Magazine Posts

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Is the sky the same every night? No -- the night sky changes every night in many ways. To better explore how the night sky changes, the USA's NSF and DOE commissioned the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Cerro Pachón, Chile. In final testing before routine operations, Rubin will begin to explore these nightly changes -- slight differences that can tell us much about our amazing universe and its surprising zoo of objects. With a mirror over 8 meters across, Rubin will continually reimage the entire visible sky every few nights to discover new supernovas, potentially dangerous asteroids, faint comets, and variable stars -- as well as mapping out the visible universe's large-scale structure. Pictured, the distant central band of our Milky Way Galaxy appears to flow out from the newly operational observatory. Taken last month, the featured picture is a composite of 21 images across the night sky, capturing airglow on the horizon and the Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy on the lower left. APOD Turns 30!: Free Public Lecture in Anchorage on June 11

Clouds over the Greater Caucasus Range, along with fog and atmospheric mist. The landscape represents geological features from different geological epochs: Triassic, Jurassic, and the Oligocene. View from Mount Asbestnaya, Republic of Adygea, Caucasus Mountains.

Vyacheslav Argenberg, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Why would the sky glow like a giant repeating rainbow? Airglow. Now, air glows all of the time, but it is usually hard to see. A disturbance however -- like an approaching storm -- may cause noticeable rippling in the Earth's atmosphere. These gravity waves are oscillations in air analogous to those created when a rock is thrown in calm water. The long-duration exposure nearly along the vertical walls of airglow likely made the undulating structure particularly visible. OK, but where do the colors originate? The deep red glow likely originates from OH molecules about 87 kilometers high, excited by ultraviolet light from the Sun. The orange and green airglow is likely caused by sodium and oxygen atoms slightly higher up. The featured image was captured during a climb up Mount Pico in the Azores of Portugal. Ground lights originate from the island of Faial in the Atlantic Ocean. A spectacular sky is visible through this banded airglow, with the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy running up the image center, and M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, visible near the top left. APOD Turns 30!: Free Public Lecture in Anchorage on June 11

Photo by Miguel Claro (TWAN); Rollover Annotation: Judy Schmidt

Photo art based on a picture of a rolling gate at blast furnace 5 in the Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, Duisburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, GermanyThe original shot used the creative technique of intentional camera movement. This image was mirrored and recomposed to achieve the symmetry effect.

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

Photo by Calob photography

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Wisps like this are all that remain visible of a Milky Way star. About 7,000 years ago that star exploded in a supernova, leaving the Veil Nebula. At the time, the expanding cloud was likely as bright as a crescent Moon, remaining visible for weeks to people living at the dawn of recorded history. Today, the resulting supernova remnant, also known as the Cygnus Loop, has faded and is now visible only through a small telescope directed toward the constellation of the Swan (Cygnus). The remaining Veil Nebula is physically huge, however, and even though it lies about 1,400 light-years distant, it covers over five times the size of the full Moon. The featured picture was taken in Kuwait in mid-2024 and features light emitted by hydrogen in red and oxygen in blue. In deep images of the complete Veil Nebula like this, even studious readers might not be able to identify the iconic filaments. Piece it All Together: Astronomy Puzzle of the Day

Photo by Abdullah Alharbi

A European bee-eater (Merops apiaster) in flight at Pfyn-Finges, Switzerland. This image was created by merging three successive photographs of the same bird's flight.

Giles Laurent, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Jacque Fresco (1916 – 2017) was an American futurist and self-described social engineer. He left home at the age of 14 and was Self-taught, He worked in a variety of positions related to industrial design. Fresco wrote and lectured his views on sustainable cities, energy efficiency, natural-resource management, cybernetic technology, automation, and the role of science in society. He was the founder of the Venus Project a still active non-profit organization that advocates for a resource-based economy and redesigns civilization.

Image source: Maj Borg, Minttu Mäntynen, Andrea Miconi, CC BY 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What's happening to this spiral galaxy? Although details remain uncertain, it surely has to do with an ongoing battle with its smaller galactic neighbor. The featured galaxy is labelled UGC 1810 by itself, but together with its collisional partner is known as Arp 273. The overall shape of UGC 1810 -- in particular its blue outer ring -- is likely a result of wild and violent gravitational interactions. This ring's blue color is caused by massive stars that are blue hot and have formed only in the past few million years. The inner galaxy appears older, redder, and threaded with cool filamentary dust. A few bright stars appear well in the foreground, unrelated to UGC 1810, while several galaxies are visible well in the background. Arp 273 lies about 300 million light years away toward the constellation of Andromeda. Quite likely, UGC 1810 will devour its galactic sidekick over the next billion years and settle into a classic spiral form.

Photo by Domingo Pestana

Nymphs of Chromacris speciosa, Paulo César Vinha State Park, Espírito Santo, Brazil.

Leonardo Merçon, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

On May 7, the Sun setting behind a church bell tower was captured in this filtered and manipulated digital skyscape from Ragusa, Sicily, planet Earth. In this version of the image the colors look bizarre. Still, an intriguing optical illusion known as an afterimage can help you experience the same scene with a more natural looking appearance. To try it, find the sunspots of active region AR4079 grouped near the bottom of the blue solar disk. Relax and stare at the dark sunspot group for about 30 seconds, then close your eyes or shift your gaze to a plain white surface. In a moment an afterimage of the sunset should faintly appear. But the afterimage sunset will have this image's complementary colors and a more normal yellow Sun against a familiar blue sky.

Photo by Marcella Giulia Pace