Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
Micro Moon over Super Moon21.01.2014
Did you see the big, bright, beautiful Full Moon last Wednesday night? That was actually a Micro Moon! On that night, the smallest Full Moon of 2014 reached its full phase only a few hours from lunar apogee, the time of its the most distant point from Earth in the Moon's elliptical orbit.
Baryon Acoustic Oscillations from SDSS III
20.01.2014
How large do things appear when far away? When peering across the universe, the answer can actually tell us about its average gravitational history and hence its composition. Toward this goal, the Baryon Oscillation...
Spiral Galaxies in Collision
19.01.2014
Billions of years from now, only one of these two galaxies will remain. Until then, spiral galaxies NGC 2207 and IC 2163 will slowly pull each other apart, creating tides of matter, sheets of shocked gas, lanes of dark dust, bursts of star formation, and streams of cast-away stars.
Apogee Full Moon
18.01.2014
This big, bright, beautiful Full Moon rose over Lick Observatory Wednesday night. Traditionally a full moon in January might be called the Wolf Moon. But this moon reached its full phase on January 16, 4:54 UT, within about 2 hours of apogee, the most distant point in its elliptical orbit around planet Earth.
M83 Star Streams
17.01.2014
Big, bright, and beautiful, spiral galaxy M83 lies a mere twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long constellation Hydra. This deep view of the gorgeous island universe includes observations...
Despina, Moon of Neptune
16.01.2014
Despina is a tiny moon of Neptune. A mere 148 kilometers across, diminutive Despina was discovered in 1989, in images from the Voyager 2 spacecraft taken during its encounter with the solar system's most distant gas giant planet.
Spitzer s Orion
15.01.2014
Few cosmic vistas excite the imagination like the Orion Nebula, an immense stellar nursery some 1,500 light-years away. This stunning false-color view spans about 40 light-years across the region, constructed using infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope.
The Gegenschein Over Chile
14.01.2014
Is the night sky darkest in the direction opposite the Sun? No. In fact, a rarely discernable faint glow known as the gegenschein (German for "counter glow") can be seen 180 degrees around from the Sun in an extremely dark sky. The gegenschein is sunlight back-scattered off small interplanetary dust particles.
A Trip to the Moon
13.01.2014
What would it be like to visit the Moon? The first major fictional cinematic film exploring this enduring transcultural fantasy was titled Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon) and made in 1902, becoming one of the most popular movies of the early years of the twentieth century.
The Scale of the Universe: Interactive
12.01.2014
What does the universe look like on small scales? On large scales? Humanity is discovering that the universe is a very different place on every proportion that has been explored. For example, so far as we know, every tiny proton is exactly the same, but every huge galaxy is different.
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