Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
Horizon to Horizon21.12.2007
Scroll right and journey from horizon to horizon as your gaze sweeps through the zenith in the night sky over Beg-Meil, France. Recorded on December 13th, the entertaining panorama (image key) covers 210 degrees in 21 separate exposures, beginning on the beach with bright star Sirius rising in the southeast.
Reflections on the 1970s
20.12.2007
The 1970s are sometimes ignored by astronomers. In particular, this beautiful grouping of reflection nebulae in Orion - NGC 1977, NGC 1975, and NGC 1973 - are usually overlooked in favor of the substantial glow from the nearby stellar nursery better known as the Orion Nebula.
Stars and Dust through Baade s Window
19.12.2007
Billions of stars light up the direction toward the center of our Galaxy. The vast majority of these stars are themselves billions of years old, rivaling their home Milky Way Galaxy in age. Together with interstellar dust, these old stars combine to create this yellowish starscape.
Unusual Silica Rich Soil Discovered on Mars
18.12.2007
You're rolling across Mars when you unexpectedly uncover some unusually light soil. You stop. You turn. You return to inspect the soil and find out it is almost purely silica -- the main ingredient in quartz and glass. Such soil has never been found on Mars before. What created this soil?
Saturn s Ancient Rings
17.12.2007
How old are Saturn's rings? No one is quite sure. One possibility is that the rings formed relatively recently in our Solar System's history, perhaps only about 100 million years ago when a moon-sized object broke up near Saturn.
The Holographic Principle
16.12.2007
Is this picture worth a thousand words? According to the Holographic Principle, the most information you can get from this image is about 3 x 10 65 bits for a normal sized computer monitor.
Mountains of Creation
15.12.2007
(xxxedit and linkxxx) This fantastic skyscape lies at the eastern edge of giant stellar nursery W5, about 7,000 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. An infrared view from the Spitzer Space Telescope...
Apollo 17: Shorty Crater Panorama
14.12.2007
In December of 1972, Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent about 75 hours on the Moon in the Taurus-Littrow valley, while colleague Ronald Evans orbited overhead. This sharp panorama is digitally stitched together from pictures taken by Cernan as he and Schmitt roamed the valley floor.
T Tauri and Hind s Variable Nebula
13.12.2007
The orange star centered in this remarkable telescopic skyview is T Tauri, protoytpe of the class of T Tauri variable stars. Nearby it is a dusty yellow cosmic cloud historically known as Hind's Variable Nebula (aka NGC 1555/1554).
Mars Rover Races to Survive
12.12.2007
The Martian rover Spirit is now in the race of its life. The rolling robot is trying to reach an outpost to spend the winter, but it keeps getting bogged down in soft sand on Mars.
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