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Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
A Map of Asteroid Vesta
8.09.1997
Vesta is a huge rock 500 kilometers across that orbits out past Mars. Last week, the above map of Vesta created using the Hubble Space Telescope was released showing a rugged surface highlighted by a single crater spanning nearly the entire length of the asteroid.
Luna 9: First Soft Lander
7.09.1997
The Luna 9 spacecraft above performed the first soft landing on another planetary body. Following a series of failures, the Soviet probe touched down in the Moon's Oceanus Procellarum region February 3, 1966.
Isaac Newton Explains the Solar System
6.09.1997
Sir Isaac Newton changed the world. Born in 1643, Newton was only an above-average student. But he went home from Cambridge one summer in 1665, thought a lot about the physical nature of the world, and came back two years later with a revolutionary understanding of mathematics, gravitation, and optics.
Apollo 17: Boulder on the Moon
5.09.1997
Twenty five years ago humans roamed the Moon. Pictured here during the last moon landing, scientist-astronaut Harrison Schmitt was photographed standing next to a huge, split boulder. Apollo 17 was one of six missions that landed humans on the moon and returned them safely.
Rivers in the Sun
4.09.1997
The surface of the Sun is shifting. By watching sunspots, it has long been known that our Sun rotates. It was also known that the center of the Sun rotates faster than the poles.
A Partial Eclipse in Southern Skies
3.09.1997
Location is everything, especially if you want to see a Solar Eclipse. These fleeting events are only visible to those in the path of the Moon's shadow as it races across the Earth.
Dark Sky, Bright Sun
2.09.1997
In low Earth orbit there is not enough atmosphere to diffuse and scatter sunlight, so shadows are black and the sky is dark - even when the Sun shines. The harsh lighting produced this dramatic...
Infrared Helix
1.09.1997
Five hundred light years from Earth, in the constellation Aquarius, a sun-like star is dying. Its last few thousand years have produced the Helix, a well studied and nearby example of a Planetary Nebula - typical of this final phase of stellar evolution.
Arp 230: Two Spirals in One?
31.08.1997
Is this one galaxy or two? Analysis of Arp 230 has shown evidence that this seemingly single spiral galaxy is actually the result of the recent collision of two spiral galaxies. The slow motion collision took place over about 100 million years and induced a burst of star formation that has begun to subside.
The United States at Night
30.08.1997
This is what the United States of America looks like at night! Can you find your favorite US city on this image? Surprisingly, city lights make this task quite possible. The above picture is actually a composite of over 200 images made by satellites orbiting the Earth.
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