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Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
Apogee Full Moon
18.01.2014
This big, bright, beautiful Full Moon rose over Lick Observatory Wednesday night. Traditionally a full moon in January might be called the Wolf Moon. But this moon reached its full phase on January 16, 4:54 UT, within about 2 hours of apogee, the most distant point in its elliptical orbit around planet Earth.
M83 Star Streams
17.01.2014
Big, bright, and beautiful, spiral galaxy M83 lies a mere twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long constellation Hydra. This deep view of the gorgeous island universe includes observations...
Despina, Moon of Neptune
16.01.2014
Despina is a tiny moon of Neptune. A mere 148 kilometers across, diminutive Despina was discovered in 1989, in images from the Voyager 2 spacecraft taken during its encounter with the solar system's most distant gas giant planet.
Spitzer s Orion
15.01.2014
Few cosmic vistas excite the imagination like the Orion Nebula, an immense stellar nursery some 1,500 light-years away. This stunning false-color view spans about 40 light-years across the region, constructed using infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope.
The Gegenschein Over Chile
14.01.2014
Is the night sky darkest in the direction opposite the Sun? No. In fact, a rarely discernable faint glow known as the gegenschein (German for "counter glow") can be seen 180 degrees around from the Sun in an extremely dark sky. The gegenschein is sunlight back-scattered off small interplanetary dust particles.
A Trip to the Moon
13.01.2014
What would it be like to visit the Moon? The first major fictional cinematic film exploring this enduring transcultural fantasy was titled Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon) and made in 1902, becoming one of the most popular movies of the early years of the twentieth century.
The Scale of the Universe: Interactive
12.01.2014
What does the universe look like on small scales? On large scales? Humanity is discovering that the universe is a very different place on every proportion that has been explored. For example, so far as we know, every tiny proton is exactly the same, but every huge galaxy is different.
The Seagull Nebula
11.01.2014
A broad expanse of glowing gas and dust presents a bird-like visage to astronomers from planet Earth, suggesting its popular moniker - The Seagull Nebula. This portrait of the cosmic bird covers a 1.6 degree wide swath across the plane of the Milky Way, near the direction of Sirius, alpha star of the constellation Canis Major.
NGC 7293: The Helix Nebula
10.01.2014
A mere seven hundred light years from Earth, in the constellation Aquarius, a sun-like star is dying. Its last few thousand years have produced the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293), a well studied and nearby example of a Planetary Nebula, typical of this final phase of stellar evolution.
The Tadpoles of IC 410
9.01.2014
This telescopic close-up shows off the otherwise faint emission nebula IC 410 in striking false-colors. It also features two remarkable inhabitants of the cosmic pond of gas and dust below and right of center, the tadpoles of IC 410. The picture is a composite of images taken through narrow band filters.
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