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Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
APOD: 2024 December 23 Б Christmas Tree Aurora
23.12.2024
It was December and the sky lit up like a Christmas tree. Shimmering, the vivid green, blue, and purple auroral colors that formed the tree-like apparition were caused by high atmospheric oxygen and nitrogen reacting to a burst of incoming electrons.
APOD: 2024 December 22 Б The Local Fluff
22.12.2024
The stars are not alone. In the disk of our Milky Way Galaxy, about 10 percent of visible matter is in the form of gas called the interstellar medium (ISM). The ISM is not uniform and shows patchiness even near our Sun.
A Year in Sunsets
21.12.2024
A year in sunsets, from April 2023 to March 2024, track along the western horizon in these stacked panoramic views. The well-planed sequence is constructed of images recorded near the 21st day of the indicated month from the same location overlooking Cairo, Egypt.
The Long Night Moon
20.12.2024
On the night of December 15, the Full Moon was bright. Known to some as the Cold Moon or the Long Night Moon, it was the closest Full Moon to the northern winter solstice and the last Full Moon of 2024. This Full Moon was also at a major lunar standstill.
Messier 2
19.12.2024
After the Crab Nebula, this giant star cluster is the second entry in 18th century astronomer Charles Messier's famous list of things that are not comets. M2 is one of the largest globular star clusters now known to roam the halo of our Milky Way galaxy.
APOD: 2024 December 18 Б NGC 660: Polar Ring Galaxy
18.12.2024
What kind of strange galaxy is this? This rare structure is known as a polar ring galaxy, and it seems to have two different rings of stars. In this galaxy, NGC 660, one ring...
APOD: 2024 December 17 Б Near to the Heart Nebula
17.12.2024
What excites the Heart Nebula? First, the large emission nebula on the upper left, catalogued as IC 1805, looks somewhat like a human heart. The nebula glows brightly in red light emitted by its most prominent element, hydrogen, but this long-exposure image was also blended with light emitted by sulfur (yellow) and oxygen (blue).
APOD: 2024 December 16 Б A Kilometer High Cliff on Comet Churyumov Gerasimenko
16.12.2024
This kilometer high cliff occurs on the surface of a comet. It was discovered on the dark nucleus of Comet Churyumov - Gerasimenko (CG) by Rosetta, a robotic spacecraft launched by ESA, which orbited the comet from 2014 to 2016. The ragged cliff, as featured here, was imaged by Rosetta early in its mission.
APOD: 2024 December 15 Б Geminid Meteors over a Snowy Forest
15.12.2024
Meteors have been flowing out from the constellation Gemini. This was expected, as mid-December is the time of the Geminid Meteor Shower. Pictured here, over two dozen meteors were caught in successively added exposures taken over several hours early Saturday morning from a snowy forest in Poland.
Apollo 17 s Moonship
14.12.2024
Awkward and angular looking, Apollo 17's lunar module Challenger was designed for flight in the near vacuum of space. Digitally enhanced and reprocessed, this picture taken from Apollo 17's command module America shows Challenger's ascent stage in lunar orbit.
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