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Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
Athena to the Moon
28.02.2025
Planet Earth hangs in the background of this space age selfie. The snapshot was captured by the IM-2 Nova-C lander Athena, just after stage separation following its February 26 launch to the Moon.
Open Star Clusters M35 and NGC 2158
27.02.2025
Framed in this single, starry, telescopic field of view are two open star clusters, M35 and NGC 2158. Located within the boundaries of the constellation Gemini, they do appear to be side by side. Its stars concentrated toward the upper right, M35 is relatively nearby, though.
APOD: 2025 February 26 Б Einstein Ring Surrounds Nearby Galaxy Center
26.02.2025
Do you see the ring? If you look very closely at the center of the featured galaxy NGC 6505, a ring becomes evident. It is the gravity of NGC 6505, the nearby (z = 0.042)...
APOD: 2025 February 25 Б M41: The Little Beehive Star Cluster
25.02.2025
Why are there so many bright blue stars? Stars are usually born in clusters, and the brightest and most massive of these stars typically glow blue. Less-bright, non-blue stars like our Sun surely also exist in this M41 star cluster but are harder to see. A few bright orange-appearing red giant stars are visible.
APOD: 2025 February 24 Б Light Pillar over Erupting Etna
24.02.2025
Can a lava flow extend into the sky? No, but light from the lava flow can. One effect is something quite unusual -- a volcanic light pillar. More typically, light pillars are caused by sunlight and so appear as a bright column that extends upward above a rising or setting Sun.
APOD: 2025 February 23 Б Saturn in Infrared from Cassini
23.02.2025
Saturn looks slightly different in infrared light. Bands of clouds show great structure, including long stretching storms. Also quite striking in infrared is the unusual hexagonal cloud pattern surrounding Saturn's North Pole. Each side of the dark hexagon spans roughly the width of our Earth.
Rima Hyginus
22.02.2025
Rima Hyginus is a spectacular fissure, some 220 kilometers long, found near the center of the lunar near side. Easy to spot in telescopic views of the Moon, it stretches top left to bottom right across this lunar closeup. The image was made with exaggerated colors that reflect the mineral composition of the lunar soil.
Hubble s Andromeda Galaxy Mosaic
21.02.2025
The largest photomosaic ever assembled from Hubble Space Telescope image data is a panoramic view of our neighboring spiral Andromeda Galaxy. With 600 overlapping frames assembled from observations made from July 2010 to December 2022, the full Hubble Andromeda Galaxy mosaic spans almost six full moons across planet Earth's sky.
Messier 87
20.02.2025
Enormous elliptical galaxy Messier 87 is about 50 million light-years away. Also known as NGC 4486, the giant galaxy holds trillions of stars compared to the mere billions of stars in our large spiral Milky Way. M87 reigns as the large central elliptical galaxy in the Virgo galaxy cluster.
APOD: 2025 February 19 Б HH 30: A Star System with Planets Now Forming
19.02.2025
How do stars and planets form? New clues have been found in the protoplanetary system Herbig-Haro 30 by the James Webb Space Telescope in concert with Hubble and the Earth-bound ALMA. The observations show, among other things, that large dust grains are more concentrated into a central disk where they can form planets.
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