000
The dramatic rotation of the cloud-tops of Saturn every ten-hours is particularly evident from orbit around the gas giant planet. With a good enough telescope, however, such rotation is visible even from Earth, as shown by this time-lapse image sequence from the Hubble Space Telescope taken in November 1990.
Pangea Ultima: Earth in 250 Million Years
2.10.2000
Is this what will become of the Earth's surface? The surface of the Earth is broken up into several large plates that are slowly shifting. About 250 million years ago, the plates...
The Center of Centaurus A
1.10.2000
A fantastic jumble of young blue star clusters, gigantic glowing gas clouds, and imposing dark dust lanes surrounds the central region of the active galaxy Centaurus A. This mosaic of Hubble Space Telescope images taken in blue, green, and red light has been processed to present a natural color picture of this cosmic maelstrom.
Titania's Trenches
30.09.2000
British astronomer Sir William Herschel discovered Titania and Oberon in January of 1787. He wasn't reading Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream though, he was making the first telescopic observations of moons of the planet Uranus (a planet which he himself discovered in 1781).
September Sky
29.09.2000
Star clusters, planets, and a red giant posed for this portrait of the night sky from rural Jasper County, Iowa, USA. Astrophotographer Stan Richard recorded the four minute time exposure looking east around midnight on September 3rd at Ashton-Wildwood Park.
Heating Coronal Loops
28.09.2000
Extending above the photosphere or visible surface of the Sun, the faint, tenuous solar corona can't be easily seen from Earth, but it is measured to be hundreds of times hotter than the photosphere itself. What makes the solar corona so hot?
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