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MXPlank Astronomy News Snippets



YEAR - 2023




**** 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 2023-12-06 : It's stars versus dust in the Carina Nebula and the stars are winning. More precisely, the energetic light and winds from massive newly formed stars are evaporating and dispersing the dusty stellar nurseries in which they formed


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-12-04 : No, the Moon is not a bow, and no, it did not shoot out a plane like an arrow. What is pictured is a chance superposition


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-12-03 : These people are not in danger. What is coming down from the left is just the Moon, far in the distance


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-11-22 : Similar in size to large, bright spiral galaxies in our neighborhood, IC 342 is a mere 10 million light-years distant in the long-necked, northern constellation Camelopardalis. A sprawling island universe, IC 342 would otherwise be a prominent galaxy in our night sky, but it is hidden from clear view and only glimpsed through the veil of stars, gas and dust clouds along the plane of our own Milky Way galaxy


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-11-19 : That's no sunspot. It's the International Space Station (ISS) caught passing in front of the Sun


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-10-23 : There goes another one! Volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io keep erupting. To investigate, NASA's robotic Juno spacecraft has begun a series of visits to this very strange moon


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-06-17 : Recorded during 2017, timelapse sequences from the International Space Station are compiled in this serene video of planet Earth at Night. Fans of low Earth orbit can start by enjoying the view as green and red aurora borealis slather up the sky


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-06-16 : This serene view from the coast of Sweden looks across the Baltic sea and compresses time, presenting the passage of one night in a single photograph. From sunset to sunrise, moonlight illuminates the creative sea and skyscape


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-06-15 : Messier 15 is an immense swarm of over 100,000 stars. A 13 billion year old relic of the early formative years of our galaxy it's one of about 170 globular star clusters that still roam the halo of the Milky Way


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-06-14 : There is no sea on Earth large enough to contain the Shark nebula. This predator apparition poses us no danger as it is composed only of interstellar gas and dust


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-06-13 : Jupiter's moons circle Jupiter. The featured video depicts Europa and Io, two of Jupiter's largest moons, crossing in front of the grand planet's Great Red Spot, the largest known storm system in our Solar System


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-06-12 : What’s that near the Moon? It’s the International Space Station (ISS). Although the ISS may appear to be physically near the Moon, it is not — it is physically near the Earth


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-06-08 : Like an illustration in a galactic Just So Story, the Elephant's Trunk Nebula winds through the emission region and young star cluster complex IC 1396, in the high and far off constellation of Cepheus. Seen on the left the cosmic elephant's trunk, also known as vdB 142, is over 20 light-years long


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-06-04 : Wouldn't it be fun to color in the universe? If you think so, please accept this famous astronomical illustration as a preliminary substitute. You, your friends, your parents or children, can print it out or even color it digitally


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-06-03 : A darkened and mysterious north polar region known to some as Mordor Macula caps this premier high-resolution view. The portrait of Charon, Pluto's largest moon, was captured by New Horizons near the spacecraft's closest approach on July 14, 2015


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-06-02 : 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 2023-05-31 : How did we get here? We know that we live on a planet orbiting a star orbiting a galaxy, but how did all of this form? Since our universe moves too slowly to watch, faster-moving computer simulations are created to help find out. Specifically, this featured video from the IllustrisTNG collaboration tracks gas from the early universe (redshift 12) until today (redshift 0)


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-05-30 : Is this what will become of our Sun? Quite possibly. The first hint of our Sun's future was discovered inadvertently in 1764


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-05-29 : What glows there? The answer depends: sea or sky? In the sea, the unusual blue glow is bioluminescence. Specifically, the glimmer arises from Noctiluca scintillans, single-celled plankton stimulated by the lapping waves


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-05-28 : This asteroid has a moon. The robot spacecraft Galileo on route to Jupiter in 1993 encountered and photographed two asteroids during its long interplanetary voyage


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-05-27 : Gliding through the outer Solar System, in 1989 the Voyager 2 spacecraft looked toward the Sun to find this view of most distant planet Neptune and its moon Triton together in a crescent phase. The elegant image of ice-giant planet and largest moon was taken from behind just after Voyager's closest approach


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-05-25 : The Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae in the sky. Its more familiar outlines are seen in the brighter central region of the nebula in this impressive wide-angle view


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-05-24 : Sometimes we witness the Moon moving directly in front of -- called occulting -- one of the planets in our Solar System. Earlier this month that planet was Jupiter


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-05-21 : Is this an alien? Probably not, but of all the animals on Earth, the tardigrade might be the best candidate. That's because tardigrades are known to be able to go for decades without food or water, to survive temperatures from near absolute zero to well above the boiling point of water, to survive pressures from near zero to well above that on ocean floors, and to survive direct exposure to dangerous radiations


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-05-19 : A bright spiral galaxy of the northern sky, Messier 63 is nearby, about 30 million light-years distant toward the loyal constellation Canes Venatici. Also cataloged as NGC 5055, the majestic island universe is nearly 100,000 light-years across, about the size of our own Milky Way


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-05-18 : Made with narrowband filters, this cosmic snapshot covers a field of view about the size of the full Moon within the boundaries of the constellation Cygnus. It highlights the bright edge of a ring-like nebula traced by the glow of ionized sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen gas


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-05-15 : From afar, the whole thing looks like an eagle. A closer look at the Eagle Nebula, however, shows the bright region is actually a window into the center of a larger dark shell of dust


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-05-14 : What would it be like to fly free in space? At about 100 meters from the cargo bay of the space shuttle Challenger, Bruce McCandless II was living the dream -- floating farther out than anyone had ever been before. Guided by a Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), astronaut McCandless, pictured, was floating free in space


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-05-13 : Our fair planet sports a curved, sunlit crescent against the black backdrop of space in this stunning photograph. From the unfamiliar perspective, the Earth is small and, like a telescopic image of a distant planet, the entire horizon is completely within the field of view


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-04-30 : Although its colors may be subtle, Saturn's moon Helene is an enigma in any light. The moon was imaged in unprecedented detail in 2012 as the robotic Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn swooped to within a single Earth diameter of the diminutive moon


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-04-22 : In visible light NGC 1333 is seen 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 2023-04-21 : Along a narrow path that mostly avoided landfall, the shadow of the New Moon raced across planet Earth's southern hemisphere on April 20 to create a rare annular-total or hybrid solar eclipse. A mere 62 seconds of totality could be seen though, when the dark central lunar shadow just grazed the North West Cape, a peninsula in western Australia


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-04-20 : Spanning light-years, 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 2023-04-17 : What's that red ring in the sky? Lightning. The most commonly seen type of lightning involves flashes of bright white light between clouds


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-04-16 : Are stars better appreciated for their art after they die? Actually, stars usually create their most artistic displays as they die. In the case of low-mass stars like our Sun and M2-9 pictured here, the stars transform themselves from normal stars to white dwarfs by casting off their outer gaseous envelopes


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-04-15 : A composite of images captured about a week apart from mid August 2022 through late March 2023, this series traces the retrograde motion of ruddy-colored Mars. Progressing from lower right to upper left Mars makes a Z-shaped path as it wanders past the Pleiades and Hyades star clusters, through the constellation Taurus in planet Earth's night sky


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-04-14 : Sharp telescopic views of NGC 3628 show a puffy galactic disk divided by dark dust lanes. Of course, this portrait of the magnificent, edge-on spiral galaxy puts some astronomers in mind of its popular moniker, the Hamburger Galaxy


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-04-12 : The large stellar association cataloged as NGC 206 is nestled within the dusty arms of the neighboring Andromeda galaxy along with the galaxy's pinkish star-forming regions. Also known as M31, the spiral galaxy is a mere 2


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-04-11 : Why is Polaris called the North Star? First, Polaris is the nearest bright star toward the north spin axis of the Earth. Therefore, as the Earth turns, stars appear to revolve around Polaris, but Polaris itself always stays in the same northerly direction -- making it the North Star


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-04-10 : To some, it looks like a giant chicken running across the sky. To others, it looks like a gaseous nebula where star formation takes place


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-04-09 : Where is the center of the Egg Nebula? Emerging from a cosmic egg, the star in the center of the Egg Nebula is casting away shells of gas and dust as it slowly transforms itself into a white dwarf star. The Egg Nebula is a rapidly evolving pre- planetary nebula spanning about one light year


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-04-08 : Majestic on a truly cosmic scale, M100 is appropriately known as a grand design spiral galaxy. It is a large galaxy of over 100 billion stars with well-defined spiral arms that is similar to our own Milky Way Galaxy


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-04-07 : Brilliant, blue, supergiant star Rigel marks the foot of Orion the Hunter in planet Earth's night. Designated Beta Orionis, it's at the center of this remarkably deep and wide field of view


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-04-06 : Relativity's Terran 1 Rocket is mostly 3D-printed. It burns a cryogenic rocket fuel composed of liquid methane and liquid oxygen (methalox)


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-04-05 : 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 2023-04-04 : The largest volcano in our Solar System is on Mars. Although three times higher than Earth's Mount Everest, Olympus Mons will not be difficult for humans to climb because of the volcano's shallow slopes and Mars' low gravity


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-04-03 : What causes this unusual curving structure near the center of our Galaxy? The long parallel rays slanting across the top of the featured radio image are known collectively as the Galactic Center Radio Arc and point out from the Galactic plane. The Radio Arc is connected to the Galactic Center by strange curving filaments known as the Arches


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-04-02 : It was noticed hundreds of years ago by stargazers who could not understand its unusual shape. It looked like a ring on the sky


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-04-01 : Distorted galaxy NGC 2442 can be found in the southern constellation of the flying fish, (Piscis) Volans. Located about 50 million light-years away, the galaxy's two spiral arms extending from a pronounced central bar give it a hook-shaped appearance in this deep colorful image, with spiky foreground stars scattered across the telescopic field of view


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-03-31 : Shrouded in a thick atmosphere, Saturn's largest moon Titan really is hard to see. Small particles suspended in the upper atmosphere cause an almost impenetrable haze, strongly scattering light at visible wavelengths and hiding Titan's surface features from prying eyes


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-03-30 : The delightful Dark Doodad Nebula drifts through southern skies, a tantalizing target for binoculars toward the small constellation Musca, The Fly. The dusty cosmic cloud is seen against rich starfields just south of the Coalsack Nebula and the Southern Cross


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-03-29 : Which star created this bubble? It wasn't the bright star on the bubble's right. And it also wasn't a giant space dolphin



AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-03-28 : Yes, but can your green flash do this? A green flash at sunset is a rare event that many Sun watchers pride themselves on having seen.  Once thought to be a myth, a green flash is now understood to occur when the Earth's atmosphere acts like both a prism and a lens


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-03-27 : Reports of powerful solar flares started a seven-hour quest north to capture modern monuments against an aurora-filled sky. The peaks of iconic Arctic Henge in Raufarhöfn in northern Iceland were already aligned with the stars: some are lined up toward the exact north from one side and toward exact south from the other


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-03-26 : How far out will humanity explore? If this video's fusion of real space imagery and fictional space visualizations is on the right track, then at least the Solar System. Some of the video's wondrous sequences depict future humans drifting through the rings of Saturn, exploring Jupiter from a nearby spacecraft, and jumping off a high cliff in the low gravity of a moon of Uranus


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-03-25 : On March 23 early evening skygazers could watch Venus and a young crescent moon, both near the western horizon. On that date Earth's brilliant evening star, faint lunar night side and slender sunlit crescent were captured in this telephoto skyscape posing alongside a church tower from Danta di Cadore, Dolomiti, Italy


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-03-24 : Former darling of the northern sky Comet C/2022E3 (ZTF) has faded. During its closest approach to our fair planet in early February Comet ZTF was a mere 2


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-03-23 : A mere 46 million light-years distant, spiral galaxy NGC 2841 can be found in planet Earth's night sky toward the northern constellation of Ursa Major. This sharp image centered on the gorgeous island universe also captures spiky foreground Milky Way stars and more distant background galaxies within the same telescopic field of view


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-03-22 : How far can you see? The most distant object easily visible to the unaided eye is M31, the great Andromeda Galaxy, over two million light-years away. Without a telescope, even this immense spiral galaxy appears as an unremarkable, faint, nebulous cloud in the constellation Andromeda


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-03-21 : Can dust be beautiful? Yes, and it can also be useful. The Taurus molecular cloud has several bright stars, but it is the dark dust that really draws attention


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-03-20 : Are your eyes good enough to see the Crab Nebula expand? The Crab Nebula is cataloged as M1, the first on Charles Messier's famous list of things which are not comets. In fact, the Crab is now known to be a supernova remnant, an expanding cloud of debris from the explosion of a massive star


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-03-19 : To see the feathered serpent descend the Mayan pyramid requires exquisite timing. You must visit El Castillo -- in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula -- near an equinox


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-03-18 : Driven by powerful stellar winds, expanding shrouds of gas and dust frame hot, luminous star Wolf-Rayet 124 in this sharp infrared view. The eye-catching 6-spike star pattern is characteristic of stellar images made with the 18 hexagonal mirrors of the James Webb Space Telescope


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-03-16 : Globular star cluster Omega Centauri, also known as NGC 5139, is 15,000 light-years away. The cluster is packed with about 10 million stars much older than the Sun within a volume about 150 light-years in diameter


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-03-15 : This was a sky to show the kids. Early this month the two brightest planets in the night sky, Jupiter and Venus, appeared to converge


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-03-14 : Stars are forming in the Soul of the Queen of Aethopia. More specifically, a large star forming region called the Soul Nebula can be found in the direction of the constellation Cassiopeia, whom Greek mythology credits as the vain wife of a King who long ago ruled lands surrounding the upper Nile river


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-03-13 : What lies at the end of a rainbow? Something different for everyone. For the photographer taking this picture, for example, one end of the rainbow ended at a tree


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-03-12 : What lies at the bottom of Hyperion's strange craters? To help find out, the robot Cassini spacecraft that once orbited Saturn swooped past the sponge-textured moon and took images of unprecedented detail. A six-image mosaic from the 2005 pass, featured here in scientifically assigned colors, shows a remarkable world strewn with strange craters and an odd, sponge-like surface


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-03-11 : Put on your red/blue glasses and float next to asteroid 101955 Bennu. Shaped like a spinning toy top with boulders littering its rough surface, the tiny Solar System world is about one Empire State Building (less than 500 meters) across


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-03-10 : Few cosmic vistas excite the imagination like The Great Nebula in Orion. Visible as a faint celestial smudge to the naked-eye, the nearest large star-forming region sprawls across this sharp telescopic image, recorded on a cold January night in dark skies from West Virginia, planet Earth


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-03-09 : On the first planetary defense test mission from planet Earth, the DART spacecraft captured this close-up on 26 September 2022, three seconds before slamming into the surface of asteroid moonlet Dimorphos. The spacecraft's outline with two long solar panels is traced at its projected point of impact between two boulders


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-03-08 : Where have all the dim stars gone? From many places on the Earth including major cities, the night sky has been reduced from a fascinating display of thousands of stars to a diffuse glow through which only a few stars are visible. The featured map indicates the relative amount of light pollution that occurs across the Earth


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-03-07 : Is this a spiral galaxy? No. Actually, it is the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), the largest satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way Galaxy


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-03-06 : It was visible around the world. The sunset conjunction of Jupiter and Venus in 2012 was visible almost no matter where you lived on Earth


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-03-05 : What are those two bright spots? Planets. A few days ago, the two brightest planets in the night sky passed within a single degree of each other in what is termed a conjunction


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-03-04 : Venus and Jupiter may have caught your attention lately. The impending close conjunction of the two brightest planets visible in clear evening skies has been hard to miss


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-03-02 : Spiral galaxy NGC 3169 looks to be unraveling like a ball of cosmic yarn. It lies some 70 million light-years away, south of bright star Regulus toward the faint constellation Sextans


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-03-01 : Is star AE Aurigae on fire? No. Even though AE Aurigae is named the Flaming Star and the surrounding nebula IC 405 is named the Flaming Star Nebula, and even though the nebula appears to some like a swirling flame, there is no fire


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-02-28 : Why is a thin crescent moon never seen far from a horizon? Because the only geometry that gives a thin crescent lunar phase occurs when the Moon appears close to the Sun in the sky. The crescent is not caused by the shadow of the Earth, but by seeing only a small part of the Moon directly illuminated by the Sun


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-02-27 : What's causing that unusual ray of light extending from the horizon? Dust orbiting the Sun. At certain times of the year, a band of sun-reflecting dust from the inner Solar System appears prominently after sunset or before sunrise and is called zodiacal light


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-02-26 : What would make a moon look like a walnut? A strange ridge that circles Saturn's moon Iapetus's equator, visible near the bottom of the featured image, makes it appear similar to a popular edible nut. The origin of the ridge remains unknown, though, with hypotheses including ice that welled up from below, a ring that crashed down from above, and structure left over from its formation perhaps 100 million years ago


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-02-25 : On February 22, a young Moon shared the western sky at sunset with bright planets Venus and Jupiter along the ecliptic plane. The beautiful celestial conjunction was visible around planet Earth


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-02-24 : Planetary nebula Jones-Emberson 1 is the death shroud of a dying Sun-like star. It lies some 1,600 light-years from Earth toward the sharp-eyed constellation Lynx


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-02-23 : Peculiar spiral galaxy Arp 78 is found within the boundaries of the head strong constellation Aries. Some 100 million light-years beyond the stars and nebulae of our Milky Way galaxy, the island universe is an enormous 200,000 light-years across


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-02-22 : Our Sun is becoming a busy place. Only two years ago, the Sun was emerging from a solar minimum so quiet that months would go by without even a single sunspot


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-02-21 : They are both falling. The water in Yosemite Falls, California, USA, is falling toward the Earth


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-02-20 : There is nothing like this ball of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy. This is surprising because, at first glance, this featured image by the Hubble Space Telescope suggests that star cluster NGC 1850's size and shape are reminiscent of the many ancient globular star clusters which roam our own Milky Way Galaxy's halo


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-02-19 : Is this really the famous Pleiades star cluster? Known for its iconic blue stars, the Pleiades is shown here in infrared light where the surrounding dust outshines the stars. Here three infrared colors have been mapped into visual colors (R=24, G=12, B=4


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-02-18 : A mere 56 million light-years distant toward the southern constellation Fornax, NGC 1365 is an enormous barred spiral galaxy about 200,000 light-years in diameter. That's twice the size of our own barred spiral Milky Way


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-02-17 : While scanning the skies for near-Earth objects Hungarian astronomer Krisztián Sárneczky first imaged the meter-sized space rock now cataloged as 2023 CX1 on 12 February 2023 at 20:18:07 UTC. That was about 7 hours before it impacted planet Earth's atmosphere


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-02-16 : Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, O'er volumes of astronomy and forgotten lore, I stumbled upon this snapshot, cosmic and eerie, A sight that filled my heart with awe and more. Two stars, like sentinels, anchored the foreground, Of our Milky Way galaxy, a sight to behold, Beyond them, a cluster of Hydra, galaxies abound, 100 million light-years away, a story to be told


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-02-15 : This unusual sky was both familiar and unfamiliar. The photographer's mission was to capture the arch of the familiar central band of our Milky Way Galaxy over a picturesque medieval manor


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-02-14 : Is the heart and soul of our Galaxy located in Cassiopeia? Possibly not, but that is where two bright emission nebulas nicknamed Heart and Soul can be found. The Heart Nebula, officially dubbed IC 1805 and visible in the featured image on the upper right, has a shape reminiscent of a classical heart symbol


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-02-13 : No, Comet ZTF is not going to hit Mars. Nicknamed the Green Comet for its bright green coma, C/2022 E3 (ZTF) did, however, pass almost in front of the much-more distant planet a few days ago, very near in time to when the featured picture was taken


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-02-12 : 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 2023-02-11 : The two prominent clouds in this Chilean Atacama Desert skyscape captured on January 21 actually lie beyond our Milky Way galaxy. Known as the Large and the Small Magellanic Clouds they are so named for the 16th century Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, leader of the first circumnavigation of planet Earth


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-02-10 : Fading as it races across planet Earth's northern skies comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) shares this telescopic frame with comet C/2022 U2 (ATLAS). Captured on the night of February 6 from a garden observatory in Germany's Bavarian Forest, the starry field of view toward the constellation Auriga spans about 2


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-02-09 : Vivid and lustrous, wafting iridescent waves of color wash across this skyscape from Kilpisjärvi, Finland. Known as nacreous clouds or mother-of-pearl clouds, they are rare


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-02-08 : Imagine traveling to a star about 100 times as massive as our Sun, a million times more luminous, and with 30 times the surface temperature. Such stars exist, and some are known as Wolf Rayet (WR) stars, named after French astronomers Charles Wolf and Georges Rayet


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-02-07 : Can you still see the comet? Yes. Even as C/2022 E3 (ZTF) fades, there is still time to see it if you know where and when to look


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-02-06 : In the heart of the Rosette Nebula lies a bright cluster of stars that lights up the nebula. The stars of NGC 2244 formed from the surrounding gas only a few million years ago


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-02-05 : This moon is shining by the light of its planet. Specifically, a large portion of Enceladus pictured here is illuminated primarily by sunlight first reflected from the planet Saturn


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-02-04 : Centered in this colorful cosmic canvas, NGC 2626 is a beautiful, bright, blue reflection nebula in the southern Milky Way. Next to an obscuring dust cloud and surrounded by reddish hydrogen emission from large H II region RCW 27 it lies within a complex of dusty molecular clouds known as the Vela Molecular Ridge


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-02-03 : Stars trace concentric arcs around the North Celestial Pole in this three hour long night sky composite, recorded with a digital camera fixed to a tripod on January 31, near Àger, Lleida, Spain. On that date Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was near its northernmost declination in planet Earth's sky


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-02-02 : The 1970s are sometimes ignored by astronomers. For example, this beautiful grouping of reflection nebulae in Orion - NGC 1977, NGC 1975, and NGC 1973 - is usually overlooked in favor of the substantial glow from the nearby stellar nursery better known as the Orion Nebula


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-02-01 : Seven worlds orbit the ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1. A mere 40 light-years away, many of the exoplanets were discovered in 2016 using the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) located at La Silla Observatory in Chile and later confirmed with telescope including NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-31 : Comet ZTF has a distinctive shape. The now bright comet visiting the inner Solar System has been showing not only a common dust tail, ion tail, and green gas coma, but also an uncommonly distinctive antitail


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-30 : Globular clusters once ruled the Milky Way. Back in the old days, back when our Galaxy first formed, perhaps thousands of globular clusters roamed our Galaxy


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-29 : Where did all the stars go? What used to be considered a hole in the sky is now known to astronomers as a dark molecular cloud. Here, a high concentration of dust and molecular gas absorb practically all the visible light emitted from background stars


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-28 : Comet-like plumes are blowing over the volcanic peaks of Mount Etna in this wintry mountain-and-skyscape from planet Earth. The stacked and blended combination of individual exposures recorded during the cold night of January 23, also capture naked-eye Comet ZTF just above Etna's snowy slopes


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-27 : The current darling of the northern night, Comet C/2022 E3 ZTF is captured in this telescopic image from a dark sky location at June Lake, California, USA. Of course Comet ZTF has been growing brighter in recent days, headed for its closest approach to Earth on February 1


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-26 : Active galaxy NGC 1275 is the central, dominant member of the large and relatively nearby Perseus Cluster of Galaxies. Wild-looking at visible wavelengths, the active galaxy is also a prodigious source of x-rays and radio emission


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-25 : To some, the dark shape looks like a mythical boogeyman. Scientifically, Lynds' Dark Nebula (LDN) 1622 appears against a faint background of glowing hydrogen gas only visible in long telescopic exposures of the region


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-24 : If you could stand on exoplanet LHS 475 b, what might you see? No one knows for sure but pictured here is an interesting guess made by an Earth-based artificial intelligence (AI) engine. The existence of the exoplanet was indicated in data taken by the Earth-orbiting TESS satellite but confirmed and further investigated only this year by the near-Earth Sun-orbiting James Webb Space Telescope


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-23 : Two galaxies are squaring off in Virgo and here are the latest pictures. When two galaxies collide, the stars that compose them usually do not


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-22 : Raise your arms if you see an aurora. With those instructions, two nights went by with, well, clouds -- mostly


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-21 : Comet C/2022E3 (ZTF) no longer requires a telescope for viewing. By January 19, it could just be seen with the naked eye in this rural sky with little light pollution from a location about 20 kilometers from Salamanca, Spain


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-20 : The two dominant galaxies near center are far far away, 12 million light-years distant toward the northern constellation of the Great Bear. On the right, with grand spiral arms and bright yellow core is spiral galaxy M81


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-19 : A broad expanse of glowing gas and dust presents a bird-like visage to astronomers from planet Earth, suggesting its popular moniker - The Seagull Nebula. Using narrowband image data, this 3-panel mosaic of the cosmic bird covers a 2


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-18 : Gravitational lensing by the galaxy cluster MACS0647 -- in which the massive foreground cluster distorts and lenses the light emitted by distant background galaxies along the line of sight — is on vivid display here in this recent multi-color infrared image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). In particular, the background source MACS0647-JD is seen to be lensed three times by the cluster


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-17 : Why are there oxygen-emitting arcs near the direction of the Andromeda galaxy? No one is sure. The gas arcs, shown in blue, were discovered and first confirmed by amateur astronomers just last year


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-16 : Our Moon doesn't really look like this. Earth's Moon, Luna, doesn't naturally show this rich texture, and its colors are more subtle


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-15 : This is the mess that is left when a star explodes. The Crab Nebula, the result of a supernova seen in 1054 AD, is filled with mysterious filaments


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-14 : Perihelion for 2023, Earth's closest approach to the Sun, was on January 4 at 16:17 UTC. That was less than 24 hours after this sharp image of the Sun's disk was recorded with telescope and H-alpha filter from Sydney, Australia, planet Earth


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-13 : The most massive young star cluster in the Small Magellanic Cloud is NGC 346, embedded in our small satellite galaxy's largest star forming region some 210,000 light-years distant. Of course the massive stars of NGC 346 are short lived, but very energetic


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-12 : This cosmic expanse of dust, gas, and stars covers some 6 degrees on the sky in the heroic constellation Perseus. At upper left in the gorgeous skyscape is the intriguing young star cluster IC 348 and neighboring Flying Ghost Nebula with clouds of obscuring interstellar dust cataloged as Barnard 3 and 4


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-11 : The scene may look like a fantasy, but it's really Iceland. The rock arch is named Gatklettur and located on the island's northwest coast


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-10 : Stars are forming in the gigantic dust pillar called the Cone Nebula. Cones, pillars, and majestic flowing shapes abound in stellar nurseries where clouds of gas and dust are sculpted by energetic winds from newborn stars


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-09 : Comet ZTF may become visible to the unaided eye. Discovered early last year, this massive snowball has been brightening as it approaches the Sun and the Earth


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-08 : The hydrogen in your body, present in every molecule of water, came from the Big Bang. There are no other appreciable sources of hydrogen in the universe


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-07 : On January 3, two space stations already illuminated by sunlight in low Earth orbit crossed this dark predawn sky. Moving west to east (left to right) across the composited timelapse image China's Tiangong Space Station traced the upper trail captured more than an hour before the local sunrise


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-06 : The first Full Moon of 2023 is in the sky tonight opposite the Sun at 23:08 UTC. Big and beautiful, the Moon at its brightest phase should be easy to spot


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-05 : Hurtling through a cosmic dust cloud a mere 400 light-years away, the lovely Pleiades or Seven Sisters open star cluster is well-known for its striking blue reflection nebulae. It lies in the night sky toward the constellation Taurus and the Orion Arm of our Milky Way galaxy


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-04 : Can a gas cloud eat 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 2023-01-03 : This line of stars is real. A little too faint to see with the unaided eye, Kemble’s Cascade of stars inspires awe when seen with binoculars


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-02 : Look up tonight and see a whole bunch of planets. Just after sunset, looking west, planets Venus, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars will all be simultaneously visible


AstroPhysics Snippet Of The Day 2023-01-01 : There, that dot on the right, that's the largest rock known in our Solar System. It is larger than every known asteroid, moon, and comet nucleus



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