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Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
Cave with Aurora Skylight
22.07.2014
Yes, but have you ever seen aurora from a cave? To capture this fascinating juxtaposition between below and above, astrophotographer Bjargmundsson spent much of a night alone in the kilometer-long RaufarhСlshellir lava cave in Iceland during late March. There, he took separate images of three parts of the cave using a strobe for illumination.
Spacecraft Rosetta Shows Comet has Two Components
21.07.2014
Why does this comet's nucleus have two components? The surprising discovery that Comet 67P/ChuryumovGerasimenko has a double nucleus came late last week as ESA's robotic interplanetary spacecraft Rosetta continued its approach toward the ancient comet's core.
A Solar Filament Erupts
20.07.2014
What's happened to our Sun? Nothing very unusual -- it just threw a filament. Toward the middle of 2012, a long standing solar filament suddenly erupted into space producing an energetic Coronal Mass Ejection (CME).
Alicante Beach Moonrise
19.07.2014
In this beach and skyscape from Alicante, Spain, July's Full Moon shines in the dark blue twilight, its reflection coloring the Mediterranean waters. Near the horizon, the moonlight is reddened by its long...
Ou4: A Giant Squid Nebula
18.07.2014
A mysterious, squid-like apparition, this nebula is very faint, but also very large in planet Earth's sky. In the mosaic image, composed with narrowband data from the 2.5 meter Isaac Newton Telescope, it spans some 2.5 full moons toward the constellation Cepheus.
3D Homunculus Nebula
17.07.2014
If you're looking for something to print with that new 3D printer, try out a copy of the Homunculus Nebula. The dusty, bipolar cosmic cloud is around 1 light-year across but is slightly scaled down for printing to about 1/4 light-nanosecond or 80 millimeters.
The Moon Eclipses Saturn
16.07.2014
What happened to half of Saturn? Nothing other than Earth's Moon getting in the way. As pictured above on the far right, Saturn is partly eclipsed by a dark edge of a Moon itself only partly illuminated by the Sun.
A Blue Bridge of Stars between Cluster Galaxies
15.07.2014
Why is there a blue bridge of stars across the center of this galaxy cluster? First and foremost the cluster, designated SDSS J1531+3414, contains many large yellow elliptical galaxies. The cluster's center...
Auroras over Northern Canada
14.07.2014
Gusting solar winds and blasts of charged particles from the Sun resulted in several rewarding nights last December for those anticipating auroras. The above image captured dramatic auroras stretching across a sky near the town of Yellowknife in northern Canada.
Planetary Nebula NGC 2818 from Hubble
13.07.2014
NGC 2818 is a beautiful planetary nebula, the gaseous shroud of a dying sun-like star. It could well offer a glimpse of the future that awaits our own Sun after spending another 5 billion years or so steadily using up hydrogen at its core, and then finally helium, as fuel for nuclear fusion.
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