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Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
The Giant and the Glory
6.08.2004
On a flight from Vienna to Brussels, astronomer Franz Kerschbaum looked out the window and photographed this beautiful atmospheric phenomenon, the glory, shining in the direction directly opposite the Sun. Before airplanes, the glory, known to some as the heiligenschein or the Specter of the Brocken, was occasionally seen from mountaintops.
Emission Nebula IC 1396
5.08.2004
Sprawling across hundreds of light-years, emission nebula IC 1396 mixes glowing cosmic gas and dark dust clouds. Stars are forming in this area, only about 3,000 light-years from Earth. This particularly colorful view of the region is a composite of digital images recorded through narrow band filters.
Solar Arcs and Halos
4.08.2004
Have you ever seen a bright halo around the Sun? Unusual halos and arcs were so bright one recent afternoon in Trier, Germany that even casual people on the street noticed them. The fantastic...
Shadow of a Martian Robot
3.08.2004
What if you saw your shadow on Mars and it wasn't human? Then you might be the Opportunity rover currently exploring Mars. Opportunity and sister robot Spirit have been probing the red planet since January, finding evidence of ancient water, and sending breathtaking images across the inner Solar System.
Spicules: Jets on the Sun
2.08.2004
Imagine a pipe as wide as a state and as long as half the Earth. Now imagine that this pipe is filled with hot gas moving 50,000 kilometers per hour. Further imagine that this pipe is not made of metal but a transparent magnetic field.
A Force from Empty Space: The Casimir Effect
1.08.2004
This tiny ball provides evidence that the universe will expand forever. Measuring slightly over one tenth of a millimeter, the ball moves toward a smooth plate in response to energy fluctuations in the vacuum of empty space.
Tonight: A Blue Moon
31.07.2004
How often does a full moon occur twice in a single month? Exactly once in a Blue Moon. In fact, the modern usage of the term "Blue Moon" refers to the second Full Moon in a single month. Tonight's Blue Moon will be the first since November 2001.
Northern Lights
30.07.2004
While enjoying the spaceweather on a gorgeous summer evening in mid-July, astronomer Philippe Moussette captured this colorful fish-eye lens view looking north from the Observatoire Mont Cosmos, Quebec, Canada, planet Earth. In the foreground, lights along the northern horizon give an orange cast to the low clouds.
Melas Chasma
29.07.2004
Steep cliffs drop into the rugged terrain of Melas Chasma in this stunning view from the Mars Express spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet. At a scale of 16 meters per pixel, the image data...
A Cygnus Star Field
28.07.2004
In the constellation of the swan near the nebula of the pelican lies the gas cloud of the butterfly surrounding a star known as the hen. That star, given the proper name Sadr, is visible to the unaided eye but found here as the brightest object on the upper left.
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