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Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
Star Colors in Orion
11.02.2011
What determines a star's color? Its temperature. Red stars are cool, with surface temperatures of around 3,000 kelvins (K), while blue stars are hotter and can have temperatures over 30,000 K. Our own lovely "yellow" Sun's temperature is a comforting 6,000 K.
Hanny s Voorwerp
10.02.2011
Hanny's Voorwerp, Dutch for "Hanny's Object", is enormous, about the size of our own Milky Way Galaxy. Glowing strongly in the greenish light produced by ionized oxygen atoms, the mysterious voorwerp is below spiral galaxy IC 2497 in this view from the Hubble Space Telescope.
NGC 2174: Stars Versus Mountains
9.02.2011
It's stars versus gas mountains in NGC 2174 and the stars are winning. More precisely, the energetic light and winds from massive newly formed stars are evaporating and dispersing the dark stellar nurseries in which they formed.
Iridescent Clouds from the Top of the World Highway
8.02.2011
Why would a cloud appear to be different colors? A relatively rare phenomenon known as iridescent clouds can show unusual colors vividly or a whole spectrum of colors simultaneously. These clouds are formed of small water droplets of nearly uniform size.
Sun 360: STEREO Captures Views of the Entire Sun
7.02.2011
For the first time, the entire Sun is being imaged all at once. This has become possible because the two STEREO satellites orbiting and monitoring the Sun are now on opposite sides of the Sun.
An Anomalous SETI Signal
6.02.2011
No one knows for sure what caused this signal. There is a slight possibility that it just might originate from an extraterrestrial intelligence. The bright colors on the blue background indicate that an anomalous signal was received here on Earth by a radio telescope involved in a Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).
Apollo 14: A View from Antares
5.02.2011
Forty years ago, while looking out the window of Apollo 14's Lunar Module Antares, astronaut Ed Mitchell snapped a series of photos of the lunar surface, assembled into this detailed mosaic by Apollo Lunar Surface Journal editor Eric Jones.
Zeta Oph: Runaway Star
4.02.2011
Like a ship plowing through cosmic seas, runaway star Zeta Ophiuchi produces the arcing interstellar bow wave or bow shock seen in this stunning infrared portrait from the WISE spacecraft. In the false-color view...
Six Worlds for Kepler 11
3.02.2011
Six worlds orbit Kepler-11, a sunlike star 2,000 light-years distant in the constellation Cygnus. The new discovery, based on data from NASA's planet hunting Kepler spacecraft, makes the Kepler-11 system the fullest exoplanetary system known.
Moon and Venus over Switzerland
2.02.2011
Sometimes a morning sky can be a combination of serene and surreal. Such a sky perhaps existed before sunrise this past Sunday as viewed from a snowy slope in eastern Switzerland. Quiet clouds blanket the above scene, lit from beneath by lights from the village of TrEbbach.
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