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MXPlank Astronomy News Snippets



YEAR - 2021




**** Extremely sorry for some of the missing dates in the year. We will try to keep it as continuous as possible****





AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-12-30 : Comet Leonard, brightest comet of 2021, is at the lower left of these two panels captured on December 29 in dark Atacama desert skies. Heading for its perihelion on January 3 Comet Leonard's visible tail has grown


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-12-27 : Which one of these two streaks is a comet? Although they both have comet-like features, the lower streak is the only real comet. This lower streak shows the coma and tail of Comet Leonard, a city-sized block of rocky ice that is passing through the inner Solar System as it continues its looping orbit around the Sun


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-12-26 : There's a big new telescope in space. This one, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), not only has a mirror over five times larger than Hubble's in area, but can see better in infrared light


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-12-25 : The tail of a comet streams across this three degree wide telescopic field of view captured under dark Namibian skies on December 21. In outburst only a few days ago and just reaching naked eye visibility Comet Leonard (C/2021 A1) is this year's brightest comet


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-12-24 : The Crab Nebula is cataloged as M1, the first object on Charles Messier's famous 18th century list of things which are not comets. In fact, the Crab is now known to be a supernova remnant, debris from the death explosion of a massive star, witnessed by astronomers in the year 1054


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-12-23 : Are you still looking for that perfect holiday gift for an astronomer? If your night sky is dark and horizon clear enough, the Solar System may have done your shopping for you. Send them outside after sunset to see three planets and a comet


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-12-22 : Birds don't fly this high. Airplanes don't go this fast


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-12-20 : This picture was supposed to feature a comet. Specifically, a series of images of the brightest comet of 2021 were being captured: Comet Leonard


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-12-17 : An arid expanse of the Tengger Desert in north-central China, planet Earth fills the foreground of this starry scene. A widefield panoramic view, it was recorded shortly after moonset in the local predawn hours of December 14


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-12-16 : Fireflies flash along a moonlit countryside in this scene taken on the night of December 13/14 from southern Uruguay, planet Earth. On that night meteors fell in the partly cloudy skies above during the annual Geminid meteor shower


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-12-15 : What does Comet Leonard look like from space? Today's featured image from Origin.Space's Yangwang-1 space telescope shows not only the currently bright comet -- but several other space delights as well


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-12-14 : To some, it may look like a beehive. In reality, the featured image from the Hubble Space Telescope captures a cosmic pillar of dust, over two-light years long, inside of which is Herbig-Haro 666 -- a young star emitting powerful jets


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-12-13 : What's going on behind that mountain? Quite a bit. First of all, the mountain itself, named Kirkjufell, is quite old and located in western Iceland near the town of Grundarfjörður


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-12-12 : Comet Leonard is now visible to the unaided eye -- but just barely. Passing nearest to the Earth today, the comet is best seen this week soon after sunset, toward the west, low on the horizon


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-12-11 : From this vantage point about three quarters of a mile from planet Earth's geographic South Pole, the December 4 eclipse of the Sun was seen as a partial eclipse. At maximum eclipse the New Moon blocked 90 percent of the solar disk


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-12-09 : Few were able to stand in the Moon's shadow and watch the December 4 total eclipse of the Sun. Determined by celestial mechanics and not geographical boundaries, the narrow path of totality tracked across planet Earth's relatively inaccessible southernmost continent


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-12-08 : Comet Hale-Bopp, the Great Comet of 1997, became much brighter than any surrounding stars. It was seen even over bright city lights


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-12-06 : What's that unusual spot on the Moon? It's the International Space Station. Using precise timing, the Earth-orbiting space platform was photographed in front of a partially lit gibbous Moon last month


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-12-05 : Yesterday there was a total solar eclipse visible only at the end of the Earth. To capture the unusual phenomenon, airplanes took flight below the clouded seascape of Southern Ocean


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-12-04 : In this snapshot from November 18, the Full Moon was not far from Earth's shadow. In skies over Sicily the brightest lunar phase was eclipsed by passing clouds though


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-12-03 : Sweeping through northern predawn skies, on November 24 Comet Leonard (C/2021 A1) was caught between two galaxies in this composite telescopic image. Sporting a greenish coma the comet's dusty tail seems to harpoon the heart of NGC 4631 (top) also known as the Whale Galaxy


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-12-03 : Sweeping through northern predawn skies, on November 24 Comet Leonard (C/2021 A1) was caught between two galaxies in this composite telescopic image. Sporting a greenish coma the comet's dusty tail seems to harpoon the heart of NGC 4631 (top) also known as the Whale Galaxy


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-12-02 : Grand spiral galaxies often seem to get all the glory, flaunting their young, bright, blue star clusters in beautiful, symmetric spiral arms. But small galaxies form stars too, like nearby NGC 6822, also known as Barnard's Galaxy


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-12-01 : What causes a blue band to cross the Moon during a lunar eclipse? The blue band is real but usually quite hard to see. The featured HDR image of last week's lunar eclipse, however -- taken from Yancheng, China -- has been digitally processed to equalize the Moon's brightness and exaggerate the colors


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-11-30 : What's that moving across the sky? A planet just a bit too faint to see with the unaided eye: Uranus. The gas giant out past Saturn was tracked earlier this month near opposition -- when it was closest to Earth and at its brightest


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-11-29 : What created the strange spiral structure on the upper left? No one is sure, although it is likely related to a star in a binary star system entering the planetary nebula phase, when its outer atmosphere is ejected. The huge spiral spans about a third of a light year across and, winding four or five complete turns, has a regularity that is without precedent


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-11-28 : This high cliff occurs not on a planet, not on a moon, but on a comet. It was discovered to be part of the dark nucleus of Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko (CG) by Rosetta, a robotic spacecraft launched by ESA that rendezvoused with the Sun-orbiting comet in 2014


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-11-27 : Big, beautiful spiral galaxy M101 is one of the last entries in Charles Messier's famous catalog, but definitely not one of the least. About 170,000 light-years across, this galaxy is enormous, almost twice the size of our own Milky Way


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-11-26 : Rain clouds passed and the dome of the Lick Observatory's 36 inch Great Refractor opened on November 19. The historic telescope was pointed toward a partially eclipsed Moon


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-11-25 : Shaped like a cone tapering into space, the Earth's dark central shadow or umbra has a circular cross-section. It's wider than the Moon at the distance of the Moon's orbit though


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-11-17 : Why doesn't the nearby galaxy create a gravitational lensing effect on the background galaxy? It does, but since both galaxies are so nearby, the angular shift is much smaller than the angular sizes of the galaxies themselves. The featured Hubble image of NGC 3314 shows two large spiral galaxies which happen to line up exactly


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-11-15 : What happening above that volcano? Something very unusual -- a volcanic light pillar. More typically, light pillars are caused by sunlight and so appear as a bright column that extends upward above a rising or setting Sun


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-11-14 : What is that light in the sky? Perhaps one of humanity's more common questions, an answer may result from a few quick observations. For example -- is it moving or blinking? If so, and if you live near a city, the answer is typically an airplane, since planes are so numerous and so few stars and satellites are bright enough to be seen over the din of artificial city lights


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-11-13 : Returning along its 6.4 year orbit, periodic comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P) is caught in this telescopic frame from November 7


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-11-12 : The small, northern constellation Triangulum harbors this magnificent face-on spiral galaxy, M33. Its popular names include the Pinwheel Galaxy or just the Triangulum Galaxy


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-11-11 : NGC 1333 is seen in visible light as a reflection nebula, dominated by bluish hues characteristic of starlight reflected by interstellar dust. A mere 1,000 light-years distant toward the heroic constellation Perseus, it lies at the edge of a large, star-forming molecular cloud


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-11-10 : Many think it is just a myth. Others think it is true but its cause isn't known


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-11-09 : Why would you want to fake a universe? For one reason -- to better understand our real universe. Many astronomical projects seeking to learn properties of our universe now start with a robotic telescope taking sequential images of the night sky


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-11-05 : Light-years across, this suggestive shape known as the Seahorse Nebula appears in silhouette against a rich, luminous background of stars. Seen toward the royal northern constellation of Cepheus, the dusty, obscuring clouds are part of a Milky Way molecular cloud some 1,200 light-years distant


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-11-04 : Dwarf galaxies NGC 147 (left) and NGC 185 stand side by side in this sharp telescopic portrait. The two are not-often-imaged satellites of M31, the great spiral Andromeda Galaxy, some 2


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-11-03 : The Horsehead Nebula is one of the most famous nebulae on the sky. It is visible as the dark indentation to the orange emission nebula at the far right of the featured picture


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-11-02 : We've seen this same supernova three times -- when will we see it a fourth? When a distant star explodes in a supernova, we're lucky if we see it even once. In the case of AT 2016jka ('SN Requiem'), because the exploding star happened to be lined up behind the center of a galaxy cluster (MACS J0138 in this case), a comparison of Hubble Space Telescope images demonstrate that we saw it three times


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-11-01 : The dream was to capture both the waterfall and the Milky Way together. Difficulties included finding a good camera location, artificially illuminating the waterfall and the surrounding valley effectively, capturing the entire scene with numerous foreground and background shots, worrying that fireflies would be too distracting, keeping the camera dry, and avoiding stepping on a poisonous snake


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-10-31 : Is our universe haunted? It might look that way on this dark matter map. The gravity of unseen dark matter is the leading explanation for why galaxies rotate so fast, why galaxies orbit clusters so fast, why gravitational lenses so strongly deflect light, and why visible matter is distributed as it is both in the local universe and on the cosmic microwave background


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-10-30 : If you see this as a monster's face, don't panic. It's only pareidolia, often experienced as the tendency to see faces in patterns of light and shadow


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-10-29 : Spooky shapes seem to haunt this dusty expanse, drifting through the night in the royal constellation Cepheus. Of course, the shapes are cosmic dust clouds visible in dimly reflected starlight


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-10-28 : As far as ghosts go, Mirach's Ghost isn't really that scary. Mirach's Ghost is just a faint, fuzzy galaxy, well known to astronomers, that happens to be seen nearly along the line-of-sight to Mirach, a bright star


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-10-27 : Do you see the bat? It haunts this cosmic close-up of the eastern Veil Nebula. The Veil Nebula itself is a large supernova remnant, the expanding debris cloud from the death explosion of a massive star


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-10-26 : Observe the graceful twirl of our Solar System's largest planet. Many interesting features of Jupiter's enigmatic atmosphere, including dark belts and light zones, can be followed in detail


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-10-25 : Does the road to our galaxy's center go through Monument Valley? It doesn't have to, but if your road does -- take a picture. In this case, the road is US Route 163 and iconic buttes on the Navajo National Reservation populate the horizon


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-10-24 : Halloween's origin is ancient and astronomical. Since the fifth century BC, Halloween has been celebrated as a cross-quarter day, a day halfway between an equinox (equal day / equal night) and a solstice (minimum day / maximum night in the northern hemisphere)


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-10-22 : This pretty field of view spans over 2 degrees or 4 full moons on the sky, filled with stars toward the constellation Taurus, the Bull. Above and right of center in the frame you can spot the faint fuzzy reddish appearance of Messier 1 (M1), also known as the Crab Nebula



AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-10-21 : Blown by fast winds from a hot, massive star, this cosmic bubble is huge. Cataloged as Sharpless 2-308 it lies some 5,000 light-years away toward the constellation of the Big Dog (Canis Major) and covers slightly more of the sky than a Full Moon


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-10-20 : Why would this mission go out as far as Jupiter -- but then not visit Jupiter? Lucy's plan is to follow different leads about the origin of our Solar System than can be found at Jupiter -- where Juno now orbits. Jupiter is such a massive planet that its gravity captures numerous asteroids that orbit the Sun ahead of it -- and behind


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-10-19 : Where did this big ball of stars come from? Palomar 6 is one of about 200 globular clusters of stars that survive in our Milky Way Galaxy. These spherical star-balls are older than our Sun as well as older than most stars that orbit in our galaxy's disk


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-10-18 : Why can we see the entire face of this Moon? When the Moon is in a crescent phase, only part of it appears directly illuminated by the Sun. The answer is earthshine, also known as earthlight and the da Vinci glow


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-10-17 : Most galaxies have a single nucleus -- does this galaxy have four? The strange answer leads astronomers to conclude that the nucleus of the surrounding galaxy is not even visible in this image. The central cloverleaf is rather light emitted from a background quasar


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-10-16 : Only natural colors of the Moon in planet Earth's sky appear in this creative visual presentation. Arranged as pixels in a framed image, the lunar disks were photographed at different times


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-10-15 : About 70 million light-years distant, gorgeous spiral galaxy NGC 289 is larger than our own Milky Way. Seen nearly face-on, its bright core and colorful central disk give way to remarkably faint, bluish spiral arms


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-10-14 : A mere seven hundred light years from Earth, toward 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


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-10-13 : It may look like a huge cosmic question mark, but the big question really is how does the bright gas and dark dust tell this nebula's history of star formation. At the edge of a giant molecular cloud toward the northern constellation Cepheus, the glowing star forming region NGC 7822 lies about 3,000 light-years away


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-10-11 : What would it be like to fly over the largest moon in the Solar System? In June, the robotic Juno spacecraft flew past Jupiter's huge moon Ganymede and took images that have been digitally constructed into a detailed flyby. As the featured video begins, Juno swoops over the two-toned surface of the 2,000-km wide moon, revealing an icy alien landscape filled with grooves and craters


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-10-10 : Have you ever watched the Moon rise? The slow rise of a nearly full moon over a clear horizon can be an impressive sight. One impressive moonrise was imaged in early 2013 over Mount Victoria Lookout in Wellington, New Zealand


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-10-09 : It's only 50 light-years to 51 Pegasi. That star's position is indicated in this snapshot from August, taken on a hazy night with mostly brighter stars visible above the dome at Observatoire de Haute-Provence in France


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-10-08 : This pretty starfield spans about three full moons (1.5 degrees) across the heroic northern constellation of Perseus


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-10-07 : Slide your telescope just east of the Lagoon Nebula to find this alluring field of view in the rich starfields of the constellation Sagittarius toward the central Milky Way. Of course the Lagoon nebula is also known as M8, the eighth object listed in Charles Messier's famous catalog of bright nebulae and star clusters


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-10-06 : Where do the dark streams of dust in the Orion Nebula originate? This part of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, M43, is the often imaged but rarely mentioned neighbor of the more famous M42. M42, seen in part to the upper right, includes many bright stars from the Trapezium star cluster


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-10-05 : Sunrise at the South Pole is different. Usually a welcome sight, it follows months of darkness -- and begins months of sunshine


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-10-04 : These two mighty galaxies are pulling each other apart. Known as the 'Mice' because they have such long tails, each spiral galaxy has likely already passed through the other


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-10-03 : Sure, you can see the 2D rectangle of colors, but can you see deeper? Counting color patches in the featured image, you might estimate that the most information that this 2D digital image can hold is about 60 (horizontal) x 50(vertical) x 256 (possible colors) = 768,000 bits. However, the yet-unproven Holographic Principle states that, counter-intuitively, the information in a 2D panel can include all of the information in a 3D room that can be enclosed by the panel


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-10-01 : Dark markings and colorful clouds inhabit this stellar landscape. The deep and expansive view spans more than 30 full moons across crowded star fields toward the center of our Milky Way Galaxy


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-09-30 : Gorgeous spiral galaxy M33 seems to have more than its fair share of glowing hydrogen gas. A prominent member of the local group of galaxies, M33 is also known as the Triangulum Galaxy and lies a mere 3 million light-years away


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-09-29 : Have you ever seen a gigantic jet? They are extremely rare but tremendously powerful. Gigantic jets are a type of lightning discharge documented only this century that occur between some thunderstorms and the Earth's ionosphere high above them


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-09-28 : Have you ever experienced a meteor shower? To help capture the wonder, a video was taken during the peak of the recent Perseid meteor shower above the Indian Astronomical Observatory in Hanle, India, high up in the Himalayan mountains. Night descends as the video begins, with the central plane of our Milky Way Galaxy approaching from the left and Earth-orbiting satellites zipping by overhead


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-09-27 : Here is one of the most famous pictures from the Moon -- but digitally reversed. Apollo 11 landed on the moon in 1969 and soon thereafter many pictures were taken, including an iconic picture of Buzz Aldrin taken by Neil Armstrong


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-09-22 : When does the line between night and day become vertical? Today. Today is an equinox on planet Earth, a time of year when day and night are most nearly equal


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-09-21 : Is this giant orange ball about to roll down that tree-lined hill? No, because the giant orange ball is actually the Sun. Our Solar System's central star was captured rising beyond a hill on Earth twelve days ago complete with a delightfully detailed foreground


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-09-18 : In this Hubble Space Telescope image the bright, spiky stars lie in the foreground toward the heroic northern constellation Perseus and well within our own Milky Way galaxy. In sharp focus beyond is UGC 2885, a giant spiral galaxy about 232 million light-years distant


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-09-16 : Fans of our fair planet might recognize the outlines of these cosmic clouds. On the left, bright emission outlined by dark, obscuring dust lanes seems to trace a continental shape, lending the popular name North America Nebula to the emission region cataloged as NGC 7000


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-09-15 : Where on Earth do cyclones go? Known as hurricanes when in the Atlantic Ocean and typhoons when in the Pacific, the featured map shows the path of all major storms from 1985 through 2005. The map shows graphically that cyclones usually occur over water, which makes sense since evaporating warm water gives them energy


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-09-13 : What's that in the mirror? In the featured image of the dark southern sky, the three brightest galaxies of the night are all relatively easy to identify. Starting from the left, these are the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), and part of the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-09-12 : What's happened to the sky? Aurora! Captured in 2015, this aurora was noted by Icelanders for its great brightness and quick development. The aurora resulted from a solar storm, with high energy particles bursting out from the Sun and through a crack in Earth's protective magnetosphere a few days later


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-09-11 : Still bright in planet Earth's night skies, good telescopic views of Saturn and its beautiful rings often make it a star at star parties. But this stunning view of Saturn's rings and night side just isn't possible from telescopes closer to the Sun than the outer planet


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-09-10 : Faint comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P) sweeps past background stars in the constellation Taurus and even fainter distant galaxies in this telescopic frame from September 7. About 5 years ago, this comet's 4 kilometer spanning, double-lobed nucleus became the final resting place of robots from planet Earth, following the completion of the historic Rosetta mission to the comet


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-09-09 : A star cluster around 2 million years young surrounded by natal clouds of dust and glowing gas, M16 is also known as The Eagle Nebula. This beautifully detailed image of the region adopts the colorful Hubble palette and includes cosmic sculptures made famous in Hubble Space Telescope close-ups of the starforming complex


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-09-08 : What surrounds the Andromeda galaxy? Out in space, Andromeda (M31) is closely surrounded by several small satellite galaxies, and further out it is part of the Local Group of Galaxies -- of which our Milky Way galaxy is also a member. On the sky, however, gas clouds local to our Milky Way appear to surround M31 -- not unlike how water clouds in Earth's atmosphere may appear to encompass our Moon


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-09-07 : Is this one galaxy or two? The jumble of stars, gas, and dust that is NGC 520 is now thought to incorporate the remains of two separate disk galaxies. A defining component of NGC 520 -- as seen in great detail in the featured image from the Hubble Space Telescope -- is its band of intricately interlaced dust running vertically down the spine of the colliding galaxies


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-09-05 : The Earth and Moon are rarely photographed together. One of most spectacular times this occurred was about 30 years ago when the Jupiter-bound Galileo spacecraft zoomed past our home planetary system


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-09-04 : Not the Hubble Space Telescope's latest view of a distant galactic nebula, this illuminated cloud of gas and dust dazzled early morning spacecoast skygazers on August 29. The snapshot was taken at 3:17am from Space View Park in Titusville, Florida


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-09-03 : These cosmic clouds have blossomed 1,300 light-years away, in the fertile starfields of the constellation Cepheus. Called the Iris Nebula, NGC 7023 is not the only nebula to evoke the imagery of flowers


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-09-02 : Find the Big Dipper and follow the handle away from the dipper's bowl until you get to the last bright star. Then, just slide your telescope a little south and west and you'll come upon this stunning pair of interacting galaxies, the 51st entry in Charles Messier's famous catalog


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-09-01 : Why would galaxies emit jets that look like ghosts? And furthermore, why do they appear to be dancing? The curled and fluffy jets from the supermassive black holes at the centers of two host galaxies (top center and lower left) are unlike anything seen before. They were found by astronomers using the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope when creating maps tracing the evolution of galaxies


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-31 : The Moon is normally seen in subtle shades of grey or gold. But small, measurable color differences have been greatly exaggerated to make this telescopic, multicolored, moonscape captured during the Moon's full phase


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-30 : What's happening to this cloud? Ice crystals in a distant cirrus cloud are acting like little floating prisms. Known informally as a fire rainbow for its flame-like appearance, a circumhorizon arc appears parallel to the horizon


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-28 : Taken on mission sol 180 (August 22) this sharp image from a Hazard Camera on the Perseverance rover looks out across a rock strewn floor of Jezero crater on Mars. At 52


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-27 : Like an illustration in a galactic Just So Story, the Elephant's Trunk Nebula winds through the emission nebula and young star cluster complex IC 1396, in the high and far off constellation of Cepheus. Also known as vdB 142, seen on the left the cosmic elephant's trunk is over 20 light-years long


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-26 : Nature photographers and other fans of planet Earth always look forward to the blue hour. That's the transition in twilight, just before sunrise or after sunset, when the Sun is below the horizon but land and sky are still suffused with a beautiful blue light


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-25 : Does a ball drop faster on Earth, Jupiter, or Uranus? The featured animation shows a ball dropping from one kilometer high toward the surfaces of famous solar system bodies, assuming no air resistance. The force of gravity depends on the mass of the attracting object, with higher masses pulling down with greater forces


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-24 : It's not the big disk that's attracting the most attention. Although the big planet-forming disk around the star PDS 70 is clearly imaged and itself quite interesting


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-24 : It's not the big disk that's attracting the most attention. Although the big planet-forming disk around the star PDS 70 is clearly imaged and itself quite interesting


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-23 : Is that one galaxy or three? Toward the right of the featured Hubble image of the massive galaxy cluster Abell 3827 is what appears to be a most unusual galaxy -- curved and with three centers. A detailed analysis, however, finds that these are three images of the same background galaxy -- and that there are at least four more images


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-22 : Spectacular explosions keep occurring in the binary star system named RS Ophiuchi. Every 20 years or so, the red giant star dumps enough hydrogen gas onto its companion white dwarf star to set off a brilliant thermonuclear explosion on the white dwarf's surface


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-22 : Spectacular explosions keep occurring in the binary star system named RS Ophiuchi. Every 20 years or so, the red giant star dumps enough hydrogen gas onto its companion white dwarf star to set off a brilliant thermonuclear explosion on the white dwarf's surface


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-21 : These three panels feature the Solar System's ruling gas giant Jupiter on August 15 as seen from Cebu City, Phillipines, planet Earth. On that date the well-timed telescopic views detail some remarkable performances, transits and mutual events, by Jupiter's Galilean moons


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-20 : Frames from a camera that spent three moonless nights under the stars create this composite night skyscape. They were recorded during August 11-13 while planet Earth was sweeping through the dusty trail of comet Swift-Tuttle


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-19 : Plowing through Earth's atmosphere at 60 kilometers per second, this bright perseid meteor streaks along a starry Milky Way. Captured in dark Portugal skies on August 12, it moves right to left through the frame


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-18 : The Ring Nebula (M57), is more complicated than it appears through a small telescope. The easily visible central ring is about one light-year across, but this remarkably deep exposure - a collaborative effort combining data from three different large telescopes - explores the looping filaments of glowing gas extending much farther from the nebula's central star


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-17 : cept for the rings of Saturn, the Ring Nebula (M57) is probably the most famous celestial circle. Its classic appearance is understood to be due to our own perspective, though


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-15 : Comet dust rained down on planet Earth last week, streaking through dark skies in the annual Perseid meteor shower. The featured picture is a composite of many images taken from the same location over the peak night of the Perseids


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-14 : Stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy are scattered through this eye-catching field of view. From the early hours after midnight on August 13, the 30 second exposure of the night sky over Busko-Zdroj, Poland records the colorful and bright trail of a Perseid meteor


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-13 : If not perfect then this spiral galaxy is at least one of the most photogenic. An island universe of about 100 billion stars, 32 million light-years away toward the constellation Pisces, M74 presents a gorgeous face-on view


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-12 : The beautiful Trifid Nebula is a cosmic study in contrasts. Also known as M20, it lies about 5,000 light-years away toward the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-11 : When do cloud bottoms appear like bubbles? Normally, cloud bottoms are flat. This is because moist warm air that rises and cools will condense into water droplets at a specific temperature, which usually corresponds to a very specific height


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-10 : What does fire look like in space? In the gravity on Earth, heated air rises and expands, causing flames to be teardrop shaped. In the microgravity of the air-filled International Space Station (ISS), however, flames are spheres


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-09 : What's the best way to watch a meteor shower? This question might come up later this week when the annual Perseid Meteor Shower peaks. One thing that is helpful is a dark sky, as demonstrated in the featured composite image of last year's Perseids


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-08 : rthlings typically watch meteor showers by looking up. But this remarkable view, captured on August 13, 2011 by astronaut Ron Garan, caught a Perseid meteor by looking down


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-07 : Get out your red-blue glasses and hover over the surface of Mars. Taken on July 24, the 3D color view is from the Mars Ingenuity Helicopter's 10th flight above the Red Planet


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-06 : Cosmic dust clouds cross a rich field of stars in this telescopic vista near the northern boundary of Corona Australis, the Southern Crown. Less than 500 light-years away the dust clouds effectively block light from more distant background stars in the Milky Way


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-05 : South is up in this detailed telescopic view across the Moon's rugged southern highlands. Captured on July 20, the lunar landscape features the Moon's young and old, the large craters Tycho and Clavius


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-04 : How do supermassive black holes create powerful jets? To help find out, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) imaged the center of the nearby active galaxy Centaurus A. The cascade of featured inset images shows Cen A from it largest, taking up more sky than many moons, to its now finest, taking up only as much sky as an golf ball on the moon


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-03 : It was bright and green and flashed as it moved quickly along the Milky Way. It left a trail that took 30 minutes to dissipate


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-02 : Have you heard about the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field? Either way, you've likely not heard about it like this -- please run your cursor over the featured image and listen! The Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (HUDF) was created in 2003-2004 with the Hubble Space Telescope staring for a long time toward near-empty space so that distant, faint galaxies would become visible. One of the most famous images in astronomy, the HUDF is featured here in a vibrant way -- with sonified distances


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-08-01 : Pluto is more colorful than we can see. Color data and high-resolution images of our Solar System's most famous dwarf planet, taken by the robotic New Horizons spacecraft during its flyby in 2015 July, have been digitally combined to give an enhanced-color view of this ancient world sporting an unexpectedly young surface


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-31 : It was just last July. If you could see the stars of the Big Dipper, you could find Comet NEOWISE in your evening sky


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-30 : Peering from the shadows, the Saturn-facing hemisphere of Mimas lies in near darkness alongside a dramatic sunlit crescent. The mosaic was captured near the Cassini spacecraft's final close approach on January 30, 2017


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-29 : This tall telescopic field of view looks out along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy toward the nebula rich constellation Cygnus the Swan


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-28 :


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-27 : Chaotic in appearance, these tangled filaments of shocked, glowing gas are spread across planet Earth's sky toward the constellation of Cygnus as part of the Veil Nebula. The Veil Nebula itself is a large supernova remnant, an expanding cloud born of the death explosion of a massive star


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-26 : Can a gas cloud grab a galaxy? It's not even close. The 'claw' of this odd looking 'creature' in the featured photo is a gas cloud known as a cometary globule


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-25 : Gliding silently through the outer Solar System, the Voyager 2 spacecraft camera captured Neptune and Triton together in crescent phase. The elegant picture of the ice-giant planet and its cloudy moon was taken from behind just after closest approach in 1989


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-24 : Where does space begin? For purposes of spaceflight some would say at the Karman line, currently defined as an altitude of 100 kilometers (60 miles). Others might place a line 80 kilometers (50 miles) above Earth's mean sea level


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-23 : Sprawling emission nebulae IC 1396 and Sh2-129 mix glowing interstellar gas and dark dust clouds in this 10 degree wide field of view toward the northern constellation Cepheus the King. Energized by its bluish central star IC 1396 (left) is hundreds of light-years across and some 3,000 light-years distant


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-22 : Point your telescope toward the high flying constellation Pegasus and you can find this expanse of Milky Way stars and distant galaxies. NGC 7814 is centered in the pretty field of view that would almost be covered by a full moon


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-21 : What if you could see, separately, all the colors of the Ring? And of the surrounding stars? There's technology for that. The featured image shows the Ring Nebula (M57) and nearby stars through such technology: in this case, a prism-like diffraction grating


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-20 : Thor not only has his own day (Thursday), but a helmet in the heavens.  Popularly called Thor's Helmet, NGC 2359 is a hat-shaped cosmic cloud with wing-like appendages


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-19 : The photographer had this shot in mind for some time. He knew that objects overhead are the brightest -- since their light is scattered the least by atmospheric air


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-18 : What does the Andromeda galaxy look like in ultraviolet light? Young blue stars circling the galactic center dominate. A mere 2


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-17 : Point your telescope at tonight's first quarter Moon. Along the terminator, the shadow line between night and day, you might find these two large craters staring back at you with an owlish gaze


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-16 : Venus, named for the Roman goddess of love, and Mars, the war god's namesake, come together by moonlight in this serene skyview, recorded on July 11 from Lualaba province, Democratic Republic of Congo, planet Earth. Taken in the western twilight sky shortly after sunset the exposure also records earthshine illuminating the otherwise dark surface of the young crescent Moon


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-15 : In silhouette against a crowded star field along the tail of the arachnalogical constellation Scorpius, this dusty cosmic cloud evokes for some the image of an ominous dark tower. In fact, clumps of dust and molecular gas collapsing to form stars may well lurk within the dark nebula, a structure that spans almost 40 light-years across this gorgeous telescopic portrait


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-14 : What happens when a black hole destroys a neutron star? Analyses indicate that just such an event created gravitational wave event GW200115, detected in 2020 January by LIGO and Virgo observatories. To better understand the unusual event, the featured visualization was created from a computer simulation


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-13 : What has happened to Saturn's moon Iapetus? Vast sections of this strange world are dark brown, while others are as bright white. The composition of the dark material is unknown, but infrared spectra indicate that it possibly contains some dark form of carbon


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-12 : What will become of our Sun? The first hint of our Sun's future was discovered inadvertently in 1764. At that time, Charles Messier was compiling a list of diffuse objects not to be confused with comets


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-11 : Where's the Moon? Somewhere in this image, the Earth's Moon is hiding. The entire Moon is visible, in its completely full phase, in plain sight


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-10 : On July 8th early morning risers saw Mercury near an old Moon low on the eastern horizon. On that date bright planet, faint glow of lunar night side, and sunlit crescent were captured in this predawn skyscape from Tenerife's Teide National Park in the Canary Islands


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-09 : M82 is a starburst galaxy with a superwind. In fact, through ensuing supernova explosions and powerful winds from massive stars, the burst of star formation in M82 is driving a prodigious outflow


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-08 : Aphelion for 2021 occurred on July 5th. That's the point in Earth's elliptical orbit when it is farthest from the Sun


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-07 : What would it look like to fly into the Orion Nebula? The exciting dynamic visualization of the Orion Nebula is based on real astronomical data and adept movie rendering techniques. Up close and personal with a famous stellar nursery normally seen from 1,500 light-years away, the digitally modeled representation based is based on infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-06 : How many moons does Saturn have? So far 82 have been confirmed, the smallest being only a fraction of a kilometer across. Six of its largest satellites can be seen here in a composite image with 13 short exposure of the bright planet, and 13 long exposures of the brightest of its faint moons, taken over two weeks last month


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-05 : Do you see the horse's head? What you are seeing is not the famous Horsehead nebula toward Orion but rather a fainter nebula that only takes on a familiar form with deeper imaging. The main part of the here imaged molecular cloud complex is a reflection nebula cataloged as IC 4592


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-04 : Wouldn't it be fun if clouds were castles? Wouldn't it be fun if the laundry on the bedroom chair was a superhero? Wouldn't it be fun if rock mesas on Mars were interplanetary monuments to the human face? Clouds, though, are floating droplets of water and ice. Laundry is cotton, wool, or plastic, woven into garments


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-03 : You can't walk along the Milky Way. Still, under a dark sky you can explore it


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-02 : Awash in a sea of incandescent plasma and anchored in strong magnetic fields, sunspots are planet-sized dark islands in the solar photosphere, the bright surface of the Sun. Found in solar active regions, sunspots look dark only because they are slightly cooler though, with temperatures of about 4,000 kelvins compared to 6,000 kelvins for the surrounding solar surface


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-07-01 : On sol 46 (April 6, 2021) the Perseverance rover held out a robotic arm to take its first selfie on Mars. The WATSON camera at the end of the arm was designed to take close-ups of martian rocks and surface details though, and not a quick snap shot of friends and smiling faces


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-06-30 : How did the first stars form? To help find out, the SPHINX computer simulation of star formation in the very early universe was created, some results of which are shown in the featured video. Time since the Big Bang is shown in millions of years on the upper left


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-06-29 : Few cosmic vistas excite the imagination like the Orion Nebula. Also known as M42, the nebula's glowing gas surrounds hot young stars at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud only 1,500 light-years away


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-06-28 : It may look like a paper Moon. Sailing past a canvas Sun


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-06-27 : What drives auroras on Saturn? To help find out, scientists have sorted through hundreds of infrared images of Saturn taken by the Cassini spacecraft for other purposes, trying to find enough aurora images to correlate changes and make movies. Once made, some movies clearly show that Saturnian auroras can change not only with the angle of the Sun, but also as the planet rotates


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2021-06-26 : These two panels, composed of video frames made with a safe solar telescope and hydrogen alpha filter, show remarkably sharp details on the solar disk and giant prominences along the Sun's edge on June 6 (top) and June 18. Taken from Beijing, China, they also show a transit of the International Space Station and China's new Tiangong Space Station in silhouette against the bright Sun



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