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Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
All the Colors of the Sun
24.06.2007
It is still not known why the Sun's light is missing some colors. Shown above are all the visible colors of the Sun, produced by passing the Sun's light through a prism-like device.
3D Barringer Meteorite Crater
23.06.2007
Baringer Meteorite Crater, near Winslow, Arizona, is one of the best known impact craters on planet Earth. View this color stereo anaglyph with red/blue glasses to get a dramatic sense of the crater's dimensions -- one mile wide, and up to 570 feet deep.
Small Worlds Ceres and Vesta
22.06.2007
Ceres and Vesta are, respectively, only around 950 kilometers and 530 kilometers in diameter - about the size of Texas and Arizona. But they are two of the largest of over 100,000 minor bodies orbiting in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Stars and the Solstice Sun
21.06.2007
If you could turn off the atmosphere's ability to scatter overwhelming sunlight, today's daytime sky might look something like this ... with the Sun surrounded by the stars of the constellations Taurus and Gemini. Of course, today is the Solstice.
A Daylight Eclipse of Venus
20.06.2007
Something was about to happen. Just two days ago, two of the three celestial objects easily visible during the day appeared to collide. But actually, Earth's Moon passed well in front of the distant planet Venus. The occultation was caught from Switzerland in the hours before sunset.
Eris: More Massive than Pluto
19.06.2007
Eris, a dwarf planet currently orbiting the Sun at about twice Pluto's distance, has been measured to have about 27 percent more mass than Pluto. The mass was calculated by timing the orbit of Eris' moon Dysnomia.
Monitoring M2-9
18.06.2007
Exploring the myriad shapes found in the cosmic zoo of planetary nebulae, some astronomers have focused on the intriguing example of M2-9. About 2,100 light-years away and over one light-year across, M2-9 is known as a twin jet or butterfly nebula in reference to its striking bipolar symmetry.
Analemma over the Ukraine
17.06.2007
If you took a picture of the Sun at the same time each day, would it remain in the same position? The answer is no, and the shape traced out by the Sun over the course of a year is called an analemma.
Lunar Orbiter Views Crater Copernicus
16.06.2007
To prepare for the Apollo landings, five Lunar Orbiter spacecraft were launched during 1966 and 1967 to gather detailed images of our fair planet's large, natural satellite. Dramatic views returned by the spacecraft cameras included this stark moonscape.
Messier 96
15.06.2007
Dust lanes seem to swirl around the core of Messier 96 in this colorful, detailed portrait of the beautiful island universe. Of course M96 is a spiral galaxy, and counting the faint arms extending beyond the brighter central region it spans 100 thousand light-years or so, about the size of our own Milky Way.
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