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Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
Infrared Trifid
13.01.2005
The Trifid Nebula, aka M20, is easy to find with a small telescope, a well known stop in the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. But where visible light pictures show the nebula divided into three parts by dark, obscuring dust lanes, this penetrating infrared image reveals filaments of luminous gas and newborn stars.
Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1300
12.01.2005
Big, beautiful barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300 lies some 70 million light-years away on the banks of the constellation Eridanus. This Hubble Space Telescope composite view of the gorgeous island universe was released...
Machholz Meets the Pleiades
11.01.2005
Sweeping northward in planet Earth's sky, comet Machholz extended its long ion tail with the Pleiades star cluster in the background on January 7th. This stunning view, recorded with a telephoto lens in skies over Oberjoch, Bavaria, Germany, emphasizes faint, complex tail structures and the scene's lovely blue and green colors.
Dust Sculptures in the Rosette Nebula
10.01.2005
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.
Jupiters Rings Revealed
9.01.2005
Why does Jupiter have rings? Jupiter's rings were discovered in 1979 by the passing Voyager 1 spacecraft, but their origin was a mystery. Data from the Galileo spacecraft that orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003 later confirmed that these rings were created by meteoroid impacts on small nearby moons.
X Ray Mystery in RCW 38
8.01.2005
A mere 6,000 light-years distant and sailing through the constellation Vela, star cluster RCW 38 is full of powerful stars. It's no surprise that these stars, only a million years young with hot outer atmospheres, appear as point-like x-ray sources dotting this x-ray image from the orbiting Chandra Observatory.
S is for Venus
7.01.2005
Planet Venus traced out this S shape in Earth's sky during 2004. Following the second planet from the Sun in a series of 29 images recorded from April 3rd through August...
UKIRT: Aloha Orion
6.01.2005
At the edge of a dense molecular cloud, filaments of gas, cosmic dust, and a multitude of young stars beckon in this penetrating image of the Orion Nebula. Alluring structures in the well-known star...
Comet Machholz in View
5.01.2005
Good views of Comet Machholz are in store for northern hemisphere comet watchers in January. Now making its closest approach to planet Earth, the comet will pass near the lovely Pleiades star cluster on January 7th and the double star cluster in Perseus on January 27th as Machholz moves relatively quickly through the evening sky.
Milky Way Illustrated
4.01.2005
What does our Milky Way Galaxy look like from afar? Since we are stuck inside, and since opaque dust truncates our view in visible light, nobody knows for sure. Drawn above, however, is a good guess based on many different types of observations.
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