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Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
A Late Leonid from a Sparse Shower
25.11.2003
The 2003 Leonids Meteor Shower contained relatively few meteors. As expected and unlike the last few years, the Earth just did not pass through any dense particle streams left over by the Sun-orbiting Comet Tempel-Tuttle.
IC 405: The Flaming Star Nebula
24.11.2003
Rippling dust and gas lanes give the Flaming Star Nebula its name. The red and purple colors of the nebula are present in different regions and are created by different processes. The bright star...
A Superwind from the Cigar Galaxy
23.11.2003
What's lighting up the Cigar Galaxy? M82, as this irregular galaxy is also known, was stirred up by a recent pass near large spiral galaxy M81. This doesn't fully explain the source of the red-glowing outwardly expanding gas, however.
Moon AND Sun
22.11.2003
This composite image was made from 22 separate pictures of the Moon and Sun all taken from Chisamba, Zambia during the total phase of the 2001 June 21 solar eclipse. The multiple exposures were...
Sunset Moonlight
21.11.2003
November's lunar eclipse was one of the shortest in recent years and also one of the brightest -- demonstrating that the Earth's shadow is not completely dark. The eclipsed Moon remained easily visible...
Voyager at 90 AU
20.11.2003
Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 is now about 12 light-hours or 90 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun, making this spacecraft humanity's most distant ambassador to the cosmos. Well beyond the orbits...
Light Can Twist as Well as Spin
19.11.2003
Light is more complicated than we thought. When astronomers measure light, they are usually concerned with its direction, energy, and spin polarization (sometimes). Recently, however, it has been more broadly realized that photons...
Leonids Over Indian Cove
18.11.2003
One year ago today an impressive meteor shower graced the skies of Earth. Pictured above from last year, at least six bright meteors are visible in only part of the sky above Indian Cove campground in California, USA, during a four-minute exposure.
Canis Major Dwarf: A New Closest Galaxy
17.11.2003
What is the closest galaxy to the Milky Way? The new answer to this old question is the Canis Major dwarf galaxy. For many years astronomers thought the Large Magellan Cloud (LMC) was closest, but its title was supplanted in 1994 by the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy.
Leonids from Leo
16.11.2003
Is Leo leaking? Leo, the famous sky constellation visible on the left of the above all-sky photograph, appears to be the source of all the meteors seen in 1998's Leonids Meteor Shower. That...
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