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Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD)
Perseid Outburst at Westmeath Lookout
23.09.2021
This year an outburst of Perseid meteors surprised skywatchers. The reliable meteor shower's peak was predicted for the night of August 12/13. But persistent visual observers in North America were deluged with...
Harvest Moon Trail
22.09.2021
Famed in festival, story, and song the best known full moon is the Harvest Moon. For northern hemisphere dwellers that's a traditional name of the full moon nearest the September equinox. Seen from...
Equinox on a Spinning Earth
21.09.2021
When does the line between night and day become vertical? Today. Today is an equinox on planet Earth, a time of year when day and night are most nearly equal. At an equinox, the Earth's terminator -- the dividing line between day and night -- becomes vertical and connects the north and south poles.
Sun Spot Hill
20.09.2021
Is this giant orange ball about to roll down that tree-lined hill? No, because the giant orange ball is actually the Sun. Our Solar System's central star was captured rising beyond a hill on Earth twelve days ago complete with a delightfully detailed foreground.
Lynds Dark Nebula
19.09.2021
Stars are forming in Lynds Dark Nebula (LDN) 1251. About 1,000 light-years away and drifting above the plane of our Milky Way galaxy, the dusty molecular cloud is part of a complex of dark nebulae mapped toward the Cepheus flare region.
Rings and Seasons of Saturn
18.09.2021
On Saturn, the rings tell you the season. On Earth, Wednesday marks an equinox, the time when the Earth's equator tilts directly toward the Sun. Since Saturn's grand rings orbit along...
Rubin's Galaxy
17.09.2021
In this Hubble Space Telescope image the bright, spiky stars lie in the foreground toward the heroic northern constellation Perseus and well within our own Milky Way galaxy. In sharp focus beyond is UGC 2885, a giant spiral galaxy about 232 million light-years distant.
Video: Flash on Jupiter
16.09.2021
There has been a flash on Jupiter. A few days ago, several groups monitoring our Solar System's largest planet noticed a two-second long burst of light. Such flashes have been seen before, with the most famous being a series of impactor strikes in 1994.
North America and the Pelican
15.09.2021
Fans of our fair planet might recognize the outlines of these cosmic clouds. On the left, bright emission outlined by dark, obscuring dust lanes seems to trace a continental shape, lending the popular name North America Nebula to the emission region cataloged as NGC 7000.
Cyclone Paths on Planet Earth
14.09.2021
Where on Earth do cyclones go? Known as hurricanes when in the Atlantic Ocean and typhoons when in the Pacific, the featured map shows the path of all major storms from 1985 through 2005. The map shows graphically that cyclones usually occur over water, which makes sense since evaporating warm water gives them energy.
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