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Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
Moon, Mercury, Monaco
17.03.2005
Low on the western horizon after sunset, a slender crescent Moon and wandering planet Mercury join the lights of Menton and Monaco along the French Riviera. Astronomer Vincent Jacques took advantage of this gorgeous...
Enceladus Close Up
16.03.2005
The surface of Enceladus is as white as fresh snow. Still, an impressive variety of terrain is revealed in this contrast enhanced image. At a resolution of about 30 meters per pixel, the close-up view spans over 20 kilometers - recorded during the touring Cassini spacecraft's March flyby of the icy Saturnian moon.
Markarians Chain of Galaxies
15.03.2005
Across the heart of the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies lies a striking string of galaxies known as Markarian's Chain. The chain, pictured above, is highlighted on the upper right with two large but featureless lenticular galaxies, M84 and M86, and connects to the large spiral on the lower left, M88.
Steep Cliffs on Mars
14.03.2005
Vertical cliffs of nearly two kilometers occur near the North Pole of Mars. Also visible in the above image of the Martian North Polar Cap are red areas of rock and sand, white areas of ice, and dark areas of unknown composition but hypothesized to be volcanic ash.
The Fox Fur Nebula
13.03.2005
The nebula surrounding bright star S Mon is filled with dark dust and glowing gas. The strange shapes originate from fine interstellar dust reacting in complex ways with the energetic light and hot gas being expelled by the young stars.
A Message From Earth
12.03.2005
What are these Earthlings trying to tell us? The above message was broadcast from Earth towards the globular star cluster M13 in 1974. During the dedication of the Arecibo Observatory - still the largest radio telescope in the world - a string of 1's and 0's representing the above diagram was sent.
Accretion Disk Simulation
11.03.2005
Don't be fooled by the familiar pattern. The graceful spiral structure seen in this computer visualization does not portray winding spiral arms in a distant galaxy of stars. Instead, the graphic shows spiral...
Infrared Ring Nebula
10.03.2005
The classic appearance of the popular Ring Nebula (aka M57) is understood to be due to perspective - our view from planet Earth looks down the center of a roughly barrel-shaped cloud of gas.
NGC 1499: California Nebula
9.03.2005
Drifting through the Orion Arm of the spiral Milky Way Galaxy, this cosmic cloud by chance echoes the outline of California on the west coast of the United States. Our own Sun also lies within the Milky Way's Orion Arm, only about 1,500 light-years from the California Nebula.
A Sun Halo Over Tennessee
8.03.2005
Sometimes it looks like the Sun is being viewed through a large lens. In the above case, however, there are actually millions of lenses: ice crystals. As water freezes in the upper atmosphere, small, flat, six-sided, ice crystals might be formed.
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