Tag: nasa
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Gamma Cassiopeiae shines high in northern autumn evening skies. It’s the brightest spiky star in this telescopic field of view toward the constellation Cassiopeia. Gamma Cas shares the ethereal-looking scene with ghostly interstellar clouds of gas and dust, IC 59 (top left) and IC 63. About 600 light-years distant, the…
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History’s second known periodic comet is Comet Encke (2P/Encke). As it swings through the inner Solar System, Encke’s orbit takes it from an aphelion, its greatest distance from the Sun, inside the orbit of Jupiter to a perihelion just inside the orbit of Mercury. Returning to its perihelion every 3.3…
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History’s first known periodic comet, Comet Halley (1P/Halley), returns to the inner Solar System every 76 years or so. The famous comet made its last appearance to the naked-eye in 1986. But dusty debris from Comet Halley can be seen raining through planet Earth’s skies twice a year during two…
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In 60 seconds, this setting Sun will turn green. Actually, the top of the Sun already appears not only green, but wavey — along with all of its edges. The Sun itself is unchanged — both effects are caused by looking along hot and cold layers in Earth’s atmosphere. The…
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This dance is to the death. As these two large galaxies duel, a cosmic bridge of stars, gas, and dust currently stretches over 75,000 light-years and joins them. The bridge itself is strong evidence that these two immense star systems have passed close to each other and experienced violent tides…
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There goes another one! Volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io keep erupting. To investigate, NASA’s robotic Juno spacecraft has begun a series of visits to this very strange moon. Io is about the size of Earth’s moon, but because of gravitational flexing by Jupiter and other moons, Io’s interior gets heated…
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What does this aurora look like to you? While braving the cold to watch the skies above northern Canada early one morning in 2013, a most unusual aurora appeared. The aurora definitely appeared to be shaped like something, but what? Two ghostly possibilities recorded by the astrophotographer were “witch” and…
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Half way between New Moon and Full Moon is the Moon’s first quarter phase. That’s a quarter of the way around its moonthly orbit. At the first quarter phase, half the Moon’s visible side is illuminated by sunlight. For the Moon’s third quarter phase, half way between Full Moon and…
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Galaxies abound in this sharp telescopic image recorded on October 12 in dark skies over June Lake, California. The celestial scene spans nearly 2 degrees within the boundaries of the well-trained northern constellation Canes Venatici. Prominent at the upper left 23.5 million light-years distant is big, beautiful spiral galaxy NGC…
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This timelapse series captured on October 14 is set against the sunrise view from Sunset Point, Bryce Canyon, planet Earth. Of course on that date the New Moon caught up with the Sun in the canyon’s morning skies. Local temperatures fell as the Moon’s shadow swept across the high altitude…
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It’s so big it is easy to miss. The entire Veil Nebula spans six times the diameter of the full moon, but is so dim you need binoculars to see it. The nebula was created about 15,000 years ago when a star in the constellation of the Swan (Cygnus) exploded.…
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It’s not the big ring that’s attracting the most attention. Although the big planet-forming ring around the star PDS 70 is clearly imaged and itself quite interesting. It’s also not the planet on the right, just inside the big disk, that’s being talked about the most. Although the planet PDS…
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She knew everything but the question. She was well aware that there would be a complete annular eclipse of the Sun visible from their driving destination: Lake Abert in Oregon. She knew that the next ring-of-fire eclipse would occur in the USA only in 16 more years, making this a…
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Yes, but can your tree do this? If you look closely at the ground in the featured image, you will see many images of yesterday’s solar eclipse — created by a tree. Gaps between tree leaves act like pinhole lenses and each create a small image of the partially eclipsed…
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