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Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
A Halo Around the Moon
15.05.2000
Have you ever seen a halo around the Moon? This fairly common sight occurs when high thin clouds containing millions of tiny ice crystals cover much of the sky. Each ice crystal acts like a miniature lens.
A Presidential Panorama of Mars
14.05.2000
Scroll right to unfold one of the great panoramas ever taken on the surface of Mars. For best viewing, click and hold the right arrow icon at the bottom of your browser window. This image, dubbed a "presidential panorama" by the Mars Pathfinder team, shows in colorful detail the surroundings of the Sagan Memorial Station.
Surveyor Slides
13.05.2000
"Safe!" In September 1967 (during regular season play), the Surveyor 5 lander actually slid several feet while making a successful soft landing on the Moon's Mare Tranquillitatis. Equipped with television cameras and soil...
X-Ray Ring Around SN1987A
12.05.2000
This false-color image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory reveals a one light-year diameter ring of hot, ten million degree plasma. It is one of the most detailed X-ray images of the expanding blast wave from supernova 1987A (SN1987A).
NGC 3314: When Galaxies Overlap
11.05.2000
Can this be a spiral galaxy? In fact, NGC 3314 consists of two large spiral galaxies which just happen to almost exactly line-up. The foreground spiral is viewed nearly face-on, its pinwheel shape defined by young bright star clusters.
Dog-Bone Shaped Asteroid 216 Kleopatra
10.05.2000
An asteroid the size of New Jersey that orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter has been discovered to have an unusual dog-bone shape. Asteroid 216 Kleopatra, recently mapped with Earth-based radar, reflects radio waves so well that astronomers speculate it is composed mostly of metals such as nickel and iron.
The Race to Reveal Our Universe
9.05.2000
A race is underway to understand our universe through background radiation produced during its infancy. Observationally, increasingly accurate balloon experiments are pressing to beat future space-faring satellites to definitive measurements of universe-determining spot characteristics of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation.
Jupiters Moons Thebe, Amalthea, and Metis
8.05.2000
The robot spacecraft Galileo in orbit around Jupiter has recently photographed the inner moons of Jupiter in greater detail than ever before. These pictures of Thebe, Amalthea, and Metis are shown to scale, and reveal details as small as three kilometers across. Amalthea, by contrast, has a total length of about 200 kilometers.
A Green Flash from the Sun
7.05.2000
Many think it is just a myth. Others think it is true but its cause isn't known. Adventurers pride themselves on having seen it. It's a green flash from the Sun. The truth is the green flash does exist and its cause is well understood.
The Heart Of Orion
6.05.2000
Newborn stars lie at at the heart of the the Orion Nebula, hidden from view by the dust and gas of the giant Orion Molecular Cloud number 1 (OMC-1). Sensitive to invisible infrared...
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