Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
Mimas: Small Moon with A Big Crater24.09.1995
Mimas is one of the smaller moons of Saturn but shows one of the largest impact craters! In fact, if the impact had been much greater, it would have disrupted the entire satellite. The large crater has been named Herschel after the 1789 discoverer of Mimas, Sir William Herschel.
Titan: Saturn's Smog Moon
23.09.1995
The largest moon of Saturn is a rare wonder. Titan is the only one of Saturn's moons with an atmosphere, and one of only two moons in the Solar System with this distinction (Neptune's Triton is the other).
Standing on the Moon
22.09.1995
Pictured, the second person to walk on the Moon: Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin. During this Apollo 11 mission, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon while Michael Collins circled in the Command Module above.
One Small Step
21.09.1995
On July 20th, 1969, a human first set foot on the Moon. Pictured above is the first lunar footprint. The footprint and distinction of the first person to walk on the Moon belong to Neil Armstrong.
GL 105C: The Coolest Star?
20.09.1995
Is the dim star to the upper right of this false-color picture the coolest possible normal star? From this recent picture by the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have estimated its mass is just high enough for it to fuse hydrogen into helium in its core.
The Small Cloud of Magellan
19.09.1995
Almost unknown to casual observers in the northern hemisphere, the southern sky contains two diffuse wonders known as the Magellanic Clouds. The Magellanic Clouds are small irregular galaxies orbiting our own larger Milky Way spiral galaxy.
The Large Cloud of Magellan
18.09.1995
Magellan and his crew had plenty of time to study the southern sky during their famous voyage around the world. As a result, two fuzzy cloud like objects, nestled among the southern constellations of Doradus and Tucana are now known as the Clouds of Magellan.
Thousands of Coma Cluster Galaxies
17.09.1995
Almost every object in the above photograph is a galaxy. The Coma Cluster of galaxies pictured is a dense cluster containing many thousands of galaxies. Many of these galaxies contain as many stars as our own Milky Way Galaxy.
Rockets and Robert Goddard
16.09.1995
Robert H. Goddard, one of the founding fathers of modern rocketry, was born in Worcester Massachusetts in 1882. As a 16 year old, Goddard read H.G. Wells' science fiction classic "War Of The Worlds" and dreamed of spaceflight. By 1926 he had designed, built, and launched the world's first liquid fuel rocket.
Space Station Mir Over Earth
15.09.1995
This picture of the Russian space station Mir over the Pacific Ocean was recorded by the Space Shuttle Discovery in February 1995. During this mission Discovery performed a rendezvous and "fly around" with Mir in preparation for a future docking mission.
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