|
Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
M51: Cosmic Whirlpool
28.04.2005
Follow the handle of the Big Dipper away from the dipper's bowl, until you get to the handle's last bright star. Then, just slide your telescope a little south and west and you might find this stunning pair of interacting galaxies, the 51st entry in Charles Messier's famous catalog.
The Hercules Cluster of Galaxies
27.04.2005
These are galaxies of the Hercules Cluster, an archipelago of "island universes" a mere 650 million light-years distant. This cluster is loaded with gas and dust rich, star forming, spiral galaxies but has relatively few elliptical galaxies, which lack gas and dust and the associated newborn stars.
A Martian Dust Devil Passes
26.04.2005
What goes there across the plains of Mars? A dust devil. For the first time, definitive movies of the famous spinning dust towers have been created from ground level. The robot rover Spirit has now imaged several dust devils from its hillside perch just within the past two months.
The Fairy of Eagle Nebula
25.04.2005
The dust sculptures of the Eagle Nebula are evaporating. As powerful starlight whittles away these cool cosmic mountains, the statuesque pillars that remain might be imagined as mythical beasts. Pictured above is one of several striking dust pillars of the Eagle Nebula that might be described as a gigantic alien fairy.
M16: Stars from Eagle's EGGs
24.04.2005
Newborn stars are forming in the Eagle Nebula. This image, taken with the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995, shows evaporating gaseous globules (EGGs) emerging from pillars of molecular hydrogen gas and dust. The giant pillars are light years in length and are so dense that interior gas contracts gravitationally to form stars.
Eclipsed Moon in Infrared
23.04.2005
In September of 1996, the Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX) satellite had a spectacular view of a total lunar eclipse from Earth orbit. SPIRIT III, an on board infrared telescope, was used to repeatedly image the moon during the eclipse.
Albert Einstein s Miraculous Year
22.04.2005
In 1905 Albert Einstein had a miraculous year. One hundred years ago, he wrote four papers which revolutionized our understanding of the Universe. The papers outlined; the idea that light could behave...
G21.5-0.9: A Supernova s Cosmic Shell
21.04.2005
The picture is lovely, but this pretty cosmic shell was produced by almost unbelievable violence - created when a star with nearly 20 times the mass of the sun blasted away its outer layers in a spectacular supernova explosion.
Barnards Loop Around Orion
20.04.2005
Why is the belt of Orion surrounded by a bubble? Although glowing like an emission nebula, the origin of the bubble, known as Barnard's Loop, is currently unknown. Progenitor hypotheses include the winds from bright Orion stars and the supernovas of stars long gone.
Orion in Infrared
19.04.2005
Do you recognize the constellation Orion? This striking but unfamiliar looking picture of the familiar Orion region of the sky was produced using survey data from the now-defunct InfraRed Astronomical Satellite (IRAS). The above image combines information recorded at three different invisible infrared wavelengths and covers about 30x24 degrees on the sky.
|
January February March April May June July August September October November December |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||