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Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
NGC 3132: The Eight Burst Nebula
13.09.2003
It's the dim star, not the bright one, near the center of NGC 3132 that created this odd but beautiful planetary nebula. Nicknamed the Eight-Burst Nebula and the Southern Ring Nebula, the glowing gas originated in the outer layers of a star like our Sun.
A Note on the Perseus Cluster
12.09.2003
A truly enormous collection of thousands of galaxies, the Perseus Cluster - like other large galaxy clusters - is filled with hot, x-ray emitting gas. The x-ray hot gas (not the individual galaxies) appears in the left panel above, a false color image from the Chandra Observatory.
NGC 3370: A Sharper View
11.09.2003
Similar in size and grand design to our own Milky Way, spiral galaxy NGC 3370 lies about 100 million light-years away toward the constellation Leo. Recorded here in exquisite detail by the Hubble Space...
Aurora Over Clouds
10.09.2003
Aurorae usually occur high above the clouds. The auroral glow is created when fast-moving particles ejected from the Sun impact air molecules high in the Earth's atmosphere. An oxygen molecule, for example, will glow in a green light when reacquiring an electron lost during a collision with a solar particle.
A Gemini Sky
9.09.2003
Where will Gemini take us tonight? It is dusk and Gemini North, one of the largest telescopes on planet Earth, prepares to peer into the distant universe. Gemini's flexible 8.1-mirror has taken...
Stars and Dust of the Lagoon Nebula
8.09.2003
The large majestic Lagoon Nebula is home for many young stars and hot gas. Spanning 100 light years across while lying only about 5000 light years distant, the Lagoon Nebulae is so big and bright that it can be seen without a telescope toward the constellation of Sagittarius.
The Galactic Center in Infrared
7.09.2003
The center of our Galaxy is a busy place. In visible light, much of the Galactic Center is obscured by opaque dust. In infrared light, however, dust glows more and obscures less, allowing nearly one million stars to be recorded in the above photograph.
Jupiter Unpeeled
6.09.2003
Slice Jupiter from pole to pole, peel back its outer layers of clouds, stretch them onto a flat surface ... and for all your trouble you'd end up with something that looks a lot like this. Scrolling right will reveal the full picture, a color mosaic of Jupiter from the Cassini spacecraft.
SIRTF Streak
5.09.2003
Streaking skyward, a Boeing Delta 2-Heavy rocket carries NASA's Space InfraRed Telescope Facility (SIRTF) aloft during the early morning hours of August 25th. The dramatic scene was recorded in a time exposure from...
Composite Crab
4.09.2003
The Crab Pulsar, a city-sized, magnetized neutron star spinning 30 times a second, lies at the center of this composite image of the inner region of the well-known Crab Nebula. The spectacular picture combines...
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