Explanation:
This sky looked delicious.
Double auroral ovals were captured above the town lights of
Östersund,
Sweden, last week.
Pictured above, the green ovals occurred lower to the ground than
violet
aurora rays above, making the whole display look a bit like a
cupcake.
To top it off, far in the distance, the
central band or our
Milky Way Galaxy
slants down from the upper left.
The auroras were caused by our Sun ejecting
plasma
clouds into the Solar System just a few days before, ionized particles that
subsequently impacted the
magnetosphere of the Earth.
Aurora
displays may continue this week as an
active sunspot group rotated into view just a few days ago.
Supernova Remnant Puppis A Image Credit:
X-ray: NASA/CXC/IAFE/
G. Dubner et al.,
ESA/XMM-Newton
Infrared: NASA/ESA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC/
R. Arendt et al.
Explanation: Driven
by the explosion of a massive star,
supernova remnant Puppis A is blasting into the
surrounding interstellar medium about 7,000 light-years away.
At that distance,
this remarkable
false-color exploration of its complex expansion
is about 180 light-years wide.
It is based on the most
complete X-ray data
set so far from the Chandra and XMM/Newton observations,
and infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope.
In blue hues, the filamentary X-ray glow is
from gas heated by the supernova's
shock wave,
while the infrared emission shown in red and green is
from warm dust.
The bright pastel tones trace the regions where shocked
gas and warmed dust mingle.
Light from the initial supernova itself, triggered by
the collapse of the massive
star's core, would have reached
Earth about 3,700 years ago, though the Puppis A supernova
remnant remains a strong source in
the X-ray sky.
Explanation:
You might not guess it, but sunrise was still hours away when
this nightscape was taken,
a view along the eastern horizon from a remote location in Chile's
Atacama
desert.
Stretching high into the otherwise dark, starry sky
the unusually bright conical glow is sunlight though,
scattered by dust along the solar system's
ecliptic
plane .
Known as
Zodiacal
light, the apparition is also nicknamed the "false dawn".
Near center, bright star Aldebaran and the Pleiades star cluster seem
immersed in the Zodiacal light, with Orion toward the right
edge of the frame.
Reddish emission from NGC 1499, the California Nebula,
can also be seen through the tinge of airglow along the horizon.
Sliding your cursor over the picture
(or
following this link)
will label the sky over this future site of the
Giant Magellan Telescope
at Las Campanas Observatory.
Full Moon Silhouettes
Video Credit & Copyright: Mark Gee;
Music: Tenderness (Dan Phillipson)
Explanation:
Have you ever watched the Moon rise?
The slow rise of a nearly full moon over a clear horizon can be an impressive sight.
One impressive moonrise was imaged in early 2013 over
Mount Victoria Lookout in
Wellington,
New Zealand.
With detailed planning, an
industrious astrophotographer
placed a camera about two kilometers away and pointed it across the lookout to where
the Moon
would surely soon be making its nightly debut.
The
above single shot sequence is unedited and
shown in real time -- it is not a time lapse.
People on
Mount Victoria Lookout
can be seen in silhouette themselves admiring the dawn of Earth's largest satellite.
Seeing a moonrise yourself is not difficult:
it happens every day, although only half the time at night.
Each day the
Moon rises about
fifty minutes later
than the previous day, with a full moon
always rising at sunset.
A good time to see a moonrise will occur at sunset on Tuesday as
the Moon's relative closeness to Earth during a full phase -- called a
supermoon -- will cause it to appear slightly larger and brighter than usual.
Explanation: Like a rainbow at night,
a beautiful moonbow shines above the western horizon in this
deserted beach scene from Molokai Island,
Hawaii,
USA, planet Earth.
Captured last June 17 in early morning hours, the lights along
the horizon are from Honolulu and cities on the island of Oahu
some 30 miles away.
So where was the Moon?
A rainbow is
produced by sunlight internally reflected in
rain drops from the direction
opposite the Sun
back toward the observer.
As the light passes from air to water and back to air again, longer
wavelengths are refracted (bent) less than shorter ones
resulting in the separation of colors.
And so the moonbow is produced as raindrops reflect moonlight
from the direction opposite the Moon.
That puts the Moon directly behind the photographer,
still low and rising over the eastern horizon,
a few days past
its full phase.
Explanation:
What is so super about tomorrow's supermoon?
Tomorrow,
a full moon will occur that appears slightly larger and brighter than
usual.
The reason is that the Moon's fully illuminated phase occurs within a
short time from perigee - when the Moon is its closest to the Earth in
its elliptical orbit.
Although the precise conditions that define a
supermoon
vary, given one definition, tomorrow's will be the third supermoon of
the year -- and the third consecutive month that a supermoon occurs.
One reason
supermoons are popular is because they are so easy to see --
just go outside and sunset and watch an impressive full moon rise!
Since perigee actually occurs today, tonight's sunset
moonrise should also be impressive.
Pictured above, a
supermoon from 2012
is compared to a micromoon -- when a full Moon occurs near the furthest
part of the Moon's orbit -- so that it appears smaller and dimmer than
usual.
Given many definitions, at least one
supermoon
occurs each year, with the next being 2015 August 30.
Median Mashup: Hubble's Top 100 Image Credit &
Copyright:Michael West
(Maria Mitchell Observatory)
Explanation:
Now, as you sip your
cosmic latte
you can view 100 Hubble Space Telescope images at the same time.
The popular scenes of the cosmos as captured from low Earth orbit
are all combined into this single digital presentation.
To make it,
Hubble's
top 100 images were downloaded and
resized to identical pixel dimensions.
At each point the 100 pixel values were arranged from
lowest to highest, and the middle or
median value was chosen
for the final image.
The combined image results in a visual
abstraction -
light from across the Universe surrounded by darkness.
Explanation:
The first hint of what will become of our
Sun
was discovered inadvertently in
1764.
At that time,
Charles Messier was compiling a list
of diffuse objects not to be confused with comets.
The 27th object on
Messier's list, now known as
M27 or the Dumbbell Nebula, is a
planetary nebula,
the type of nebula our
Sun will produce when
nuclear fusion stops in its core.
M27 is one of the brightest
planetary nebulae on the sky,
and can be seen toward the constellation of the Fox (Vulpecula) with binoculars.
It takes light about 1000 years to reach us from M27,
shown above in colors emitted by
hydrogen and
oxygen.
Understanding the physics and significance of
M27
was well beyond 18th century science.
Even today, many things remain mysterious about
bipolar planetary nebula like
M27, including the physical mechanism that expels a
low-mass star's gaseous outer-envelope, leaving an
X-ray hot white dwarf.
