Astronomy Picture of the Day (Unofficial) apod@hub.polari.us
SPACE!
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
Astronomy Picture of the Day for 2023-09-26 12:30:02.071936
2023-09-26T16:30:02Z via PyPump To: Public
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2023 September 26
IC 4592: The Blue Horsehead Reflection Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: Antoine & Dalia GrelinExplanation: 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 reflection nebula IC 4592. Reflection nebulas are made up of very fine dust that normally appears dark but can look quite blue when reflecting the visible light of energetic nearby stars. In this case, the source of much of the reflected light is a star at the eye of the horse. That star is part of Nu Scorpii, one of the brighter star systems toward the constellation of the Scorpion (Scorpius). A second reflection nebula dubbed IC 4601 is visible surrounding two stars above and to the right of the image center.
Tomorrow's picture: steve X
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Astronomy Picture of the Day for 2023-09-25 12:30:01.829451
2023-09-25T16:30:02Z via PyPump To: Public
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2023 September 25
Arp 142: The Hummingbird Galaxy
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble, HLA; Processing & Copyright: Basudeb ChakrabartiExplanation: What's happening to this spiral galaxy? Just a few hundred million years ago, NGC 2936, the upper of the two large galaxies shown at the bottom, was likely a normal spiral galaxy -- spinning, creating stars -- and minding its own business. But then it got too close to the massive elliptical galaxy NGC 2937, just below, and took a turn. Sometimes dubbed the Hummingbird Galaxy for its iconic shape, NGC 2936 is not only being deflected but also being distorted by the close gravitational interaction. Behind filaments of dark interstellar dust, bright blue stars form the nose of the hummingbird, while the center of the spiral appears as an eye. Alternatively, the galaxy pair, together known as Arp 142, look to some like Porpoise or a penguin protecting an egg. The featured re-processed image showing Arp 142 in great detail was taken recently by the Hubble Space Telescope. Arp 142 lies about 300 million light years away toward the constellation of the Water Snake (Hydra). In a billion years or so the two galaxies will likely merge into one larger galaxy.
Tomorrow's picture: big blue horse
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Astronomy Picture of the Day for 2023-09-24 12:30:01.757211
2023-09-24T16:30:02Z via PyPump To: Public
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2023 September 24
A Ring of Fire Sunrise Solar Eclipse
Video Credit: Colin Legg & Geoff Sims; Music: Peter NanasiExplanation: What's rising above the horizon behind those clouds? It's the Sun. Most sunrises don't look like this, though, because most sunrises don't include the Moon. In the early morning of 2013 May 10, however, from Western Australia, the Moon was between the Earth and the rising Sun. At times, it would be hard for the uninformed to understand what was happening. In an annular eclipse, the Moon is too far from the Earth to block the entire Sun, and at most leaves a ring of fire where sunlight pours out around every edge of the Moon. The featured time-lapse video also recorded the eclipse through the high refraction of the Earth's atmosphere just above the horizon, making the unusual rising Sun and Moon appear also flattened. As the video continues, the Sun continues to rise, while the Sun and Moon begin to separate. The next annular solar eclipse will occur in less than three weeks. On Saturday, October 14, a ring of fire will be visible through clear skies from a thin swath crossing both North and South America.
Tour the Universe: Random APOD Generator
Tomorrow's picture: big blue bird
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Astronomy Picture of the Day for 2023-09-23 12:30:02.247935
2023-09-23T16:30:03Z via PyPump To: Public
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2023 September 23
Afternoon Analemma
Image Credit & Copyright: Ian Griffin (Otago Museum)Explanation: An analemma is that figure-8 curve you get when you mark the position of the Sun at the same time each day for one year. To make this one, a 4x5 pinhole camera was set up looking north in southern New Zealand skies. The shutter was briefly opened each clear day in the afternoon at 4pm local time exposing the same photosensitized glass plate for the year spanning September 23, 2022 to September 19, 2023. On two days, the winter and summer solstices, the shutter was opened again 15 minutes after the main exposure and remained open until sunset to create the sun trails at the bottom and top of the curve. The equinox dates correspond to positions in the middle of the curve, not the crossover point. Of course, the curve itself is inverted compared to an analemma traced from the northern hemisphere. And while fall begins today at the Autumnal Equinox for the northern hemisphere, it's the Spring Equinox in the south.
Tomorrow's picture: sunrise solar eclipse
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Astronomy Picture of the Day for 2023-09-22 12:30:01.859555
2023-09-22T16:30:02Z via PyPump To: Public
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2023 September 22
Cosmos in Reflection
Image Credit & Copyright: Jeff Dai (TWAN)Explanation: During the day, over 12,000 large mirrors reflect sunlight at the 100-megawatt, molten-salt, solar thermal power plant at the western edge of the Gobi desert near Dunhuang, Gansu Province, China. Individual mirror panels turn to track the sun like sunflowers. They conspire to act as a single super mirror reflecting the sunlight toward a fixed position, the power station's central tower. During the night the mirrors stand motionless though. They reflect the light of the countless distant stars, clusters and nebulae of the Milky Way and beyond. This sci-fi night skyscape was created with a camera fixed to a tripod near the edge of the giant mirror matrix on September 15. The camera's combined sequence of digital exposures captures concentric arcs of celestial star trails through the night with star trails in surreal mirrored reflection.
Tomorrow's picture: analog analemma's afternoon
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Astronomy Picture of the Day for 2023-09-21 12:30:01.936207
2023-09-21T16:30:02Z via PyPump To: Public
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2023 September 21
Tagging Bennu
Image Credit: OSIRIS-REx, University of Arizona, NASA, Goddard Scientific Visualization StudioExplanation: The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft's arm reached out and touched asteroid 101955 Bennu on October 20, 2020, after a careful approach to the small, near-Earth asteroid's boulder-strewn surface. Dubbed a Touch-And-Go (TAG) sampling event, the 30 centimeter wide sampling head (TAGSAM) appears to crush some of the rocks in this close-up recorded by the spacecraft's SamCam. The image was snapped just after surface contact some 321 million kilometers from planet Earth. One second later, the spacecraft fired nitrogen gas from a bottle intended to blow a substantial amount of Bennu's regolith into the sampling head, collecting the loose surface material. And now, nearly three years later, on Sunday, September 24, that sample of asteroid Bennu is scheduled to arrive on planet Earth. The sample return capsule will be dropped off by the OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft as it makes a close flyby of Earth. Twenty minutes after the drop-off, the spacecraft will fire its thrusters to divert past Earth and continue on to orbit near-Earth asteroid 99942 Apophis.
Tomorrow's picture: reflections of the cosmos
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Astronomy Picture of the Day for 2023-09-20 12:30:01.303606
2023-09-20T16:30:02Z via PyPump To: Public
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2023 September 20
Methane Discovered on Distant Exoplanet
Illustration Credit: Ahmad Jabakenji (ASU Lebanon, North Star Space Art); Data: NASA, ESA, CSA, JWSTExplanation: Where else might life exist? One of humanity's great outstanding questions, locating planets where extrasolar life might survive took a step forward in 2019 with the discovery of a significant amount of water vapor in the atmosphere of distant exoplanet K2-18b. The planet and its parent star, K2-18, lie about 124 light years away toward the constellation of the Lion (Leo). The exoplanet is significantly larger and more massive than our Earth, but orbits in the habitable zone of its home star. K2-18, although more red than our Sun, shines in K2-18b's sky with a brightness similar to the Sun in Earth's sky. The 2019 discovery of atmospheric water was made in data from three space telescopes: Hubble, Spitzer, and Kepler, by noting the absorption of water-vapor colors when the planet moved in front of the star. Now in 2023, further observations by the Webb Space Telescope in infrared light have uncovered evidence of other life-indicating molecules -- including methane. The featured illustration imagines exoplanet K2-18b on the far right orbited by a moon (center), which together orbit a red dwarf star depicted on the lower left.
Tomorrow's picture: space tag
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Astronomy Picture of the Day for 2023-09-19 12:30:01.508877
2023-09-19T16:30:02Z via PyPump To: Public
Astronomy Picture of the Day
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2023 September 19
HH 211: Jets from a Forming Star
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Webb; Processing: Tom Ray (DIAS Dublin)Explanation: Do stars always create jets as they form? No one is sure. As a gas cloud gravitationally contracts, it forms a disk that can spin too fast to continue contracting into a protostar. Theorists hypothesize that this spin can be reduced by expelling jets. This speculation coincides with known Herbig-Haro (HH) objects, young stellar objects seen to emit jets -- sometimes in spectacular fashion. Pictured is Herbig-Haro 211, a young star in formation recently imaged by the Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in infrared light and in great detail. Along with the two narrow beams of particles, red shock waves can be seen as the outflows impact existing interstellar gas. The jets of HH 221 will likely change shape as they brighten and fade over the next 100,000 years, as research into the details of star formation continues.
Tomorrow's picture: another star's planets
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Astronomy Picture of the Day for 2023-09-18 12:30:01.785997
2023-09-18T16:30:02Z via PyPump To: Public
Astronomy Picture of the Day
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2023 September 18
The Red Sprite and the Tree
Credit & Copyright: Maxime VillaeysExplanation: The sprite and tree could hardly be more different. To start, the red sprite is an unusual form of lightning, while the tree is a common plant. The sprite is far away -- high in Earth's atmosphere, while the tree is nearby -- only about a football field away. The sprite is fast -- electrons streaming up and down at near light's speed, while the tree is slow -- wood anchored to the ground. The sprite is bright -- lighting up the sky, while the tree is dim -- shining mostly by reflected light. The sprite was fleeting -- lasting only a small fraction of a second, while the tree is durable -- living now for many years. Both however, when captured together, appear oddly similar in this featured composite image captured early this month in France as a thunderstorm passed over mountains of the Atlantic Pyrenees.
Your Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday? (post 1995)
Tomorrow's picture: star jets from webb
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Astronomy Picture of the Day for 2023-09-17 12:30:02.093690
2023-09-17T16:30:02Z via PyPump To: Public
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2023 September 17
Moon Mountains Magnified during Ring of Fire Eclipse
Credit & Copyright: Wang Letian (Eyes at Night)Explanation: What are those dark streaks in this composite image of a solar eclipse? They are reversed shadows of mountains at the edge of the Moon. The center image, captured from Xiamen, China, has the Moon's center directly in front of the Sun's center. The Moon, though, was too far from the Earth to completely block the entire Sun. Light that streamed around the edges of the Moon is called a ring of fire. Images at each end of the sequence show sunlight that streamed through lunar valleys. As the Moon moved further in front of the Sun, left to right, only the higher peaks on the Moon's perimeter could block sunlight. Therefore, the dark streaks are projected, distorted, reversed, and magnified shadows of mountains at the Moon's edge. Bright areas are called Baily's Beads. Only people in a narrow swath across Earth's Eastern Hemisphere were able to view this full annular solar eclipse in 2020. Next month, though, a narrow swath crossing both North and South America will be exposed to the next annular solar eclipse. And next April, a total solar eclipse will be visible across North America.
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Tomorrow's picture: sprite tree
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Astronomy Picture of the Day for 2023-09-16 12:30:02.083271
2023-09-16T16:30:02Z via PyPump To: Public
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2023 September 16
Fireball over Iceland
Image Credit & Copyright: Jennifer FranklinExplanation: On September 12, from a location just south of the Arctic Circle, stones of Iceland's modern Arctic Henge point skyward in this startling scene. Entertaining an intrepid group of aurora hunters during a geomagnetic storm, alluring northern lights dance across the darkened sky when a stunning fireball meteor explodes. Awestruck, the camera-equipped skygazers captured video and still images of the boreal bolide, at its peak about as bright as a full moon. Though quickly fading from view, the fireball left a lingering visible trail or persistent train. The wraith-like trail was seen for minutes wafting in the upper atmosphere at altitudes of 60 to 90 kilometers along with the auroral glow.
Tomorrow's picture: Magnified Moon Mountains
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Astronomy Picture of the Day for 2023-09-15 12:30:02.212029
2023-09-15T16:30:02Z via PyPump To: Public
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2023 September 15
Venus, Moon, and the Smoking Mountain
Image Credit & Copyright: Luis Miguel Meade RodrÃguezExplanation: Venus has returned as a brilliant morning star. From a window seat on a flight to Mexico City, the bright celestial beacon was captured just before sunrise in this astronomical snapshot, taken on September 12. Venus, at the upper right, shared the early predawn skies with an old crescent Moon. Seen from this stratospheric perspective, both mountain peaks and clouds appear in silhouette along a glowing eastern horizon. The dramatic, long, low cloud bank was created by venting from planet Earth's active volcano Popocatépetl.
Tomorrow's picture: Fire over Ice
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Astronomy Picture of the Day for 2023-09-14 12:30:01.670040
2023-09-14T16:30:02Z via PyPump To: Public
Astronomy Picture of the Day
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2023 September 14
NGC 7331 and Beyond
Image Credit & Copyright: Ian GorensteinExplanation: Big, beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 7331 is often touted as an analog to our own Milky Way. About 50 million light-years distant in the northern constellation Pegasus, NGC 7331 was recognized early on as a spiral nebula and is actually one of the brighter galaxies not included in Charles Messier's famous 18th century catalog. Since the galaxy's disk is inclined to our line-of-sight, long telescopic exposures often result in images that evokes a strong sense of depth. The effect is further enhanced in this sharp image by galaxies that lie beyond the gorgeous island universe. The most prominent background galaxies are about one tenth the apparent size of NGC 7331 and so lie roughly ten times farther away. Their close alignment on the sky with NGC 7331 occurs just by chance. Lingering above the plane of the Milky Way, this striking visual grouping of galaxies is known to some as the Deer Lick Group.
Tomorrow's picture: good morning moon
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Astronomy Picture of the Day for 2023-09-13 12:30:01.483696
2023-09-13T16:30:02Z via PyPump To: Public
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2023 September 13
NGC 4632: Galaxy with a Hidden Polar Ring
Credit: Jayanne English (U. Manitoba), Nathan Deg (Queen's University) & WALLABY Survey, CSIRO/ASKAP, NAOJ/Subaru Telescope; Text: Jayanne English (U. Manitoba)Explanation: Galaxy NGC 4632 hides a secret from optical telescopes. It is surrounded by a ring of cool hydrogen gas orbiting at 90 degrees to its spiral disk. Such polar ring galaxies have previously been discovered using starlight. However, NGC 4632 is among the first in which a radio telescope survey revealed a polar ring. The featured composite image combines this gas ring, observed with the highly sensitive ASKAP telescope, with optical data from the Subaru telescope. Using virtual reality, astronomers separated out the gas in the main disk of the galaxy from the ring, and the subtle color gradient traces its orbital motion. Why do polar rings exist? They could be material pulled from one galaxy as it gravitationally interacts with a companion. Or hydrogen gas flows along the filaments of the cosmic web and accretes into a ring around a galaxy, some of which gravitationally contracts into stars.
Tomorrow's picture: open space
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Astronomy Picture of the Day for 2023-09-12 12:30:01.518970
2023-09-12T16:30:02Z via PyPump To: Public
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2023 September 12
Galaxy Cluster Abell 370 and Beyond
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Jennifer Lotz and the HFF Team (STScI)Explanation: Some 4 billion light-years away, massive galaxy cluster Abell 370 is captured in this sharp Hubble Space Telescope snapshot. The cluster of galaxies only appears to be dominated by two giant elliptical galaxies and infested with faint arcs. In reality, the fainter, scattered bluish arcs, along with the dramatic dragon arc below and left of center, are images of galaxies that lie far beyond Abell 370. About twice as distant, their otherwise undetected light is magnified and distorted by the cluster's enormous gravitational mass, overwhelmingly dominated by unseen dark matter. Providing a tantalizing glimpse of galaxies in the early universe, the effect is known as gravitational lensing. A consequence of warped spacetime, lensing was predicted by Einstein almost a century ago. Far beyond the spiky foreground Milky Way star at lower right, Abell 370 is seen toward the constellation Cetus, the Sea Monster. It was the last of six galaxy clusters imaged in the Frontier Fields project.
Tomorrow's picture: partly hidden
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Astronomy Picture of the Day for 2023-09-11 12:30:01.351033
2023-09-11T16:30:01Z via PyPump To: Public
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2023 September 11
Beautiful Comet Nishimura
Credit & Copyright: Petr Horálek / Institute of Physics in OpavaExplanation: This scene would be beautiful even without the comet. By itself, the sunrise sky is an elegant deep blue on high, with faint white stars peeking through, while near the horizon is a pleasing tan. By itself, the foreground hills of eastern Slovakia are appealingly green, with the ZadÅa hura and Veľká hora hills in the distance, and with the lights of small towns along the way. Venus, by itself on the right, appears unusually exquisite, surrounded by a colorful atmospheric corona. But what attracts the eye most is the comet. On the left, in this composite image taken just before dawn yesterday morning, is Comet Nishimura. On recent mornings around the globe, its bright coma and long ion tail make many a morning panoramic photo unusually beautiful. Tomorrow, C/2023 P1 (Nishimura) will pass its nearest to the Earth for about the next 434 years.
Tomorrow's picture: galaxies galore
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Astronomy Picture of the Day for 2023-09-10 12:30:01.790583
2023-09-10T16:30:02Z via PyPump To: Public
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2023 September 10
An Annular Solar Eclipse over New Mexico
Credit & Copyright: Colleen PinskiExplanation: What is this person doing? In 2012, an annular eclipse of the Sun was visible over a narrow path that crossed the northern Pacific Ocean and several western US states. In an annular solar eclipse, the Moon is too far from the Earth to block out the entire Sun, leaving the Sun peeking out over the Moon's disk in a ring of fire. To capture this unusual solar event, an industrious photographer drove from Arizona to New Mexico to find just the right vista. After setting up and just as the eclipsed Sun was setting over a ridge about 0.5 kilometers away, a person unknowingly walked right into the shot. Although grateful for the unexpected human element, the photographer never learned the identity of the silhouetted interloper. It appears likely that the person is holding a circular device that would enable them to get their own view of the eclipse. The shot was taken at sunset on 2012 May 20 at 7:36 pm local time from a park near Albuquerque. Next month, on October 14, a different narrow swath across North and South America will be exposed to a different annular solar eclipse, if the sky is clear. Simultaneously, cloud-free observers almost anywhere on either continent will be able to see a partial solar eclipse.
Tomorrow's picture: active comet
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Astronomy Picture of the Day for 2023-09-08 12:30:02.164227
2023-09-08T16:30:02Z via PyPump To: Public
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2023 September 8
Star Factory Messier 17
Image Credit & Copyright: Kim Quick, Terry Hancock, and Tom Masterson (Grand Mesa Observatory)Explanation: Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, the star factory known as Messier 17 lies some 5,500 light-years away in the nebula-rich constellation Sagittarius. At that distance, this 1/3 degree wide field of view spans over 30 light-years. The sharp composite, color image highlights faint details of the region's gas and dust clouds against a backdrop of central Milky Way stars. Stellar winds and energetic light from hot, massive stars formed from M17's stock of cosmic gas and dust have slowly carved away at the remaining interstellar material, producing the cavernous appearance and undulating shapes. M17 is also known as the Omega Nebula or the Swan Nebula.
Tomorrow's picture: large galaxy cloud
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Astronomy Picture of the Day for 2023-09-07 12:30:02.680306
2023-09-07T16:30:04Z via PyPump To: Public
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2023 September 7
The Large Cloud of Magellan
Image Credit & Copyright: Chris WillocksExplanation: The 16th century Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan and his crew had plenty of time to study the southern sky during the first circumnavigation of planet Earth. As a result, two fuzzy cloud-like objects easily visible to southern hemisphere skygazers are known as the Clouds of Magellan, now understood to be satellite galaxies of our much larger, spiral Milky Way galaxy. About 160,000 light-years distant in the constellation Dorado, the Large Magellanic Cloud is seen in this sharp galaxy portrait. Spanning about 15,000 light-years or so, it is the most massive of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies and is the home of the closest supernova in modern times, SN 1987A. The prominent patch above center is 30 Doradus, also known as the magnificent Tarantula Nebula, a giant star-forming region about 1,000 light-years across.
Tomorrow's picture: large star factory
< | Archive | Submissions | Index | Search | Calendar | RSS | Education | About APOD | Discuss | >Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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Astronomy Picture of the Day for 2023-09-05 12:30:01.922990
2023-09-05T16:30:02Z via PyPump To: Public
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2023 September 5
Blue Supermoon Beyond Syracuse
Credit & Copyright: Kevin SaragozzaExplanation: The last full moon was doubly unusual. First of all, it was a blue moon. A modern definition of a blue moon is a second full moon to occur during one calendar month. Since there are 13 full moons in 2023, one month has to have two -- and that month was August. The first full moon was on August 1 and named a Sturgeon Moon. The second reason that the last full moon was unusual was because it was a supermoon. A modern definition of supermoon is a moon that reaches its full phase when it is relatively close to Earth -- and so appears a bit larger and brighter than average. Pictured, the blue supermoon of 2023 was imaged hovering far behind a historic castle and lighthouse in Syracuse, Sicily, Italy.
Gallery: Selected August 2023 supermoon images submitted to APOD
Tomorrow's picture: sky in motion
< | Archive | Submissions | Index | Search | Calendar | RSS | Education | About APOD | Discuss | >Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
NASA Web Privacy Policy and Important Notices
A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC,
NASA Science Activation
& Michigan Tech. U.
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