Full Moon, Full Earth
Image Credit:
NASA,
NOAA/DSCOVR
Explanation:
The Moon was
new on July 16.
Its familiar
nearside
facing the surface of planet Earth was in shadow.
But on that date
a
million miles away, the
Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) spacecraft's Earth
Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC)
captured this view
of an apparently Full Moon crossing in front of a Full Earth.
In fact, seen from the spacecraft's position
beyond the Moon's orbit and between Earth and Sun, the fully
illuminated lunar hemisphere is the less familiar
farside.
Only known since the dawn of the
space age, the farside
is mostly devoid of dark lunar maria that sprawl across the Moon's
perpetual Earth-facing hemisphere.
Only the small dark spot of
the farside's Mare Moscoviense (Sea of Moscow) is clear, at
the upper left.
Planet Earth's north pole is near 11 o'clock, with the North America
visited by Hurricane Dolores near center.
Slight color shifts are visible around the lunar edge, an artifact
of the Moon's motion through the field caused by combining the
camera's separate exposures taken in quick succession through different
color filters.
While monitoring the Earth and solar wind for space weather forcasts,
about twice a year DSCOVR can capture
similar images of Moon and Earth
together as it crosses the orbital plane of the Moon.
Stripping ESO 137-001
NASA,
ESA,
CXC
Explanation:
Spiral galaxy
ESO 137-001 hurtles through massive
galaxy cluster Abell
3627 some 220 million light years away.
The distant galaxy is seen in this colorful
Hubble/Chandra
composite image through a foreground
of the Milky Way's stars toward the southern constellation
Triangulum Australe.
As the spiral
speeds along
at nearly 7 million kilometers per hour, its
gas and dust are stripped away when
ram pressure with
the cluster's own hot, tenuous intracluster medium overcomes the
galaxy's gravity.
Evident in Hubble's near visible light data,
bright star clusters have formed in the
stripped material along the short, trailing blue streaks.
Chandra's X-ray data shows off the enormous extent of the
heated,
stripped gas
as diffuse, darker blue trails stretching
over 400,000 light-years toward the bottom right.
The significant loss of dust and gas will make new
star formation
difficult for this galaxy.
A yellowish
elliptical galaxy,
lacking in star forming dust
and gas, is just to the right of ESO 137-001 in the frame.
The ISS and a Colorful Moon
Image Credit &
Copyright:
Dylan O'Donnell
Explanation:
Tonight's Full Moon, the second Full Moon in July, could be
called a blue moon
according
to modern folklore.
But this sharp and detailed mosaic, recorded with telescope and
digital camera just before July's first Full Moon,
actually does show a colorful lunar surface.
The colors have been enhanced in the processed image but are
real nonetheless,
corresponding to real differences
in the chemical makeup of the lunar surface.
Also easy to see especially when the Moon is near full phase,
bright rays from 85 kilometer wide Tycho crater at the upper right extend
far across the lunar surface.
Against the southern lunar highlands above and right
of Tycho is an amazingly detailed silhouette of the
International Space Station.
Seen from Byron Bay, NSW Australia on June 30, the ISS lunar transit
lasted about 1/3 of a second,
captured with a fast shutter speed in burst mode.
Milky Way over Uluru
Image Credit &
Copyright:
Babak Tafreshi
(TWAN)
Explanation:
The central regions of our Milky Way Galaxy rise above
Uluru/Ayers Rock in
this striking
night
skyscape.
Recorded on July 13, a faint airglow along the horizon shows
off central Australia's most
recognizable
landform in silhouette.
Of course the Milky Way's own cosmic dust clouds appear in
silhouette too, dark rifts along the galaxy's faint
congeries of stars.
Above the central bulge,
rivers of cosmic dust converge on a
bright yellowish supergiant star Antares.
Left of Antares, wandering
Saturn shines in the night.
Milky Way and Aurora over Antarctica
Image Credit & Copyright:
LI Hang
Explanation:
It has been one of the better skies of this long night.
In
parts of
Antarctica, not only is it winter, but the Sun can spend weeks below the horizon.
At China's
Zhongshan Station,
people sometimes venture out into the cold to photograph a spectacular night sky.
The featured image from one such outing was taken in mid-July,
just before the end of this
polar night.
Pointing up, the
wide angle lens
captured not only the ground at the bottom, but at the top as well.
In the foreground is a colleague also taking pictures.
In the distance, a spherical satellite receiver and several
windmills
are visible.
Numerous stars dot the night sky, including
Sirius and
Canopus.
Far in the background, stretching overhead from horizon to horizon, is the
central band of our
Milky Way Galaxy.
Even further in the distance, visible as extended smudges near the top, are the
Large and
Small Magellanic
Clouds, satellite galaxies near our huge
Milky Way Galaxy.
Rainbows and Rays over Bryce Canyon
Image Credit & Copyright:
John Rummel
Explanation:
What's happening over Bryce Canyon?
Two different optical effects that were captured in
one image taken earlier this month.
Both effects needed to have the Sun situated directly behind the photographer.
The nearest apparition was the common
rainbow,
created by sunlight streaming from the setting sun over the head of the photographer,
and scattering from raindrops in front of the canyon.
If you look closely, even a
second rainbow appears above the first.
More rare, and perhaps more striking, are the rays of light that emanate out from the horizon above the canyon.
These are known as
anticrepuscular rays
and result from sunlight streaming though breaks in the clouds, around the sky, and
converging at the point 180 degrees around from the Sun.
Geometrically, this
antisolar point
must coincide with the exact center of the rainbows.
Located in
Utah, USA,
Bryce Canyon itself
contains a
picturesque array of ancient
sedimentary rock spires known as
hoodoos.
The Deep Lagoon
Image Credit &
Copyright:
Adam Block,
Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter,
Univ. Arizona
Explanation:
Ridges of glowing interstellar gas and dark dust clouds
inhabit the
turbulent, cosmic depths of the Lagoon Nebula.
Also known as M8, The bright star forming region is about
5,000 light-years distant.
But it still makes for a popular stop on
telescopic tours of
the constellation Sagittarius, toward the center
of our Milky Way Galaxy.
Dominated by the telltale red emission of ionized hydrogen atoms
recombining with stripped electrons,
this
stunning, deep view of the
Lagoon's central reaches is about 40 light-years across.
Near the center of the frame, the bright hourglass
shape is gas ionized and sculpted by energetic radiation
and extreme stellar winds from a
massive young star.
Apollo 17 at Shorty Crater
Image Credit:
Apollo 17 Crew,
NASA
Explanation:
On the Moon, it is easy to remember where you parked.
In December of 1972,
Apollo 17 astronauts
Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent about 75 hours
on the Moon in the
Taurus-Littrow
valley, while colleague Ronald Evans orbited overhead.
This sharp image was taken by Cernan as he and Schmitt roamed the
valley floor.
The
image
shows Schmitt on the left with the
lunar rover at the edge of Shorty Crater,
near the spot where geologist Schmitt
discovered
orange lunar soil.
The Apollo 17 crew returned with 110 kilograms
of rock and soil samples, more than was
returned from any of the other lunar
landing sites.
Now forty three years later, Cernan and Schmitt are still
the last to walk
on the Moon.
A Proton Arc Over Lake Superior
Image Credit & Copyright:
Ken Williams
Explanation:
The setting had been picked out -- all that was needed was an aurora.
And late last August,
forecasts predicted
that an otherwise beautiful night sky would be lit up with
auroral green.
Jumping into his truck, the astrophotographer approached his secret site --
but only after a five hour drive across the rural
Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
What he didn't know was that his luck was just beginning.
While setting up for the image, a
proton arc -- a rare type of aurora -- appeared.
The
red arc lasted only about 15 minutes, but that was long enough to capture in a 30-second exposure.
As the name indicates,
proton arcs
are caused not by
electrons but by more massive
protons that
bombard the Earth's atmosphere following an
energetic event on the Sun.
In the
featured image,
the yellow lights on the horizon are the city lights of
Marquette,
Michigan,
USA.
The blue and yellow rocks in the
Lake Superior foreground are lit by a
LED flashlight.
Also captured, to the left of the red proton arc, was the band of our
Milky Way Galaxy.
Virgo Cluster Galaxies
Image Credit &
Copyright:
Rogelio
Bernal Andreo
Explanation:
Well over a thousand galaxies are known members of
the Virgo Cluster,
the closest large cluster of galaxies to our own
local group.
In fact, the galaxy cluster is difficult
to
appreciate all at once because
it covers such a large area on the sky.
This careful wide-field
mosaic of telescopic images
clearly records the central region of the Virgo Cluster through faint
foreground dust
clouds lingering above the plane of our own Milky Way galaxy.
The cluster's dominant giant elliptical
galaxy M87, is just below and to the left of the frame center.
To the right of
M87 is a string of galaxies known as
Markarian's Chain.
A closer examination of the image will
reveal many Virgo cluster member
galaxies as small fuzzy patches.
Sliding your cursor over the image will label the larger galaxies
using
NGC catalog designations.
Galaxies are also shown with
Messier
catalog numbers, including
M84, M86,
and prominent colorful spirals
M88,
M90, and
M91.
On average, Virgo Cluster galaxies are measured to be
about 48 million light-years away.
The Virgo
Cluster distance has been used to give an important
determination of the Hubble Constant and
the scale of the Universe.
X-ray Echoes from Circinus X-1
Image Credit:
X-ray - NASA/CXC/Univ.
Wisconsin-Madison/S.Heinz et al,
Optical - DSS
Explanation:
Circinus X-1 is an X-ray binary star known for its erratic
variability.
In the
bizarre
Circinus X-1 system, a dense neutron star,
the collapsed remnant of a supernova explosion, orbits with a more ordinary
stellar companion.
Observations of the X-ray binary in months
following an intense X-ray flare from the source in 2013
progressively revealed striking concentric rings - bright
X-ray
light echoes
from four intervening clouds of interstellar dust.
In this
X-ray/optical composite, the swaths of Chandra Observatory
X-ray image
data showing partial outlines of the rings are in false colors.
Remarkably,
timing the X-ray echoes,
along with known distances to the
interstellar dust clouds, determines
the formerly highly uncertain distance to Circinus X-1 itself
to be 30,700 light-years.
Stereo Pluto
Image Credit:
NASA,
Johns Hopkins University/APL,
Southwest Research Institute -
Stereo Assembly:
Brian
May
Explanation:
These two detailed, true color images of Pluto were
captured during the historic New Horizons flyby last month.
With slightly different perspectives on the now recognizeable
surface
features
they are presented in this first high quality
stereo
pair intended for viewing by denizens of planet Earth.
The left hand image
(left eye) is a mosaic recorded when
the spacecraft was about 450,000 kilometers from Pluto.
The right single image
was acquired earlier, a last full look before the
spacecraft's closest approach.
Despite a difference in resolution, the pair combine for
a stunning 3D perception of the distant,
underworldly
terrain.
Source -
NASA