Αστρονομική Εικόνα της Ημέρας από τη NASA

Προηγούμενες Αστρονομικές Εικόνες της Ημέρας από τη NASA

Comet Pons-Brooks in Northern Spring

09/03/2024

As spring approaches for northern skygazers, Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks is growing brighter. Currently visible with small telescopes and binoculars, the Halley-type comet could reach naked eye visibility in the coming weeks. Seen despite a foggy atmosphere, the comet's green coma and long tail hover near the horizon in this well-composed deep night skyscape from Revuca, Slovakia recorded on March 5. M31, also known as the Andromeda galaxy, and bright yellowish star Mirach, beta star of the constellation Andromeda, hang in the sky above the comet. The Andromeda galaxy is some 2.5 million light-years beyond the Milky Way. Comet Pons-Brooks is a periodic visitor to the inner Solar System and less than 14 light-minutes away. Reaching its perihelion on April 21, this comet should be visible in the sky during the April 8 total solar eclipse.

The Tarantula Zone

08/03/2024

The Tarantula Nebula, also known as 30 Doradus, is more than a thousand light-years in diameter, a giant star forming region within nearby satellite galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud. About 180 thousand light-years away, it's the largest, most violent star forming region known in the whole Local Group of galaxies. The cosmic arachnid sprawls across this magnificent view, an assembly of image data from large space- and ground-based telescopes. Within the Tarantula (NGC 2070), intense radiation, stellar winds, and supernova shocks from the central young cluster of massive stars cataloged as R136 energize the nebular glow and shape the spidery filaments. Around the Tarantula are other star forming regions with young star clusters, filaments, and blown-out bubble-shaped clouds. In fact, the frame includes the site of the closest supernova in modern times, SN 1987A, at lower right. The rich field of view spans about 2 degrees or 4 full moons in the southern constellation Dorado. But were the Tarantula Nebula closer, say 1,500 light-years distant like the Milky Way's own star forming Orion Nebula, it would take up half the sky.

The Crew-8 Nebula

07/03/2024

Not the James Webb Space Telescope's latest view of a distant galactic nebula, this cloud of gas and dust dazzled spacecoast skygazers on March 3. The telephoto snapshot was taken minutes after the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket on the SpaceX Crew-8 mission to the International Space Station. It captures plumes and exhaust from the separated first and second stages, a drifting Rorschach pattern in dark evening skies. The bright spot near bottom center within the stunning terrestrial nebulosity is the second stage engine firing to carry 4 humans to space in the Crew Dragon spacecraft Endeavour. In sharp silhouette just above it is the Falcon 9 first stage booster orienting itself for return to a landing zone at Cape Canaveral, planet Earth. This reuseable first stage booster was making its first flight. But the Crew Dragon Endeavour capsule has flown humans to low Earth orbit and back again 4 times before. Endeavour, as a name for a spacecraft, has also seen reuse, christening retired Space Shuttle Endeavour and the Apollo 15 command module.

M102: Edge-on Disk Galaxy

06/03/2024

What kind of celestial object is this? A relatively normal galaxy -- but seen from its edge. Many disk galaxies are actually just as thin as NGC 5866, the Spindle galaxy, pictured here, but are not seen edge-on from our vantage point. A perhaps more familiar galaxy seen edge-on is our own Milky Way galaxy. Also cataloged as M102, the Spindle galaxy has numerous and complex dust lanes appearing dark and red, while many of the bright stars in the disk give it a more blue underlying hue. The blue disk of young stars can be seen in this Hubble image extending past the dust in the extremely thin galactic plane. There is evidence that the Spindle galaxy has cannibalized smaller galaxies over the past billion years or so, including multiple streams of faint stars, dark dust that extends away from the main galactic plane, and a surrounding group of galaxies (not shown). In general, many disk galaxies become thin because the gas that forms them collides with itself as it rotates about the gravitational center. The Spindle galaxy lies about 50 million light years distant toward the constellation of the Dragon (Draco).

NGC 2170: Angel Nebula Abstract Art

05/03/2024

Is this a painting or a photograph? In this celestial abstract art composed with a cosmic brush, dusty nebula NGC 2170, also known as the Angel Nebula, shines just above the image center. Reflecting the light of nearby hot stars, NGC 2170 is joined by other bluish reflection nebulae, a red emission region, many dark absorption nebulae, and a backdrop of colorful stars. Like the common household items that abstract painters often choose for their subjects, the clouds of gas, dust, and hot stars featured here are also commonly found in a setting like this one -- a massive, star-forming molecular cloud in the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros). The giant molecular cloud, Mon R2, is impressively close, estimated to be only 2,400 light-years or so away. At that distance, this canvas would be over 60 light-years across.

Light Pillars Over Inner Mongolia

04/03/2024

What's happening across that field? Pictured here are not auroras but nearby light pillars, a phenomenon typically much closer. In most places on Earth, a lucky viewer can see a Sun pillar, a column of light appearing to extend up from the Sun caused by flat fluttering ice-crystals reflecting sunlight from the upper atmosphere. Usually, these ice crystals evaporate before reaching the ground. During freezing temperatures, however, flat fluttering ice crystals may form near the ground in a form of light snow sometimes known as a crystal fog. These ice crystals may then reflect ground lights in columns not unlike a Sun pillar. The featured image was taken last month across the Wulan Butong Grasslands in Inner Mongolia, China.

A Total Solar Eclipse Close-Up in Real Time

03/03/2024

How would you feel if the Sun disappeared? Many eclipse watchers across the USA surprised themselves in 2017 with the awe that they felt and the exclamations that they made as the Sun momentarily disappeared behind the Moon. Perhaps expecting just a brief moment of dusk, the spectacle of unusually rapid darkness, breathtakingly bright glowing beads around the Moon's edge, shockingly pink solar prominences, and a strangely detailed corona stretching across the sky caught many a curmudgeon by surprise. Many of these attributes were captured in the featured real-time, three-minute video of 2017's total solar eclipse. The video frames were acquired in Warm Springs, Oregon with equipment specifically designed by Jun Ho Oh to track a close-up of the Sun's periphery during eclipse. As the video ends, the Sun is seen being reborn on the other side of the Moon from where it departed. Next month, on April 8th, a new total solar eclipse will be visible in a thin band across North America.

Odysseus on the Moon

02/03/2024

Methalox rocket engine firing, Odysseus' landing legs absorb first contact with the lunar surface in this wide-angle snapshot from a camera on board the robotic Intuitive Machines Nova-C moon lander. Following the landing on February 22, broken landing legs, visible in the image, ultimately left the lander at rest but tilted. Odysseus' gentle lean into a sloping lunar surface preserved the phone booth-sized lander's ability to operate, collect solar power, and return images and data to Earth. Its exact landing site in the Moon's far south polar region was imaged by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Donated by NASA, the American flag seen on the lander's central panel is 1970 Apollo program flight hardware.

Η Αστρονομική Εικόνα της Ημέρας από τη NASA

Terminator Moon: A Moonscape of Shadows

22/04/2025