Connecting To The Server To Fetch The WebPage Elements!!....
MXPlank.com MXMail Submit Research Thesis Electronics - MicroControllers Contact us QuantumDDX.com

ScienceCasts Earth's Magnetosphere Elucidating The Black Holes The Surprising Power of a Solar Storm Weird Planets A Close Encounter With Jupiter Ancient remnants deep in the Kuiper belt The Super Fluid Core Of A Dead Neutron Star Massive Cloud On Collision Course With Milky Way Mysterious Objects at the Edge of the Electromagnetic Spectrum Big Mystery in the Perseus Cluster Spacecraft discovers thousands of doomed comets Close Encounter with Enceladus Amazing Moons The Sounds Of The InterStellar Space


Search The Site



 

MXPlank Astronomy News Snippets



YEAR - 2022




**** 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 2022-11-06 : Does this strange dark ball look somehow familiar? If so, that might be because it is our Sun. In the featured image from 2012, a detailed solar view was captured originally in a very specific color of red light, then rendered in black and white, and then color inverted


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-11-04 : The Mars InSight lander returned its first image from the Red Planet's flat, equatorial Elysium Planitia after a successful touchdown on November 26, 2018. The history making mission to explore the martian Interior using Seismic investigations, geodesy, and heat transport has been operating for over 1,400 martian days or sols


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-11-03 : 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 2022-11-02 : Watch for three things in this unusual eclipse video. First, watch for a big dark circle to approach from the right to block out more and more of the Sun


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-11-01 : Why is the Lobster Nebula forming some of the most massive stars known? No one is yet sure. Cataloged as NGC 6357, the Lobster Nebula houses the open star cluster Pismis 24 near its center -- a home to unusually bright and massive stars


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-08-28 : Here comes Jupiter! NASA's robotic spacecraft Juno is continuing on its highly-elongated orbits around our Solar System's largest planet. The featured video is from perijove 11 in early 2018, the eleventh time Juno has passed near Jupiter since it arrived in mid-2016


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-08-27 : Inside the Cocoon Nebula is a newly developing cluster of stars. Cataloged as IC 5146, the beautiful nebula is nearly 15 light-years wide


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-08-26 : Lights play around the horizon of this snowy little planet as it drifts through a starry night sky. Of course the little planet is actually planet Earth


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-08-25 : The rugged lunar south polar region lies at the top of this colorful portrait of a last quarter Moon made on August 20. Constructed from video frames and still images taken at Springrange, New South Wales, Australia it also captures a transit of China's Tiangong Space Station


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-08-24 : To some, it looks like a wheel of a cart. In fact, because of its outward appearance, the presence of a central galaxy, and its connection with what looks like the spokes of a wheel, the galaxy on the right is known as the Cartwheel Galaxy


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-08-23 : Careful planning made this a nightscape to remember. First, the night itself was chosen to occur during the beginning of this year's Perseid Meteor Shower


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-08-22 : Is our Earth warming? Compared to the past 250 million years, the Earth is currently enduring a relative cold spell, possibly about four degrees Celsius below average. Over the past 120 years, though, data indicate that the average global temperature of the Earth has increased by nearly one degree Celsius


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-08-21 : At the core of the Crab Nebula lies a city-sized, magnetized neutron star spinning 30 times a second. Known as the Crab Pulsar, it is the bright spot in the center of the gaseous swirl at the nebula's core


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-08-20 : Heading for its closest approach to the Sun, or perihelion, on December 19 comet C/2017 K2 (PanSTARRS) remains a sight for telescopic observers as it sweeps through planet Earth's skies in the constellation Scorpius. The comet currently sports a greenish coma, long whitish dust tail, and short ion tail in this deep image from August 18


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-08-19 : Saturn is the most distant planet of the Solar System easily visible to the unaided eye. With this extraordinary, long-term astro-imaging project begun in 1993, you can follow the ringed gas giant for one Saturn year as it wanders once around the ecliptic plane, finishing a single orbit around the Sun by 2022


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-08-18 : The annual Perseid meteor shower was near its peak on August 13. As planet Earth crossed through streams of debris left by periodic Comet Swift-Tuttle meteors rained in northern summer night skies


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-08-17 : There is a huge gate of stars in the sky, and you pass through it twice a day. The stargate is actually our Milky Way Galaxy, and it is the spin of the Earth that appears to propel you through it


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-08-16 : Does the Earth ever pass through a wind of meteors? Yes, and they are frequently visible as meteor showers. Almost all meteors are sand-sized debris that escaped from a Sun-orbiting comet or asteroid, debris that continues in an elongated orbit around the Sun


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-08-15 : The North America nebula on the sky can do what the North America continent on Earth cannot -- form stars. Specifically, in analogy to the Earth-confined continent, the bright part that appears as Central America and Mexico is actually a hot bed of gas, dust, and newly formed stars known as the Cygnus Wall


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-08-14 : Over 4000 planets are now known to exist outside our Solar System. Known as exoplanets, this milestone was passed last month, as recorded by NASA's Exoplanet Archive


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-08-13 : Mimas, small 400 kilometer-diameter moon of Saturn, is host to 130 kilometer-diameter Herschel crater, one of the larger impact craters in the entire Solar System. The robotic Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn in 2010 recorded this startling view of small moon and big crater while making a 10,000-kilometer record close pass by the diminutive icy world


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-08-12 : A star cluster around 2 million years young surrounded by natal clouds of dust and glowing gas, Messier 16 (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 2022-08-11 : On August 11, 2021 a multi-mirror, 17 meter-diameter MAGIC telescope reflected this starry night sky from the Roque de los Muchachos European Northern Observatory on the Canary Island of La Palma. MAGIC stands for Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-08-10 : Stars can create huge and intricate dust sculptures from the dense and dark molecular clouds from which they are born. The tools the stars use to carve their detailed works are high energy light and fast stellar winds


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-08-09 : What it would look like to leave planet Earth? Such an event was recorded visually in great detail by the MESSENGER spacecraft as it swung back past the Earth in 2005 on its way in toward the planet Mercury. Earth can be seen rotating in this time-lapse video, as it recedes into the distance


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-08-08 : Ridges of glowing interstellar gas and dark dust clouds inhabit the turbulent, cosmic depths of the Lagoon Nebula. Also known as M8, the bright star forming region is about 5,000 light-years distant


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-08-07 : What's that green streak in front of the Andromeda galaxy? A meteor. While photographing the Andromeda galaxy in 2016, near the peak of the Perseid Meteor Shower, a small pebble from deep space crossed right in front of our Milky Way Galaxy's far-distant companion


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-08-06 : Get out your red/blue glasses and float next to Phobos, grooved moon of Mars! Captured in 2004 by the High Resolution Stereo Camera on board ESA's Mars Express spacecraft, the image data was recorded at a distance of about 200 kilometers from the martian moon. This tantalizing stereo anaglyph view shows the Mars-facing side of Phobos


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-08-05 : 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 2022-07-30 : Get out your red/blue glasses and check out this stereo view from lunar orbit. The 3D anaglyph was created from two photographs (AS11-44-6633, AS11-44-6634) taken by astronaut Michael Collins during the 1969 Apollo 11 mission


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-07-27 : This moon made quite an entrance. Typically, a moonrise is quiet and serene


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-07-25 : Can you find the Moon? This usually simple task can be quite difficult. Even though the Moon is above your horizon half of the time, its phase can be anything from crescent to full


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-07-24 : Many details of Saturn appear clearly in infrared light. Bands of clouds show great structure, including long stretching storms


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-07-19 : Stars come in bunches. The most famous bunch of stars on the sky is the Pleiades, a bright cluster that can be easily seen with the unaided eye


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-07-17 : What are those spots on Jupiter? Largest and furthest, just right of center, is the Great Red Spot -- a huge storm system that has been raging on Jupiter possibly since Giovanni Cassini's likely notation of it 357 years ago. It is not yet known why this Great Spot is red


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-07-12 : It's northern noctilucent cloud season. Composed of small ice crystals forming only during specific conditions in the upper atmosphere, noctilucent clouds may become visible at sunset during late summer when illuminated by sunlight from below


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-07-11 : What is the oldest thing you can see? At 2.5 million light years distant, the answer for the unaided eye is the Andromeda galaxy, because its photons are 2


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-07-10 : Three thousand light-years away, a dying star throws off shells of glowing gas. This image from the Hubble Space Telescope reveals the Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543), to be one of the most complex planetary nebulae known


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-07-09 : Soaring high in skies around planet Earth, bright planet Saturn was a star of June's morning planet parade. But very briefly on June 24 it posed with a bright object in low Earth orbit, the International Space Station


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-07-08 : With roots on a rotating planet, an old tree is centered in this sequence of 137 exposures each 20 seconds long, recorded one night from northern Sicily. Digital camera and fisheye lens were fixed to a tripod to capture the dramatic timelapse, so the stars trailed through the region's dark sky


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-07-07 : A study in contrasts, this colorful skyscape features stars, dust, and glowing gas in the vicinity of NGC 6914. The interstellar complex of nebulae lies some 6,000 light-years away, toward the high-flying northern constellation Cygnus and the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-07-06 : Our sky is alive with the streams of stars. The motions of 26 million Milky Way stars are evident in the featured map constructed from recent data taken by ESA's Gaia satellite


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-07-05 : It is difficult to hide a galaxy behind a cluster of galaxies. The closer cluster's gravity will act like a huge lens, pulling images of the distant galaxy around the sides and greatly distorting them


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-07-04 : Near the horizon the full moon often seems to loom large, swollen in appearance by the famous Moon illusion. But time-lapse image sequences demonstrate that the Moon's angular size doesn't really change as it rises or sets


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-07-03 : This moon is doomed. Mars, the red planet named for the Roman god of war, has two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, whose names are derived from the Greek for Fear and Panic


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-07-02 : For the northern hemisphere June 21 was the summer solstice, the Sun reaching its northernmost declination for the year. That would put it at the top of each of these three figure-8 curves, or analemmas, as it passed through the daytime sky over the village of Proboszczow, Poland


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-07-01 : Stars trail through a clear morning sky in this postcard from a rotating planet. The timelapse image is constructed from consecutive exposures made over nearly three hours with a camera fixed to a tripod beside the Forbidden City in Beijing, China on June 24


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-06-30 : Imaged on June 20 2022, comet C/2017 K2 (PanSTARRS) shares this wide telescopic field of view with open star cluster IC 4665 and bright star Beta Ophiuchi, near a starry edge of the Milky Way. On its maiden voyage to the inner Solar System from the dim and distant Oort cloud, this comet PanSTARRS was initially spotted over five years ago, in May 2017


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-06-29 : Yes, but have you ever seen all of the planets at once? A rare roll-call of planets has been occurring in the morning sky for much of June. The featured fisheye all-sky image, taken a few mornings ago near the town of San Pedro de Atacama in Chile, caught not only the entire planet parade, but the Moon between Mars and Venus


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-06-28 : Which part of the Moon is this? No part -- because this is the planet Mercury. Mercury's old surface is heavily cratered like that of Earth's Moon


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-06-27 : The Gum Nebula is so large and close it is actually hard to see. This interstellar expanse of glowing hydrogen gas frequently evades notice because it spans 35 degrees -- over 70 full Moons -- while much of it is quite dim


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-06-26 : What caused this outburst of V838 Mon? For reasons unknown, star V838 Mon's outer surface suddenly greatly expanded with the result that it became one of the brighter stars in the Milky Way Galaxy in early 2002. Then, just as suddenly, it shrunk and faded


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-06-25 : Simultaneous images from four cameras were combined to construct this atmospheric predawn skyscape. The cooperative astro-panorama captures all the planets of the Solar System, just before sunrise on June 24


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-06-24 : A solar filament is an enormous stream of incandescent plasma suspended above the active surface of the Sun by looping magnetic fields. Seen against the solar disk it looks dark only because it's a little cooler, and so slightly dimmer, than the solar photosphere


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-06-23 : Beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 6744 is nearly 175,000 light-years across, larger than our own Milky Way. It lies some 30 million light-years distant in the southern constellation Pavo but appears as only a faint, extended object in small telescopes


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-06-22 : Ten thousand years ago, before the dawn of recorded human history, a new light would have suddenly have appeared in the night sky and faded after a few weeks. Today we know this light was from a supernova, or exploding star, and record the expanding debris cloud as the Veil Nebula, a supernova remnant


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-06-21 : Does the Sun return to the same spot on the sky every day? No. A better and more visual answer to that question is an analemma, a composite of images taken at the same time and from the same place over the course of a year


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-06-20 : There, just right of center, what is that? The surface of Mars keeps revealing new surprises with the recent discovery of finger-like rock spires. The small nearly-vertical rock outcrops were imaged last month by the robotic Curiosity rover on Mars


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-06-19 : Can you create a planetary system that lasts for 1000 years? Super Planet Crash, the featured game, allows you to try. To create up to ten planets, just click anywhere near the central star


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-06-18 : Supergiant star Gamma Cygni is at the center of the Northern Cross. Near the plane of our Milky Way galaxy, that famous asterism flies high in northern summer night skies in the constellation Cygnus the Swan


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-06-17 : On June 15, innermost planet Mercury had wandered about as far from the Sun as it ever gets in planet Earth's sky. Near the eastern horizon just before sunrise it stands over distant Andes mountain peaks in this predawn snapshot from the valley of Rio Hurtado in Chile


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-06-15 : The Virgo Cluster of Galaxies is the closest cluster of galaxies to our Milky Way Galaxy. The Virgo Cluster is so close that it spans more than 5 degrees on the sky - about 10 times the angle made by a full Moon


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-06-14 : What are all those streaks across the background? Satellite trails. First, the foreground features picturesque rock mounds known as Pinnacles


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-06-13 : The Whirlpool Galaxy is a classic spiral galaxy. At only 30 million light years distant and fully 60 thousand light years across, M51, also known as NGC 5194, is one of the brightest and most picturesque galaxies on the sky


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-06-11 : At night you can follow this road as it passes through the Dark Sky Alqueva reserve not too far from Alentejo, Portugal. Or you could stop, look up, and follow the Milky Way through the sky


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-06-10 : This colorful telescopic field of view features a trio of interacting galaxies almost 90 million light-years away, toward the constellation Virgo. On the right two spiky, foreground Milky Way stars echo the extragalactic hues, a reminder that stars in our own galaxy are like those in distant island universes


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-06-09 : These cosmic clouds of gas and dust drift through rich star fields along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy toward the high flying constellation Cygnus. They're too faint to be seen with the unaided eye though, even on a clear, dark night


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-06-08 : What are those unusual streaks? Some images of planet Earth show clear bright streaks that follow the paths of ships. Known as ship tracks, these low and narrow bands are caused by the ship's engine exhaust


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-06-07 : Do dragons fight on the altar of the sky? Although it might appear that way, these dragons are illusions made of thin gas and dust. The emission nebula NGC 6188, home to the glowing clouds, is found about 4,000 light years away near the edge of a large molecular cloud unseen at visible wavelengths, in the southern constellation Ara (the Altar)


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-06-06 : Will our Milky Way Galaxy collide one day with its larger neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy? Most likely, yes. Careful plotting of slight displacements of M31's stars relative to background galaxies on recent Hubble Space Telescope images indicate that the center of M31 could be on a direct collision course with the center of our home galaxy


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-06-05 : What's happening at the center of active galaxy 3C 75? The two bright sources at the center of this composite x-ray (blue)/ radio (pink) image are co-orbiting supermassive black holes powering the giant radio source 3C 75. Surrounded by multimillion degree x-ray emitting gas, and blasting out jets of relativistic particles the supermassive black holes are separated by 25,000 light-years


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-06-04 : On May 31 tens of parallel meteor streaks were recorded in this 8 degree wide field of view of planet Earth's limb from space. The image is one of a series of 5 minute long observations by the orbiting Yangwang-1 space telescope


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-06-02 : On May 27 Venus rose as the morning star, near the waning crescent Moon in a predawn sky already full of planets. It was close on the sky to the Moon's crescent and a conjunction of the second an third brightest celestial beacons were enjoyed by skygazers around the world


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-06-01 : It wasn't the storm of the century -- but it was a night to remember. Last night was the peak of the Tau Herculids meteor shower, a usually modest dribble of occasional meteors originating from the disintegrating Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-05-31 : The launch of a rocket at sunrise can result in unusual but intriguing images that feature both the rocket and the Sun. Such was the case last month when a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center carrying 53 more Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-05-30 : What's happening behind that island? Things both expected and unexpected. Expected, perhaps, the pictured rays of light -- called crepuscular rays -- originate from the Sun


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-05-29 : How do clusters of galaxies form? Since our universe moves too slowly to watch, faster-moving computer simulations are created to help find out. A recent effort is TNG50 from IllustrisTNG, an upgrade of the famous Illustris Simulation


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-05-28 : In 185 AD, Chinese astronomers recorded the appearance of a new star in the Nanmen asterism. That part of the sky is identified with Alpha and Beta Centauri on modern star charts


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-05-27 : Like Earth's moon, Saturn's largest moon Titan is locked in synchronous rotation. This mosaic of images recorded by the Cassini spacecraft in May of 2012 shows its anti-Saturn side, the side always facing away from the ringed gas giant


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-05-26 : Magnificent spiral galaxy NGC 4565 is viewed edge-on from planet Earth. Also known as the Needle Galaxy for its narrow profile, bright NGC 4565 is a stop on many telescopic tours of the northern sky, in the faint but well-groomed constellation Coma Berenices


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-05-25 : The center of the Lagoon Nebula is a whirlwind of spectacular star formation. Visible near the image center, at least two long funnel-shaped clouds, each roughly half a light-year long, have been formed by extreme stellar winds and intense energetic starlight


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-05-24 : The plan was to capture a picturesque part of the sky that was hosting an unusual guest. The result included a bonus — an additional and unexpected guest


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-05-23 : This picture of Andromeda shows not only where stars are now, but where stars will soon be. Of course, the big, beautiful Andromeda Galaxy, M31, is a spiral galaxy -- and a mere 2


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-05-22 : Tsunamis this large don't happen on Earth. During 2006, a large solar flare from an Earth-sized sunspot produced a tsunami-type shock wave that was spectacular even for the Sun


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-05-21 : Very faint planetary nebula Abell 7 is some 1,800 light-years distant, just south of Orion in planet Earth's skies in the constellation Lepus, The Hare. Surrounded by Milky Way stars and near the line-of-sight to distant background galaxies, its generally simple spherical shape, about 8 light-years in diameter, is outlined in this deep telescopic image


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-05-20 : This serene sand and skyscape finds the Dune of Pilat on the coast of France still in Earth's shadow during the early morning hours of May 16. Extending into space, the planet's dark umbral shadow covered the Moon on that date


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-05-19 : Recorded on May 15/16 this sequence of exposures follows the Full Moon during a total lunar eclipse as it arcs above treetops in the clearing skies of central Florida. A frame taken every 5 minutes by a digital camera shows the progression of the eclipse over three hours


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-05-18 : Cloudy skies plagued some sky watchers on Sunday as May's Full Flower Moon slipped through Earth's shadow in a total lunar eclipse. In skies above Chile's Atacama desert this telephoto snapshot still captured an awesome spectacle though


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-05-17 : Astronomers turn detectives when trying to figure out the cause of startling sights like NGC 1316. Investigations indicate that NGC 1316 is an enormous elliptical galaxy that started, about 100 million years ago, to devour a smaller spiral galaxy neighbor, NGC 1317, just on the upper right


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-05-16 : Real castles aren't this old. And the background galaxy is even older


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-05-15 : What color is the Moon? It depends on the night. Outside of the Earth's atmosphere, the dark Moon, which shines by reflected sunlight, appears a magnificently brown-tinged gray


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-05-13 : There's a black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Stars are observed to orbit a very massive and compact object there known as Sgr A* (say 'sadge-ay-star')


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-05-12 : The massive stars of NGC 346 are short lived, but very energetic. The star cluster is embedded in the largest star forming region in the Small Magellanic Cloud, some 210,000 light-years distant


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-05-11 : Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, published over 100 years ago, predicted the phenomenon of gravitational lensing. And that's what gives these distant galaxies such a whimsical appearance, seen through the looking glass of X-ray and optical image data from the Chandra and Hubble space telescopes


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-05-09 : What's that passing in front of the Sun? It looks like a moon, but it can't be Earth's Moon, because it isn't round. It's the Martian moon Phobos


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-05-08 : Most galaxies don't have any rings -- why does this galaxy have two? To begin, the bright band near NGC 1512's center is a nuclear ring, a ring that surrounds the galaxy center and glows brightly with recently formed stars. Most stars and accompanying gas and dust, however, orbit the galactic center in a ring much further out -- here seen near the image edge


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-05-07 : On certain dates in February, an elusive firefall can be spotted at sunset in Yosemite National Park, when water flows, the weather cooperates and the direction to the setting Sun is just right. Often photographed from vantage points below, at the right moment the park's seasonal Horsetail Fall is isolated in the shadows of the steep walls of El Capitan


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-05-06 : This cosmic skyscape features glowing gas and dark dust clouds along side the young stars of NGC 3572. A beautiful emission nebula and star cluster it sails far southern skies within the nautical constellation Carina


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-05-05 : Gorgeous spiral galaxy NGC 3521 is a mere 35 million light-years away, toward the northern springtime constellation Leo. Relatively bright in planet Earth's sky, NGC 3521 is easily visible in small telescopes but often overlooked by amateur imagers in favor of other Leo spiral galaxies, like M66 and M65


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-05-04 : The early morning planet parade continues. Visible the world over, the planets Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Saturn have been lining up in the pre-dawn sky since mid-April


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-03-04 : The Crab Nebula is cataloged as M1, the first object on Charles Messier's famous list of things which are not comets. In fact, the Crab is now known to be a supernova remnant, expanding debris from massive star's death explosion, witnessed on planet Earth in 1054 AD


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-03-01 : What are these two bands in the sky? The more commonly seen band is the one on the right and is the central band of our Milky Way galaxy. Our Sun orbits in the disk of this spiral galaxy, so that from inside, this disk appears as a band of comparable brightness all the way around the sky


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-02-28 : You don't have to look through a telescope to know where it's pointing. Allowing the telescope to project its image onto a large surface can be useful because it dilutes the intense brightness of very bright sources


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-02-27 : 'Oh my God! Look at that picture over there! Here's the Earth coming up. Wow is that pretty!' Soon after that pronouncement, about 53 years ago, one of the most famous images ever taken was snapped from the orbit of the Moon


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-02-26 : Large spiral galaxy NGC 4945 is seen nearly edge-on in this cosmic galaxy close-up. It's almost the size of our Milky Way Galaxy


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-02-25 : This Navcam mosaic from Perseverance looks out over the car-sized rover's deck, across the floor of Jezero crater on Mars. Frames used to construct the mosaic view were captured on mission sol 354


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-02-24 : Beta Cygni is a single bright star to the naked eye. About 420 light-years away it marks the foot of the Northern Cross, famous asterism in the constellation Cygnus


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-02-23 : What will the huge Green Bank Telescope discover tonight? Pictured, the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) on the lower right is the largest fully-pointable single-dish radio telescope in the world


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-02-22 : What did the first quasars look like? The nearest quasars are now known to involve supermassive black holes in the centers of active galaxies. Gas and dust that falls toward a quasar glows brightly, sometimes outglowing the entire home galaxy


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-02-21 : Many spiral galaxies have bars across their centers. Even our own Milky Way Galaxy is thought to have a modest central bar


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-02-20 : Sometimes both heaven and Earth erupt. Colorful auroras erupted unexpectedly a few years ago, with green aurora appearing near the horizon and brilliant bands of red aurora blooming high overhead


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-02-19 : The spiky stars in the foreground of this backyard telescopic frame are well within our own Milky Way Galaxy. But the two eye-catching galaxies lie far beyond the Milky Way, at a distance of over 300 million light-years


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-02-18 : Galactic or open star clusters are young. The swarms of stars are born together near the plane of the Milky Way, but their numbers steadily dwindle as cluster members are ejected by galactic tides and gravitational interactions


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-02-17 : Dark markings and bright nebulae in this telescopic southern sky view are telltale signs of young stars and active star formation. They lie a mere 650 light-years away, at the boundary of the local bubble and the Chamaeleon molecular cloud complex


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-02-16 : What's that on the Sun? Although it may look like a flowing version of the Eiffel Tower, it is a solar prominence that is actually much bigger -- about the height of Jupiter. The huge prominence emerged about ten days ago, hovered over the Sun's surface for about two days, and then erupted -- throwing a coronal mass ejection (CME) into the Solar System


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-02-15 : What's different about this Moon? It's the terminators. In the featured image, you can't directly see any terminator -- the line that divides the light of day from the dark of night


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-02-14 : What excites the Heart Nebula? First, the large emission nebula dubbed IC 1805 looks, in whole, like a human heart. Its shape perhaps fitting of the Valentine's Day, this heart glows brightly in red light emitted by its most prominent element: excited hydrogen


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-02-14 : What excites the Heart Nebula? First, the large emission nebula dubbed IC 1805 looks, in whole, like a human heart. Its shape perhaps fitting of the Valentine's Day, this heart glows brightly in red light emitted by its most prominent element: excited hydrogen


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-02-08 : Which half of this sky is your favorite? On the left, the night sky is lit up by particles expelled from the Sun that later collided with Earth's upper atmosphere — creating bright auroras. On the right, the night glows with ground lights reflected by millions of tiny ice crystals falling from the sky — creating light pillars


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-01-26 : Why is the sky near Antares and Rho Ophiuchi so dusty yet colorful? The colors result from a mixture of objects and processes. Fine dust -- illuminated from the front by starlight -- produces blue reflection nebulae


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-01-24 : By starlight this eerie visage shines in the dark, a crooked profile evoking its popular name, the Witch Head Nebula. In fact, this entrancing telescopic portrait gives the impression that the witch has fixed her gaze on Orion's bright supergiant star Rigel


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-01-23 : Seen from ice moon Tethys, rings and shadows would display fantastic views of the Saturnian system. Haven't dropped in on Tethys lately? Then this gorgeous ringscape from the Cassini spacecraft will have to do for now


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-01-20 : Hot, young stars and cosmic pillars of gas and dust seem to crowd into NGC 7822. At the edge of a giant molecular cloud toward the northern constellation Cepheus, the glowing star forming region lies about 3,000 light-years away


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-01-19 : The most distant object easily visible to the unaided eye is M31, the great Andromeda Galaxy. Even at some two and a half million light-years distant, this immense spiral galaxy -- spanning over 200,000 light years -- is visible, although as a faint, nebulous cloud in the constellation Andromeda


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-01-18 : This is a sky filled with glowing icons. On the far left is the familiar constellation of Orion, divided by its iconic three-aligned belt stars and featuring the famous Orion Nebula, both partly encircled by Barnard's Loop


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-01-16 : What type of cloud is that? This retreating cumulonimbus cloud, more commonly called a thundercloud, is somewhat unusual as it contains the unusual bumpiness of a mammatus cloud on the near end, while simultaneously producing falling rain on the far end. Taken in mid-2013 in southern Alberta, Canada, the cloud is moving to the east, into the distance, as the sun sets in the west, behind the camera


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-01-15 : Looping through the Jovian system in the late 1990s, the Galileo spacecraft recorded stunning views of Europa and uncovered evidence that the moon's icy surface likely hides a deep, global ocean. Galileo's Europa image data has been remastered here, with improved calibrations to produce a color image approximating what the human eye might see


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-01-14 : An island universe of billions of stars, NGC 1566 lies about 60 million light-years away in the southern constellation Dorado. Popularly known as the Spanish Dancer galaxy, it's seen face-on from our Milky Way perspective


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-01-13 : It's easy to get lost following the intricate, looping, twisting filaments in this detailed image of supernova remnant Simeis 147. Also cataloged as Sharpless 2-240 it goes by the popular nickname, the Spaghetti Nebula


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-01-12 : What does Comet Leonard look like up close? Although we can't go there, imaging the comet's coma and inner tails through a small telescope gives us a good idea. As the name implies, the ion tail is made of ionized gas -- gas energized by ultraviolet light from the Sun and pushed outward by the solar wind


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-01-11 : You may have seen Orion's belt before -- but not like this. The three bright stars across this image are, from left to right, Mintaka, Alnilam, and Alnitak: the iconic belt stars of Orion


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-01-10 : Why does Comet Leonard's tail wag? The featured time-lapse video shows the ion tail of Comet C/2021 A1 (Leonard) as it changed over ten days early last month. The video was taken by NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory-Ahead (STEREO-A) spacecraft that co-orbits the Sun at roughly the same distance as the Earth


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-01-08 : Named for a forgotten constellation, the Quadrantid Meteor Shower puts on an annual show for planet Earth's northern hemisphere skygazers. The shower's radiant on the sky lies within the old, astronomically obsolete constellation Quadrans Muralis


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-01-07 : A male Adelie penguin performed this Ecstatic Vocalization in silhouette during the December 4 solar eclipse, the final eclipse of 2021. Of course his Ecstatic Vocalization is a special display that male penguins use to claim their territory and advertise their condition


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-01-06 : That's not a young crescent Moon posing behind cathedral towers after sunset. It's Venus in a crescent phase


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-01-05 : Does the Sun always rise in the same direction? No. As the months change, the direction toward the rising Sun changes, too


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-01-04 : What's happened to that moon of Saturn? Nothing -- Saturn's moon Rhea is just partly hidden behind Saturn's rings. In 2010, the robotic Cassini spacecraft then orbiting Saturn took this narrow-angle view looking across the Solar System's most famous rings


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-01-03 : You couldn't see Comet Leonard’s extremely long tail with a telescope — it was just too long. You also couldn't see it with binoculars — still too long


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-01-02 : Sometimes falling ice crystals make the atmosphere into a giant lens causing arcs and halos to appear around the Sun or Moon. One Saturday night in 2012 was just such a time near Madrid, Spain, where a winter sky displayed not only a bright Moon but four rare lunar halos


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2022-01-01 : very Full Moon of 2021 shines in this year-spanning astrophoto project, a composite portrait of the familiar lunar nearside at each brightest lunar phase. Arranged by moonth, the year progresses in stripes beginning at the top



Next





Recent Posts