... 2000 December 19 . A Close-Up of Aurora on Jupiter . ... Explanation: Jupiter has aurorae . ... Electric force attracts these electrons back. ... Unlike Earth's aurorae , Jupiter's aurorae include several bright streaks and dots . These marks are caused by magnetic flux tubes connecting Jupiter to its largest moons . Specifically, Io caused the bright streak on the far left, Ganymede caused the bright dot below center, and Europa caused the dot to its right. ... About APOD | ...

... December 8, 1996 . Degas Ray Crater on Mercury . ... Explanation : Like the Earth's Moon, Mercury is scarred with craters, testifying to an intense bombardment during the early history of the Solar System. ... In the above mosaic the bright rays emanating from the 27 mile wide Degas crater almost appear to be painted on . The rays consist of light colored material blasted out during the crater's formation. Numerous smaller, younger craters are seen superposed on the Degas crater itself. ...

... Credit: Galileo Project , Brown University , JPL , NASA Explanation: This remarkable line of 13 closely spaced craters on Jupiter's moon Ganymede was photographed by the Galileo spacecraft in 1997. ... What caused this crater chain? ... It is very likely that similar torn comets from the early history of the Solar System are responsible for this and other crater chains . ... 1997 1998 . ... Publications with keywords: Ganymede - crater chain . Publications with words: Ganymede - crater chain . ...

... Exoplanets . ... Artists impression of the blue exoplanet. ... This exoplanet is located in the constellation of Vulpecula, the fox, a faint pattern inside the Summer Triangle.ТљТљ This planet is a not too distant 63 light years away so has been studied by space-based telescopes.Тљ Data collected from Hubbleт??s Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) when this planet moved behind its star showed that in the shadow of the star the light reflected from HD 189733b reduced into the blue part of the spectrum. ...

... I fixed the bugs that caused the map_point changes to fail tests. Then I removed the no longer needed dimensional variables from the p structure and got those changes to pass all the tests. ... I put the code under subversion control in a new branch called refactor. ... The code change which processes each drizzle kernel over an entire image rather than a line at a time now passes the unit tests and was checked in. ... I got the keywords argument changes done and got the tests to pass. ...

... When the Voyager 2 spacecraft flew by the planet Uranus in January 1986, astronomers were treated to their first close-up glimpse of the satellites that orbit the seventh planet. ... But by far the most intriguing of those 15 satellites was a jigsaw-puzzle world called Miranda . ... How dark was it at Miranda? One of the Voyager scientists put it this way: Taking pictures in the Uranus system is like trying to do photography in a ballpark at night when the only light comes from a single candle. ...

M1 image More About M1 Nice Color Picture . ... M16 image More About M16 HST image . ... M31 image More About M31 Nice Color Picture . ... M42 image ; M43 image More About M42/43 Nice Color CCD Picture . M51 image More About M51 Color Image of M51 M51 Supernova . M57 image More About M57 Nice Color CCD Picture Very Deep M57 Image . ... M81 image More About M81 M81 Supernova Ultraviolet Image of M81 More about Ultraviolet Imaging . M82 image More About M82 M82 False Color M82 True Color . ...

... An artificial comet holds secrets to Earths life . ... Astronomers recently discovered that Scholz's star passed close to the Sun 70,000 years ago. Wouldn't its gravity have sent Oort Cloud comets raining into the inner planets? ... COMETS | OORT CLOUD . Based on the number of long-period comets that enter the inner solar system, astronomers estimate there are probably trillions of