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Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
La Nina Watch
20.07.1998
Goodbye El Niño. Hello La Niña? Scientists are watching to see if an evolving pool of relatively cool water in the mid-Pacific Ocean will develop into a full "La Niña". Over the past several months, the water temperature in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean has been doing a flip-flop.
Globular Cluster M3
19.07.1998
This huge ball of stars predates our Sun. Long before mankind evolved, before dinosaurs roamed, and even before our Earth existed, ancient globs of stars condensed and orbited a young Milky Way Galaxy.
Rockets and Robert Goddard
18.07.1998
Robert H. Goddard, one of the founding fathers of modern rocketry, was born in Worcester Massachusetts in 1882. As a 16 year old, Goddard read H.G. Wells' science fiction classic "War Of The Worlds" and dreamed of spaceflight. By 1926 he had designed, built, and launched the world's first liquid fuel rocket.
Hyakutake: Stars Through A Comet Tail
17.07.1998
Comets are cosmic icebergs. They follow very elongated orbits which carry them from the frozen, remote outer reaches of the Solar System to close encounters with the Sun. Heated by sunlight, they slough off layers of material as gas and dust, forming their characteristic awe-inspiring comas (heads) and tails.
X Ray Triple Jet
16.07.1998
Recorded on July 7, this animation using X-ray images of the Sun shows an amazing event - three nearly simultaneous jets connected with solar active regions. The two frames were taken several hours apart by the Soft X-ray Telescope on board the orbiting Yohkoh observatory.
Ghost Galaxy NGC 2915
15.07.1998
How do you find a nearly invisible galaxy? Pictured above is the blue compact dwarf (BCD) galaxy NGC 2915. In visible light, shown above in yellow, this galaxy appears to be a normal dwarf galaxy, as indicated by the yellow smudge in the image center.
At Work on Mars
14.07.1998
To learn about the history ofMars, just ask the rocks. Last year, that's exactly what the robot rover Sojourner did. Sojouner can be seen, above, analyzing a rock nicknamed Moe, trying to discern its past.
GRB 980703: A Reassuring Redshift
13.07.1998
In the old days, just over a year ago, astronomers had little idea of the true distance to gamma-ray bursts. Did these enigmatic explosions occur in our outer Galaxy, or in the outer Universe?
Asteroid Gaspra's Best Face
12.07.1998
Asteroid 951 Gaspra is a huge rock tumbling in space. Gaspra became one of the best-studied asteroids in 1991 when the spacecraft Galileo flew by. In the above photograph, subtle color variations have been exaggerated to highlight changes in reflectivity, surface structure and composition.
M64: The Sleeping Beauty Galaxy
11.07.1998
The Sleeping Beauty galaxy may appear peaceful at first sight but it is actually tossing and turning. In an unexpected twist, recent observations have shown that the center of this photogenic galaxy is rotating in the opposite direction than the outer regions!
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