Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos!Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe isfeatured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2021 June 28 A Paper Moon Solar Eclipse Image Credit & Copyright: Wang Letian (Eyes at Night) Explanation: It may look like a paper Moon. Sailing past a canvas Sun. But those are not cardboard clouds. And it's not make believe. The featured picture of an orange colored sky is real -- a digital composite of two exposures of the solar eclipse that occurred earlier this month. The first exposure was taken with a regular telescope that captured an overexposed Sun and an underexposed Moon, while the second image was taken with a solar telescope that captured details of the chromosphere of the background Sun.The Sun's canvas-like texture was brought up by imaging in a very specific shade of red emitted by hydrogen. Several prominences can be seen around the Sun's edge. The image was captured just before sunset from Xilingol, Inner Mongolia, China.It's also not make-believe to imagine that the Moon is made of dense rock, the Sun is made of hot gas, and clouds are made of floating droplets of water...

APOD: 2021 June 27 - The Dancing Auroras of Saturn Discover the cosmos!Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe isfeatured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2021 June 27 The Dancing Auroras of Saturn Image Credit: NASA,Cassini,VIMS Team,U. Arizona, U. Leicester, JPL, ASI Explanation: What drives auroras on Saturn?To help find out, scientists have sorted through hundreds of infrared images of Saturn taken by the Cassini spacecraft for other purposes, trying to find enough aurora images to correlate changes and make movies.Once made, some movies clearly show that Saturnian auroras can change not only with the angle of the Sun, but also as the planet rotates.Furthermore, some auroral changes appear related to waves in Saturn's magnetosphere likely caused by Saturn's moons.Pictured here, a false-colored image taken in 2007 shows Saturn in three bands of infrared light. The rings reflect relatively blue sunlight, while the planet itself glows in comparatively low energy red. A band of southern aurora in visible in green.In has recently been found that auroras heat Saturn's upper atmosphere.Understanding Saturn's auroras is a path toward a better understanding of Earth's auroras. Tomorrow's picture: paper moon eclipse <| Archive| Submissions | Index|...

APOD: 2021 June 26 - Pixels in the Sun Discover the cosmos!Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe isfeatured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2021 June 26 Pixels in the Sun Image Credit &Copyright:Wang Letian (Eyes at Night) Explanation: These two panels, composed of video frames madewith a safe solar telescope andhydrogen alpha filter,show remarkably sharp details onthe solar diskand giant prominences along the Sun's edge on June 6 (top) and June 18.Taken from Beijing, China, they also show a transit of theInternational Space Station and China's newTiangong Space Stationin silhouette against the bright Sun.TheInternational Space Stationis near center in the bottom panel,crossing the solar disk left of bright active region AR2833 and belowa large looping solar filament.China's space station is below solar active region AR2827 andright of center in the top panel,seen as a smaller, combined "+" and "-" shape.The pictures of thetransiting orbital outpostswere taken with the same equipment and at the same pixel scale,with the International Space Station some 492 kilometers away.China's space station was over 400 kilometersfrom the camera. Tomorrow's picture: ring around aurora<| Archive| Submissions | Index| Search| Calendar| RSS| Education| About APOD| Discuss| > Authors &...

APOD: 2021 June 25 - Andromeda in a Single Shot Discover the cosmos!Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe isfeatured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2021 June 25 Andromeda in a Single Shot Image Credit &Copyright:Miguel Claro(TWAN,Dark Sky Alqueva) Explanation: How far can you see?TheAndromeda Galaxy, 2.5 million light years away, is the most distantobject easily seen by the unaided eye.Other denizens of the night sky, like stars, clusters, and nebulae,are typically hundreds to thousands of light-years distant.That's far beyond the Solar System but well withinour own Milky Way Galaxy.Also known as M31, the external galaxy posesdirectly above a chimney in this well-planneddeep night skyscapefrom an old mine in southern Portugal.The image was captured in a single exposure tracking the sky,so the foreground is slightly blurred by the camera's motion whileAndromeda itself looms large.The galaxy's brighter central region, normally all that'svisible to the naked-eye, can be seen extending to spiral armswith fainter outer reaches spanning over 4 full moons across the sky.Of course in only 5 billion years or so, the stars of Andromeda couldspan theentire night sky as the Andromeda Galaxymerges with the Milky Way. Tomorrow's picture: pixels in the Sun<|...

APOD: 2021 June 24 - Messier 99 Discover the cosmos!Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe isfeatured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2021 June 24 Messier 99 Image Credit: NASA, ESA,Hubble, Janice Lee; Processing & Copyright: Leo Shatz Explanation: Grand designspiral galaxy Messier 99looks majestic on a truly cosmic scale.This recently processedfull galaxy portraitstretches over 70,000 light-years across M99.The sharp view is a combination of ultraviolet, visible,and infrared image data from the Hubble Space Telescope.About 50 million light-years distant toward the well-groomedconstellation Coma Bernices, the face-on spiral is amember of the nearbyVirgo Galaxy Cluster.Also cataloged as NGC 4254, aclose encounterwith another Virgo cluster member has likelyinfluenced the shape of its well-defined, blue spiral arms. Tomorrow's picture: single shot Andromeda<| Archive| Submissions | Index| Search| Calendar| RSS| Education| About APOD| Discuss| > Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff(MTU) &Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)NASA Official: Phillip NewmanSpecific rights apply.NASA WebPrivacy Policy and Important NoticesA service of:ASD atNASA /GSFC& Michigan Tech. U.

APOD: 2021 June 23 - STARFORGE: A Star Formation Simulation Discover the cosmos!Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe isfeatured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. STARFORGE: A Star Formation Simulation Video & Text Credit: Michael Y. Grudić (Northwestern U.) et al., STARFORGE Collaboration; Music: Prelude, Op. 28, No. 4 in E Minor (Frédéric Chopin) Explanation: How do stars form? Most form in giant molecular clouds located in the central disk of a galaxy. The process is started, influenced, and limited by the stellar winds, jets, high energy starlight, and supernova explosions of previously existing stars.The featured video shows these complex interactions as computed by the STARFORGE simulation of a gas cloud 20,000 times the mass of our Sun.In the time-lapse visualization, lighter regions indicate denser gas, color encodes the gas speed (purple is slow, orange is fast), while dots indicate the positions of newly formed stars.As the video begins, a gas cloud spanning about 50 light years begins to condense under its own gravity. Within 2 million years, the first stars form, while newly formed massive stars are seen to expel impressive jets.The simulation is frozen after 4.3 million years, and the...

APOD: 2021 June 22 - HD 163296: Jet from a Star in Formation Discover the cosmos!Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe isfeatured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2021 June 22 HD 163296: Jet from a Star in Formation Image Credit: Visible: VLT/MUSE (ESO); Radio: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO) Explanation: How are jets created during star formation?No one is sure, although recent images of the young star system HD 163296 are quite illuminating.The central star in the featured image is still forming but seen already surrounded by arotating disk and anoutward moving jet.The disk is shown in radio waves taken by the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, and show gaps likely created by the gravity of very-young planets. The jet, shown in visible light taken by the Very Large Telescope (VLT, also in Chile), expels fast-moving gas -- mostly hydrogen -- from the disk center. The system spans hundreds of times the Earth-Sun distance (au). Details of these new observations are being interpreted to bolster conjectures that the jets are generated and shaped, at least in part, by magnetic fields in the rotating disk.Future observations of HD 163296 and other similar star-forming...