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Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
Total Eclipse of the Active Sun
20.06.2001
A total eclipse of the Sun is that special geocentric celestial event where the Moon passes exactly in front of the solar disk. During a fleeting few minutes of totality, fortunate earthdwellers located within...
Crescent Neptune and Triton
19.06.2001
Gliding silently through the outer Solar System, the Voyager 2 spacecraft camera captured Neptune and Triton together in crescent phase in 1989. The above picture of the gas giant planet and its cloudy moon was taken from behind just after closest approach.
NGC 4755: A Jewel Box of Stars
18.06.2001
The great variety of star colors in this open cluster underlie its name: The Jewel Box. One of the bright central stars is a red supergiant, in contrast to the many blue stars that surround it. The cluster, also known as Kappa Crucis contains just over 100 stars, and is about 10 million years old.
Colorful Clouds Of Carina
17.06.2001
Tumultuous clouds of the Carina Nebula, 8000 light-years away, glow in planet Earth's southern sky. Striking and detailed, this close-up of a portion of the famous nebula is a combination of exposures through six different filters taken with the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 in April of 1999.
APOD is Six Years Old Today
16.06.2001
Welcome to the seventh year of Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD). Editors Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell are extremely grateful for the continued large volume of gracious e-mail and APOD submissions (and also for the "occasional" critical note!). Today we would like to offer a very sincere thank you to all.
Messiers and Mars
15.06.2001
A telescopic tour of the constellation Sagittarius offers the many bright clusters and nebulae of dimensioned space in a starscape surrounding the galactic center. This gorgeous color deep-sky photograph visits two such lovely sights, cataloged by the 18th century cosmic tourist Charles Messier as M8 and M20.
Around The Arches Cluster
14.06.2001
The most compact cluster of stars known in our galaxy, the Arches cluster, boasts 100 or so massive, young stars contained within a diameter of one light-year. Seen toward the constellation Sagittarius, the Arches...
M94: Beyond the Blue
13.06.2001
Today's galaxy, M94 (NGC 4736), lies 15 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici. In the red light image (left), its very bright nucleus and tightly wound spiral arms seem to slowly fade into a faint outer disk.
The Cartwheel Galaxy
12.06.2001
By chance, a collision of two galaxies has created a surprisingly recognizable shape on a cosmic scale. The Cartwheel Galaxy is part of a group of galaxies about 500 million light years away in the constellation Sculptor. Two smaller galaxies in the group are visible on the left of the above photograph.
Globular Cluster M2
11.06.2001
Beneath the south pole of our Milky Way Galaxy lies a ball of over 100,000 stars. M2, the second object on Charles Messier's eighteenth century list of bright diffuse sky objects...
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