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Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
Denizen of the Tarantula Nebula
7.04.1999
The star cluster at lower right, cataloged as Hodge 301, is a denizen of the Tarantula Nebula. An evocative nebula in the southern sky, the sprawling cosmic Tarantula is an energetic star forming region some 168,000 light-years distant in our neighboring galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud.
NGC 6334: The Bear Claw Nebula
6.04.1999
NGC 6334 is a cloud of gas and dust that appears to be forming massive stars. At 5500 light-years away, the Bear Claw Nebula, as it has also been dubbed, is more than three times as distant as the Orion Nebula, but still close enough for detailed study.
The Launch of STARDUST
5.04.1999
NASA launches powerful rockets. One such rocket, the Delta II, recently lofted the STARDUST mission into the nearby Solar System. STARDUST is expected to photograph Comet Wild in 2004 as it zooms by, and return interstellar dust samples to Earth in 2006.
Hot Gas and Dark Matter
4.04.1999
Is the gravity of the galaxies seen in this image high enough to contain the glowing hot gas? Superposed on an optical picture of a group of galaxies is an image taken in X-ray light.
The Radio Sky: Tuned to 408MHz
3.04.1999
Tune your radio telescope to 408MHz (408 million cycles per second) and check out the Radio Sky! You should find that frequency on your dial somewhere between US broadcast television channels 13 and 14.
Stars of NGC 206
2.04.1999
Nestled within the dusty arms of the large spiral galaxy Andromeda (M31), the star cluster NGC 206 is one of the largest star forming regions known in our local group of galaxies. The beautiful...
Ski Mars
1.04.1999
These brightly reflecting fields of snow or frost are on the slopes of a crater rim in the northern hemisphere of Mars. They are 500 meters or so long and have lasted through about eight months of the Red Planet's spring and summer weather.
PG 1115+080: A Gravitational Cloverleaf
31.03.1999
All four blue images in the above photograph are the same object. The gravitational lens effect of the red, foreground, elliptical galaxy visible near image center creates a cloverleaf image of the single distant quasar. Light from the quasar is pulled around the massive galaxy in different paths, corresponding to different images.
An Anomalous SETI Signal
30.03.1999
No one knows for sure what caused this signal. The bright colors on the blue background indicate that an anomalous signal was received here on Earth by a radio telescope involved in a Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). A search for these signals is ongoing by several groups including volunteer members of the SETI League.
NGC 1850: Gas Clouds and Star Clusters
29.03.1999
There's nothing like it in our own Galaxy. Globular clusters as young as NGC 1850 don't exist here. Globular clusters only 40 millions of years old can still be found in the neighboring LMC galaxy, though, but perhaps none so unusual as NGC 1850.
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