Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Light Pillars over Finland

Light Pillars over Finland: APOD: 2013 December 18 - Light Pillars over Finland


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2013 December 18



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Light Pillars over Finland

Image Credit & Copyright: Thomas Kast
Explanation: What's happening behind those houses? Pictured above are not aurora but nearby light pillars, a local phenomenon that can appear as a distant one. 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. While going out to buy cat food, a quick thinking photographer captured the above light pillars extending up from bright parking lot lights in Oulu, Finland.

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Mind-Bending View of a Solar Eclipse from the Stratosphere

Mind-Bending View of a Solar Eclipse from the Stratosphere:



The solar eclipse on Friday, March 20, 2015, photographed at 14,000 meters. Credit and copyright: Guillaume Cannat.


The solar eclipse on Friday, March 20, 2015, photographed at 14,000 meters. Credit and copyright: Guillaume Cannat.
What does a solar eclipse look like from a fast-flying Falcon 7X jet at 14,000 meters (48,000 feet)? French journalist Guillaume Cannat described the Sun as looking black and “ruffled.”

Cannat was part of a group accompanying professional and amateur astronomers on board three Dassault Falcon 7X executive jets that flew in the narrow zone where totality of the eclipse could be observed, from southern Greenland to the geographic North Pole. Traveling through the stratosphere provided the unique opportunity to watch the total eclipse without atmospheric turbulence — which improved the view and the ride. And flying at speeds near Mach .9 also “lengthened” the view of the eclipse to over a minute.

Cannat described the view of totality:


“The crown was deployed around the black disc of the New Moon . It looks like a disheveled silver hair and matted by the solar wind. Far to the left, the planet Venus throws diamond chips, but the absorption of the window hides other celestial body that must always shine in the night daylight. Twilight slides around, bathing the distant clouds in a soft orange glow.”
Here’s a composite of several images of the eclipse that Cannat put together:



A montage of photos from the March 20, 2015 solar eclipse, captured at 14,000 meters from a jet. Credit and copyright: Guillaume Cannat.


A montage of photos from the March 20, 2015 solar eclipse, captured at 14,000 meters from a jet. Credit and copyright: Guillaume Cannat.
The flight was organized by French amateur astronomer Xavier Jubier who created the software Solar Eclipse Maestro. The jets were filled with observation equipment:

#Falcon7X's advanced pressurization system gives #eclipse2015 chasers the feeling they're barely over the tree tops.. pic.twitter.com/DmfL2HZK4M

— Dassault Falcon (@DassaultFalcon) March 20, 2015
Cannat also filmed the eclipse in real time with a GoPro Hero 4. “The whole sequence is rendered in real time so you can relive all in live conditions,” Cannat said. “Note, left, the presence of the bright spot of the planet Venus. The visible light rays around the sun before and after the totality phase are reflections on the window; there are also occasional reflections from inside the cabin. I left her to fully convey the mood of the scene. Naturally, I urge you to watch this video in HD 1080p to capture more detail and better see the spectacular growth of the shadow on cloud strata.”



And here’s a video of the adventure from Dassault Falcon:



Read Cannat’s full account (in French) and see more images at two posts at Le Monde here and here. Our thanks to Guillaume Cannat for sharing his images with Universe Today.



About 

Nancy Atkinson is currently Universe Today's Contributing Editor. Previously she served as UT's Senior Editor and lead writer, and has worked with Astronomy Cast and 365 Days of Astronomy. Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador.

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Turning Stars Into Art

Turning Stars Into Art:



Short time exposure of the star Sirius with the camera attached to a small telescope. I tapped the tube to make the star bounce around, recording the star's rapid color changes as it twinkled. All photos by the author


Color Crazy. Short time exposure of the star Sirius photographed through a small telescope. I tapped the tube to make the star bounce around, recording the star’s continuous and rapid color changes as it twinkled.  Refraction of the star’s light by our turbulent atmosphere breaks it up into every color of the spectrum. Credit: Bob King
We all have cameras, and the sky’s an easy target, so why not have a little fun? Ever since I got my first camera at age 12 I wanted to shoot time exposures of the night sky. That and a tripod are all you need. Presented here for your enjoyment are a few oddball and yet oddly informative images of stars and planets.  Take the word “art” loosely!



This is the pair to the Sirius image and shows Jupiter through the telescope. Notice how blandly white it appears. That's because Jupiter's disk is large enough to not show twinkling (and color changes) caused by atmospheric turbulence as in the case of point-like Sirius.


Colorless mess. This is the companion to the Sirius image and shows Jupiter through the telescope. Notice how blandly white it appears. That’s because Jupiter’s disk is large enough to not show twinkling (and color changes) caused by atmospheric turbulence as in the case of point-like Sirius. Credit: Bob King


Orion's Belt and Sword trail in this time exposure made with a 200mm lens. The nearly perfectly parallel because the stars lie very near the celestial equator and were on the meridian at the time.


Pleasing parallels. Orion’s Belt and Sword trail in this time exposure made with a 200mm lens. The fuzzy pink streak is the Orion Nebula. They’re trails are nearly parallel because the stars all lie close to the celestial equator and were crossing the meridian at the time. Credit: Bob King


Star Trek Effect. OK, this was crazy to shoot. I centered Jupiter in the viewfinder, pressed the shutter button for a 20-second time exposure and slowly zoomed out from 70mm to 200mm on the telephoto lens. It took a few tries, because I was shooting blind, but even the rejects weren't too bad. Credit: Bob King


Star Trek Effect.  I centered Jupiter in the viewfinder, pressed the shutter button for a 20-second time exposure and slowly hand-zoomed the lens from 70mm to 200mm. It took a few tries because I was shooting blind, but even the rejects weren’t too bad. Credit: Bob King


Color by fog. The colors of stars are accentuated when photographed through fog or light cloud. Orion at right with the crescent moon at lower left. Credit: Bob King


Color by Fog. The colors of stars are accentuated when spread into a glowing disk by fog or light cloud. Orion  is at right with the crescent moon at lower left. Credit: Bob King


Snow flies. During a time exposure taken on a snowy but partly cloudy night, snowflakes, illuminated by a yard light, streak about beneath a Full Moon earlier this winter. Credit: Bob King


Snow flies. During a time exposure taken on a snowy but partly cloudy night, snowflakes, illuminated by a yard light, streak about beneath a Full Moon earlier this winter. Credit: Bob King


Stuttering Stars. For this image of the Big Dipper the camera was on a tracking mount. I left the shutter open for about a half hour, then covered the lens with a black cloth for a few minutes. After the cloth was removed, I started tracking and exposed the Dipper for a few minutes. During part of the exposure I used a diffusion filter in front of the lens to soften and enlarge the brightest stars. Credit: Bob King


Stuttering Stars. For this image of the Big Dipper the camera was on a tracking mount. I left the shutter open for about 25 minutes with the tracking turned off so the stars would trail.  Then the lens was covered with a black cloth for a few minutes to create a gap between this exposure and the next. After the cloth was removed, I started the tracking motor and kept the exposure running for a few minutes. A diffusion filter was used in front of the lens to soften and enlarge the brightest stars. Credit: Bob King


About 

I'm a long-time amateur astronomer and member of the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO). My observing passions include everything from auroras to Z Cam stars. Every day the universe offers up something both beautiful and thought-provoking. I also write a daily astronomy blog called Astro Bob.

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Monday, March 23, 2015

The Universe

THE UNIVERSE :

The Universe
The Universe
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SILVERY MOON

SILVERY MOON:



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Date: Mar 2, 2015, 12:53 PM

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Black Hole

Black Hole:



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Date: Mar 17, 2012, 9:18 PM

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As It Turns Out, We Really Are All Starstuff

As It Turns Out, We Really Are All Starstuff:



Hubble image of the Crab Nebula supernova remnant captured with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Hester and A. Loll (Arizona State University)


Hubble image of the Crab Nebula supernova remnant captured with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Hester and A. Loll (Arizona State University)
“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars,” Carl Sagan famously said in his 1980 series Cosmos. “We are made of starstuff.”

And even today, observations with NASA’s airborne SOFIA observatory are supporting this statement. Measurements taken of the dusty leftovers from an ancient supernova located near the center our galaxy – aka SNR Sagittarius A East – show enough “starstuff” to build our entire planet many thousands of times over.

“Our observations reveal a particular cloud produced by a supernova explosion 10,000 years ago contains enough dust to make 7,000 Earths,” said research leader Ryan Lau of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York – the same school, by the way, where Carl Sagan taught astronomy and space science.



Composite image of SNR Sgr A East showing infrared SOFIA data outlined in white against X-ray and radio observations. (NASA/CXO/Herschel/VLA/Lau et al.)


Composite image of SNR Sgr A East showing infrared SOFIA data outlined in white against X-ray and radio observations. (NASA/CXO/Herschel/VLA/Lau et al.)
While it’s long been known that supernovae expel enormous amounts of stellar material into space, it wasn’t understood if clouds of large-scale dust could withstand the immense shockwave forces of the explosion.



NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy 747SP aircraft flies over Southern California's high desert during a test flight in 2010. Credit: NASA/Jim Ross


NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) aircraft (Credit: NASA/Jim Ross)
These observations, made with the joint NASA/DLR-developed Faint Object InfraRed Camera for the SOFIA Telescope (FORCAST) instrument, provide key “missing-link” evidence that dust clouds do in fact survive intact, spreading outward into interstellar space to seed the formation of new systems.

Interstellar dust plays a vital role in the evolution of galaxies and the formation of new stars and protoplanetary discs – the orbiting “pancakes” of material around stars from which planets (and eventually everything on them) form.

The findings may also answer the question of why young galaxies observed in the distant universe possess so much dust; it’s likely the result of frequent supernova explosions from massive early-generation stars.

Read more in a NASA news release here.

Source: NASA, Cornell, and Caltech 

“We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose.”

– Carl Sagan, Cosmos (1980)


About 

A graphic designer in Rhode Island, Jason writes about space exploration on his blog Lights In The Dark, Discovery News, and, of course, here on Universe Today. Ad astra!

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Northern Equinox Eclipse

Northern Equinox Eclipse: APOD: 2015 March 21 - Northern Equinox Eclipse


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2015 March 21


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Explanation: Snowy and cold is weather you might expect at the start of spring for Longyearbyen on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, Norway. But that turned out to be good weather for watching the Moon's umbral shadow race across northern planet Earth. The region was plunged into darkness for 3 minutes during the March 20 total solar eclipse while insulated eclipse chasers witnessed the dark Sun in the cold clear sky. In this well-timed snapshot captured near the end of totality, the Moon's shadow sweeps away from the horizon and the solar corona fades as the lunar disk just begins to uncover the Sun. Streaming past the Moon's edge, direct rays of sunlight create the fleeting appearance of a glistening diamond ring.

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A Double Eclipse of the Sun

A Double Eclipse of the Sun: APOD: 2015 March 22 - A Double Eclipse of the Sun


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2015 March 22



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Explanation: Can the Sun be eclipsed twice at the same time? Last Friday was noteworthy because part of the Earth was treated to a rare total eclipse of the Sun. But also on Friday, from a part of the Earth that only saw part of the Sun eclipsed, a second object appeared simultaneously in front of the Sun: the Earth-orbiting International Space Station. Although space station eclipses are very quick -- in this case only 0.6 seconds, they are not so rare. Capturing this composite image took a lot of planning and a little luck, as the photographer had to dodge a series of third objects that kept, annoyingly, also lining up in front of the Sun: clouds. The above superposed time-lapse sequence was taken from Fregenal de la Sierra in southern Spain. The dark disk of the Moon dominates the lower right, while the Sun's textured surface shows several filaments and, over an edge, a prominence.

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Saturday, March 21, 2015

A Colorful Moon

A Colorful Moon: APOD: 2013 December 19 - A Colorful Moon


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2013 December 19


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Explanation: The Moon is normally seen in subtle shades of grey or yellow. But small, measurable color differences have been greatly exaggerated to make this telescopic, multicolored, moonscape captured during the Moon's full phase. The different colors are recognized to correspond to real differences in the chemical makeup of the lunar surface. Blue hues reveal titanium rich areas while orange and purple colors show regions relatively poor in titanium and iron. The familiar Sea of Tranquility, or Mare Tranquillitatis, is the blue area in the upper right corner of the frame. White lines radiate across the orange-hued southern lunar highlands from 85 kilometer wide ray crater Tycho at bottom left. Above it, darker rays from crater Copernicus extend into the Sea of Rains (Mare Imbrium) at the upper left. Calibrated by rock samples from the Apollo missions, similar multicolor images from spacecraft have been used to explore the Moon's global surface composition.

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Titan's Land of Lakes

Titan's Land of Lakes: APOD: 2013 December 20 - Titan's Land of Lakes


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2013 December 20


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Explanation: Saturn's large moon Titan would be unique in our solar system, the only world with stable liquid lakes and seas on its surface ... except for planet Earth of course. Centered on the north pole, this colorized map shows Titan's bodies of methane and ethane in blue and black, still liquid at frigid surface temperatures of -180 degrees C (-292 degrees F). The map is based on data from the Cassini spacecraft's radar, taken during flybys between 2004 and 2013. Roughly heart-shaped, the lake above and right of the pole is Ligeia Mare, the second largest known body of liquid on Titan and larger than Lake Superior on Earth. Just below the north pole is Punga Mare. The sprawling sea below and right of Punga is the (hopefully sleeping) Kraken Mare, Titan's largest known sea. Above and left of the pole, the moon's surface is dotted with smaller lakes that range up to 50 kilometers across.

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SDO's Multiwavelength Sun

SDO's Multiwavelength Sun: APOD: 2013 December 21 - SDO's Multiwavelength Sun


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2013 December 21
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Explanation: Today, the solstice is at 17:11 Universal Time, the Sun reaching the southernmost declination in its yearly journey through planet Earth's sky. The December solstice marks the astronomical beginning of winter in the northern hemisphere and summer in the south. To celebrate, explore this creative visualization of the Sun from visible to extreme ultraviolet wavelengths, using image data from the orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Against a base image made at a visible wavelengths, the wedge-shaped segments show the solar disk at increasingly shorter ultraviolet and extreme ultraviolet wavelengths. Shown in false-color and rotating in a clockwise direction, the filters decrease in wavelength from 170 nanometers (in pink) through 9.4 nanometers (green). At shorter wavelengths, the altitude and temperature of the regions revealed in the solar atmosphere tend to increase. Bright at visible wavelengths, the solar photosphere looks darker in the ultraviolet, but sunspots glow and bright plasma traces looping magnetic fields. Watch the filters sweep around the solar disk in this animation of SDO's multiwavelength view of the Sun.

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Tutulemma: Solar Eclipse Analemma

Tutulemma: Solar Eclipse Analemma: APOD: 2013 December 22 - Tutulemma: Solar Eclipse Analemma


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2013 December 22


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Tutulemma: Solar Eclipse Analemma

Image Credit & Copyright: Cenk E. Tezel and Tunç Tezel (TWAN)
Explanation: If you went outside at exactly the same time every day and took a picture that included the Sun, how would the Sun's position change? With great planning and effort, such a series of images can be taken. The figure-8 path the Sun follows over the course of a year is called an analemma. Yesterday, the Winter Solstice day in Earth's northern hemisphere, the Sun appeared at the bottom of the analemma. Analemmas created from different latitudes would appear at least slightly different, as well as analemmas created at a different time each day. With even greater planning and effort, the series can include a total eclipse of the Sun as one of the images. Pictured is such a total solar eclipse analemma or Tutulemma - a term coined by the photographers based on the Turkish word for eclipse. The above composite image sequence was recorded from Turkey starting in 2005. The base image for the sequence is from the total phase of a solar eclipse as viewed from Side, Turkey on 2006 March 29. Venus was also visible during totality, toward the lower right.

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Geminid Meteors over Chile

Geminid Meteors over Chile: APOD: 2013 December 23 - Geminid Meteors over Chile


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2013 December 23


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Explanation: From a radiant point in the constellation of the Twins, the annual Geminid meteor shower rained down on planet Earth over the past few weeks. Recorded near the shower's peak over the night of December 13 and 14, the above skyscape captures Gemini's shooting stars in a four-hour composite from the dark skies of the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. In the foreground the 2.5-meter du Pont Telescope is visible as well as the 1-meter SWOPE telescope. The skies beyond the meteors are highlighted by Jupiter, seen as the bright spot near the image center, the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy, seen vertically on the image left, and the pinkish Orion Nebula on the far left. Dust swept up from the orbit of active asteroid 3200 Phaethon, Gemini's meteors enter the atmosphere traveling at about 22 kilometers per second.

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Sharpless 308: Star Bubble

Sharpless 308: Star Bubble: APOD: 2013 December 24 - Sharpless 308: Star Bubble


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2013 December 24


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Sharpless 308: Star Bubble

Image Credit & Copyright: Jeff Husted
Explanation: Blown by fast winds from a hot, massive star, this cosmic bubble is huge. Cataloged as Sharpless 2-308 it lies some 5,200 light-years away toward the constellation of the Big Dog (Canis Major) and covers slightly more of the sky than a Full Moon. That corresponds to a diameter of 60 light-years at its estimated distance. The massive star that created the bubble, a Wolf-Rayet star, is the bright one near the center of the nebula. Wolf-Rayet stars have over 20 times the mass of the Sun and are thought to be in a brief, pre-supernova phase of massive star evolution. Fast winds from this Wolf-Rayet star create the bubble-shaped nebula as they sweep up slower moving material from an earlier phase of evolution. The windblown nebula has an age of about 70,000 years. Relatively faint emission captured in the expansive image is dominated by the glow of ionized oxygen atoms mapped to violet hues.

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Melotte 15 in the Heart

Melotte 15 in the Heart: APOD: 2013 December 27 - Melotte 15 in the Heart


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2013 December 27


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Explanation: Cosmic clouds seem to form fantastic shapes in the central regions of emission nebula IC 1805. Of course, the clouds are sculpted by stellar winds and radiation from massive hot stars in the nebula's newborn star cluster, Melotte 15. About 1.5 million years young, the cluster stars are near the center of this colorful skyscape, along with dark dust clouds in silhouette. Dominated by emission from atomic hydrogen, the telescopic view spans about 30 light-years. But wider field images reveal that IC 1805's simpler, overall outline suggests its popular name - The Heart Nebula. IC 1805 is located along the northern Milky Way, about 7,500 light years distant toward the constellation Cassiopeia.

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Alaska Aurora Sequence

Alaska Aurora Sequence: APOD: 2013 December 28 - Alaska Aurora Sequence


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2013 December 28


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Explanation: A remarkably intense auroral band flooded the northern night with shimmering colors on December 7. The stunning sequence captured here was made with a camera fixed to a tripod under cold, clear skies near Ester, just outside of Fairbanks, Alaska. Left to right, spanning a period of about 30 minutes, the panels follow changes in the dancing curtains of northern lights extending to altitudes of over 100 kilometers in a band arcing directly overhead. The panels span 150 degrees vertically, covering about 500 kilometers of aurora laying across the sky from edge to edge. The auroral activity was triggered by a moderate level geomagnetic storm, as a high speed solar wind stream buffeted planet Earth's magnetosphere.

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The Horsehead Nebula

The Horsehead Nebula:

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2013 December 31


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Explanation: The Horsehead Nebula is one of the most famous nebulae on the sky. It is visible as the dark indentation to the red emission nebula in the center of the above photograph. The horse-head feature is dark because it is really an opaque dust cloud that lies in front of the bright red emission nebula. Like clouds in Earth's atmosphere, this cosmic cloud has assumed a recognizable shape by chance. After many thousands of years, the internal motions of the cloud will alter its appearance. The emission nebula's red color is caused by electrons recombining with protons to form hydrogen atoms. Also visible at the bottom left of the picture is a greenish reflection nebulae that preferentially reflects the blue light from nearby stars.

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A New Year's Crescent

A New Year's Crescent: APOD: 2014 January 1 - A New Year's Crescent


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2014 January 1


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Explanation: That's not the young crescent Moon poised above the western horizon at sunset. Instead it's Venus in a crescent phase, captured with a long telephoto lens from Quebec City, Canada, planet Earth on a chilly December 30th evening. The very bright celestial beacon is dropping lower into the evening twilight every day. But it also grows larger in apparent size and becomes a steadily thinner crescent in binocular views as it heads toward an inferior conjunction, positioned between the Earth and the Sun on January 11. The next few evenings will see a young crescent Moon join the crescent Venus in the western twilight, though. Historically, the first observations of the phases of Venus were made by Galileo with his telescope in 1610, evidence consistent with the Copernican model of the Solar System, but not the Ptolemaic system.

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Lovejoy in the New Year

Lovejoy in the New Year: APOD: 2014 January 3 - Lovejoy in the New Year


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2014 January 3


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Explanation: A rival to vanquished Comet ISON in 2013, Comet Lovejoy (C/2013 R1) still sweeps through early morning skies, captured in this starry scene on New Year's day. The frame stretches some 3.5 degrees (about 7 full moons) across a background of faint stars in the constellation Hercules. Only just visible to the naked eye from dark sites before dawn, Lovejoy remains a good target for the northern hemisphere's binocular equipped skygazers. But this deep exposure shows off Lovejoy's beautiful tails and tantalizing greenish coma better than binocular views. Not a sungrazer, this Comet Lovejoy made its closest approach to the Sun around December 22, looping high above the ecliptic plane. Now headed for the outer Solar System, Lovejoy began the new year about 6.7 light-minutes from planet Earth.

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Clouds and Crescents

Clouds and Crescents: APOD: 2014 January 4 - Clouds and Crescents


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2014 January 4


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Explanation: A crescent Venus shines along the western horizon at dusk in this clearing sky. The Earth's sister planet is smiling between the low clouds near the bottom of the frame during its January 2nd conjunction with the slender, young crescent Moon above. Of course the lovely pairing of Moon and Venus crescents could be enjoyed in the new year's skies around the the world. But the twin contrails in this scene belong to an aircraft above Appenzell, Switzerland. Soon to disappear from evening skies, Venus is heading toward its January 11th inferior conjunction and an appearance in predawn skies as planet Earth's morning star by late January. And the Moon will be young again, too.

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Galaxy NGC 474: Shells and Star Streams

Galaxy NGC 474: Shells and Star Streams: APOD: 2014 January 5 - Galaxy NGC 474: Shells and Star Streams


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2014 January 5


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Explanation: What's happening to galaxy NGC 474? The multiple layers of emission appear strangely complex and unexpected given the relatively featureless appearance of the elliptical galaxy in less deep images. The cause of the shells is currently unknown, but possibly tidal tails related to debris left over from absorbing numerous small galaxies in the past billion years. Alternatively the shells may be like ripples in a pond, where the ongoing collision with the spiral galaxy just above NGC 474 is causing density waves to ripple though the galactic giant. Regardless of the actual cause, the above image dramatically highlights the increasing consensus that at least some elliptical galaxies have formed in the recent past, and that the outer halos of most large galaxies are not really smooth but have complexities induced by frequent interactions with -- and accretions of -- smaller nearby galaxies. The halo of our own Milky Way Galaxy is one example of such unexpected complexity. NGC 474 spans about 250,000 light years and lies about 100 million light years distant toward the constellation of the Fish (Pisces).

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