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Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
Natural Saturn On The Cassini Cruise
5.11.1998
What you could see approaching Saturn aboard an interplanetary cruise ship would closely resemble this subtly shaded view of the gorgeous ringed gas giant. Processed by the Hubble Heritage project, the picture intentionally avoids...
Cosmology Solved?
4.11.1998
At the Nature of the Universe Debate held last month at the Smithsonian, top cosmologists P. James E. Peebles (Princeton) and Michael S. Turner (Chicago) argued over whether new data is finally resolving the type of universe in which we live.
Sextans A: A Seemingly Square Galaxy
3.11.1998
What's bothering local galaxy Sextans A? A small dwarf irregular galaxy spanning 5 thousand light years across, Sextans A is located only 5 million light-years away. Named for its home constellation of Sextans, the "diamond in the rough" structure relates to an ancient unknown event.
PG 1115: A Ghost of Lensing Past
2.11.1998
In this tangle of quasars and galaxies lies a clue to the expansion rate of the universe. A diffuse glow evident in the picture on the left reveals a normal elliptical galaxy. Directly behind this galaxy lies a normal quasar.
The Cat's Eye Nebula
1.11.1998
Three thousand light years away, a dying star throws off shells of glowing gas. This image from the Hubble Space Telescope reveals The Cat's Eye Nebula to be one of the most complex planetary nebulae known.
Bats And The Barren Moon
31.10.1998
This picture, taken as the Apollo 17 astronauts orbited the Moon in 1972, depicts the stark lunar surface around the Eratosthenes and Copernicus craters. Images of a Moon devoid of life are familiar to denizens of the space age.
John Glenn: Discovery Launch
30.10.1998
At left, the Space Shuttle Discovery waits in darkness on Kennedy Space Center's launch pad 39B. At right, on Thursday October 29, Discovery blasts through a bright afternoon sky returning Senator John Glenn to space over 36 years after he became the first American in orbit.
John Glenn: Friendship 7 To Discovery
29.10.1998
Rehearsing for his historic flight on February 20, 1962, Mercury program astronaut John H. Glenn Jr. works in a cramped training capsule preparing for a few hours' voyage through space. Dubbed Friendship...
NGC 6210: The Turtle in Space Planetary Nebula
28.10.1998
A Turtle in Space? Planetary nebula NGC 6210 may look like a giant space turtle, but it is actually much more massive and violent. Fortunately, this gas cloud in Hercules lies about 6500 light years away.
Henrietta Leavitt Calibrates the Stars
27.10.1998
Humanity's understanding of the relative brightness and variability of stars was revolutionized by the work of Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868-1921). Working at Harvard College Observatory, Leavitt precisely calibrated the photographic magnitudes of 47 stars to which all other stars could be compared.
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