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Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
The Long Shadow of the Moon
26.11.2003
The long shadow of the Moon fell across the continent of Antarctica on November 23rd, during the second total solar eclipse of 2003. In this view from orbit, based on data from the MODIS instrument on board the Earth observing Aqua satellite, the Moon's shadow stretches for almost 500 kilometers.
The Turbulent Neighborhood of Eta Carina
25.11.2003
How do violent stars affect their surroundings? To help find out, astronomers pointed the Hubble Space Telescope to the regions surrounding Eta Carina, a star showing signs that it may explode sometime in the next million years.
A Late Leonid from a Sparse Shower
24.11.2003
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
23.11.2003
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
22.11.2003
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
21.11.2003
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
20.11.2003
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
19.11.2003
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
18.11.2003
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
17.11.2003
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.
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