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Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
Shocked by Supernova 1987A
23.02.2002
Fifteen years ago today, the brightest supernova of modern times was sighted. Over time, astronomers have watched and waited for the expanding debris from this tremendous stellar explosion to crash into previously expelled material.
Saturn at the Lunar Limb
22.02.2002
Gliding through the sky on Wednesday evening, February 20th, a first quarter Moon seemed to run over bright planet Saturn as viewed from much of North America. In this sharp sequence of telescopic digital...
Comet Ikeya Zhang
21.02.2002
Comet Ikeya-Zhang is presently heading north in planet Earth's sky, framed by stars of the constellation Cetus. The comet was discovered as a faint, telescopic object near the western horizon on the evening...
Oddities of Star Cluster NGC 6397
20.02.2002
One of these stars is blinking. This star, a member of globular cluster NGC 6397, is noteworthy not just because it blinks, but because it blinks so fast and because its companion star is so atypical.
Water Ice Imaged in Martian Polar Cap
19.02.2002
Does water exist today on Mars? Yes, although the only place on Mars known to have water is the North Polar Cap, and that water is frozen. Views of this potentially life-enabling water-ice are usually obscured -- in the winter by darkness and in the summer by clouds.
A Radio Vista of Cygnus
18.02.2002
Shells of ancient supernovas, cocoons surrounding newborn stars, and specks from distant quasars highlight this tremendous vista toward the constellation of Cygnus. The representative color image covers about 10 degrees across on the sky but is only a small part of the Canadian Galactic Plane Survey in radio light.
The Local Bubble and the Galactic Neighborhood
17.02.2002
What surrounds the Sun in this neck of the Milky Way Galaxy? Our current best guess is depicted in the above map of the surrounding 1500 light years constructed from various observations and deductions.
Miranda, Chevron, and Alonso
16.02.2002
Miranda is a bizarre world which surely had a tempestuous past. The innermost of the larger Uranian moons, Miranda is almost 300 miles in diameter and was discovered on today's date in 1948 by American planetary astronomer Gerard Kuiper.
Saturn: Lord of the Rings
15.02.2002
Born on today's date in 1564, Galileo used a telescope to explore the Solar System. In 1610, he became the first to be amazed by Saturn's rings. After nearly 400 years, Saturn's magnificent rings still offer one of the most stunning astronomical sights.
Solar System Portrait
14.02.2002
On another Valentine's Day (February 14, 1990), cruising four billion miles from the Sun, the Voyager 1 spacecraft looked back to make this first ever family portrait of our Solar System. The complete portrait is a 60 frame mosaic made from a vantage point 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane.
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