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Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
Dust and Light in the Rosette Nebula
14.02.2006
What creates the cosmic dust sculptures in the Rosette Nebula? Noted for the common beauty of its overall shape, parts of the Rosette Nebula, also known as NGC 2244, show beauty even when viewed up close.
The N44 Emission Nebula
13.02.2006
N44 is one of the largest and most intricate nebulas in this part of the universe. Located in our galactic neighbor the Large Magellanic Cloud, N44 houses numerous massive bright stars, lengthy lanes of dark dust, and vast clouds of hydrogen gas that glows red.
Phoebe: Comet Moon of Saturn
12.02.2006
Was Saturn's moon Phoebe once a comet? Images from the robotic Cassini spacecraft taken two years ago when entering the neighborhood of Saturn indicate that Phoebe may have originated in the outer Solar System.
Plato and the Lunar Alps
11.02.2006
The dark-floored, 95 kilometer wide crater Plato (top) and sunlit peaks of the lunar Alps are highlighted in this sharp digital mosaic of the Moon's surface. While the Alps of planet Earth were...
M8: The Lagoon Nebula
10.02.2006
This beautiful cosmic cloud is a popular stop on telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius. Eighteenth century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged the bright nebula as M8, while modern day astronomers recognize the Lagoon...
NGC 1309 and Friends
9.02.2006
A gorgeous spiral galaxy some 100 million light-years distant, NGC 1309 lies on the banks of the constellation Eridanus. NGC 1309 spans about 30,000 light-years, one third the size of our larger Milky Way galaxy.
The Great Basin on Tethys
8.02.2006
Some moons wouldn't survive the collision. Tethys, one of Saturn's larger moons at about 1000 kilometers in diameter, survived the collision, but sports today the expansive impact crater Odysseus. Sometimes called...
UB313: Larger than Pluto
7.02.2006
What do you call an outer Solar System object that is larger than Pluto? Nobody is yet sure. The question arose recently when 2003 UB313, an object currently twice as far out as Pluto and not in the plane with the rest of the planets, was verified recently to be 30 percent wider than Pluto.
The N44 Superbubble
6.02.2006
What created this gigantic hole? The vast emission nebula N44 in our neighboring galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud has a large, 250 light-year hole and astronomers are trying to figure out why. One possibility is particle winds expelled by massive stars in the bubble's interior that are pushing out the glowing gas.
A Sun Pillar in Red and Violet
5.02.2006
Sometimes the unknown is beautiful. In 2000 February near Lake Tahoe, Nevada, two amateur photographers noticed an unusual red column of light rise mysteriously from a setting sun. During the next few minutes, they were able to capture the pillar and a photogenic sunset on film.
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