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Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
Meteors over Inner Mongolia
13.12.2017
Did you ever get caught in a meteor shower? If yes, then every minute or so the sky sparked with fleeting flashes of light. This was the fate of the pictured astrophotographer during last year's Perseids meteor shower.
Highlights of the Winter Sky
12.12.2017
What's up in the sky this winter? The featured graphic gives a few highlights for Earth's northern hemisphere. Viewed as a clock face centered at the bottom, early winter sky events fan out toward the left, while late winter events are projected toward the right.
Mercury Visualized from MESSENGER
11.12.2017
What would it be like to fly over the planet Mercury? Images and data taken from NASA's robotic MESSENGER spacecraft that orbited Mercury from 2011 to 2015 have been digitally combined to envision a virtual flight that highlights much of the hot planet's surface.
In Green Company: Aurora over Norway
10.12.2017
Raise your arms if you see an aurora. With those instructions, two nights went by with, well, clouds -- mostly. On the third night of returning to same peaks, though, the sky not only cleared up but lit up with a spectacular auroral display.
Stardust in Aries
9.12.2017
This composition in stardust covers over 8 degrees on the northern sky. The mosaicked field of view is west of the familiar Pleiades star cluster, toward the zodiacal constellation Aries and the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy.
Alpine Superga Moonset
8.12.2017
December's Full Moon phase occurred near perigee, the closest point in its orbit around our fair planet. Big and bright, the fully illuminated lunar disk sets over rugged mountains in this early morningscape from Turin, Italy.
All the Eclipses of 2017
7.12.2017
As seen from planet Earth, all the lunar and solar eclipses of 2017 are represented at the same scale in these four panels. The year's celestial shadow play was followed through four different countries by one adventurous eclipse chaser.
HH 666: Carina Dust Pillar with Jet
6.12.2017
To some, it may look like a beehive harboring an evil bee. In reality, the featured Hubble image captures a cosmic pillar of dust, two-light years long, inside of which is Herbig-Haro 666 -- a young star emitting powerful jets.
A Horizon with Blue and Red
5.12.2017
What's happening on the horizon? The horizon itself, past a spinach field in Guatemala, shows not only trees but a large volcano: the VolcАn de Fuego (Volcano of Fire). The red glow at the top of the volcano is hot lava.
Earth and Moon
4.12.2017
On rare occasions, the Earth and Moon are photographed together. One of most spectacular times this occurred was 25 years ago this month when the Jupiter-bound Galileo spacecraft zoomed past our home planetary system. Then, robotic Galileo watched from about 15-times the Earth-Moon separation as our only natural satellite glided past our home world.
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