Magazine Posts

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Seen to the left of Saturn's banded planetary disk, small icy moons Dione and Rhea are caught passing in front of the gas giant's extensive ring system in this sharp telescopic snapshot. The remarkable image was recorded on November 20, when Saturn's rings were nearly edge-on when viewed from planet Earth. In fact, every 13 to 16 years the view from planet Earth aligns with Saturn's ring plane to produce a series of ring plane crossings. During a ring plane crossing, the interplanetary edge-on perspective makes the thin but otherwise bright rings seem to disappear. By November 23rd Saturn's rings will have reached a minimum angle for now, at their narrowest for viewing from planet Earth, but then start to widen again. Of course, Dione and Rhea orbit Saturn near the ring plane once every 2.7 and 4.5 days respectively, while the next series of Saturn ring plane crossings as seen from Earth will begin again in 2038.

Photo by Christopher Go

Geoffroy's tamarin (Saguinus geoffroyi) Gatun Lake, Panama.

Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Now outbound after its perihelion or closest approach to the Sun on October 29, Comet 3I/ATLAS is only the third known interstellar object to pass through our fair Solar System. Its greenish coma and faint tails are seen against a background of stars in the constellation Virgo in this view from planet Earth, recorded with a small telescope on November 14. But this interstellar interloper is the subject of an on-going, unprecedented Solar System-wide observing campaign involving spacecraft and space telescopes from Earth orbit to the surface of Mars and beyond. And while the comet from another star-system has recently grown brighter, you'll still need a telescope if you want to see 3I/ATLAS from planet Earth. It's now above the horizon in November morning skies and will make its closest approach to Earth, a comfortable 270 million kilometers distant, around December 19.

Photo by Rolando Ligustri

Small grove of trees at sunset in late autumn (Massenbach, Schwaigern, Germany).

Roman Eisele, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka are the bright bluish stars from east to west (upper right to lower left) along the diagonal in this cosmic vista. Otherwise known as the Belt of Orion, these three blue supergiant stars are hotter and much more massive than the Sun. They lie from 700 to 2,000 light-years away, born of Orion's well-studied interstellar clouds. In fact, clouds of gas and dust adrift in this region have some surprisingly familiar shapes, including the dark Horsehead Nebula and Flame Nebula near Alnitak at the upper right. The famous Orion Nebula itself is off the right edge of this colorful starfield. The telescopic frame spans almost 4 degrees on the sky.

Photo by Aygen Erkaslan

Geological fieldworks, underground in the Estonian oil shale mine to study the variable mineralogical and chemical composition and microstructure in the different layers of the oil shale profile.

Peeter paaver, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Sometimes the dark dust of interstellar space has an angular elegance. Such is the case toward the far-south constellation of Chamaeleon. Normally too faint to see, dark dust is best known for blocking visible light from stars and galaxies behind it. In this 11.4-hour exposure, however, the dust is seen mostly in light of its own, with its strong red and near-infrared colors creating a brown hue. Contrastingly blue, a bright star Beta Chamaeleontis is visible on the upper right of the V, with the dust that surrounds it preferentially reflecting blue light from its primarily blue-white color. All of the pictured stars and dust occur in our own Milky Way Galaxy with one notable exception: a white spot just below Beta Chamaeleontis is the galaxy IC 3104, which lies far in the distance. Interstellar dust is mostly created in the cool atmospheres of giant stars and dispersed into space by stellar light, stellar winds, and stellar explosions such as supernovas.

Photo by Xinran Li & Houbo Zhao

Le concert champêtre (English: Woodland Music-makers), a 1857 oil-on-canvas by the French painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.

Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

"Aging is inevitable but unpredictable. Aging is an unpredictable, highly individualized process that varies
depending on a person’s genetics, medical history, cognitive status and socioeconomic factors. More at The Conversation ➜

Structures with different colored sand on the beach of Morro Jable, Fuerteventura, Spain.

Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What has happened to Comet Lemmon's tail? The answer is blowing in the wind — the wind from the Sun in this case. This continuous outflow of charged particles from the Sun has been quite variable of late, as the Sun emits bursts of energy, CMEs, that push out and deflect charged particles emitted by the comet itself. The result is a blue hued ion tail for Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) that is not only impressively intricate but takes some unusual turns. This long-duration composite image taken from Alfacar, Spain last month captured this inner Solar System ionic tumult. Comet Lemmon is now fading as it heads out away from the Earth and Sun and back into the outer Solar System.

Work shed on the Boshuisweg. Location: Kroondomein Het Loo. (Detail).

Agnes Monkelbaan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.