Magazine Posts

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What does our Milky Way Galaxy look like from the side? Because we are on the inside, humanity can’t get an actual picture. Recently, however, just such a map has been made using location data for over a billion stars from ESA’s Gaia mission. The resulting featured illustration shows that just like many other spiral galaxies, our Milky Way has a very thin central disk. Our Sun and all the stars we see at night are in this disk. Although hypothesized before, perhaps more surprising is that the disk appears curved at the outer edges. The colors of our Galaxy's warped central band derive mostly from dark dust, bright blue stars, and red emission nebulas. Although data analysis is ongoing, Gaia was deactivated in March after a successful mission. Explore Your Universe: Random APOD Generator

Örebro Castle on the Svartån river in Sweden.

ArildV, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

If you could stand on Venus -- what would you see? Pictured is the view from Venera 14, a robotic Soviet lander which parachuted and air-braked down through the thick Venusian atmosphere in March of 1982. The desolate landscape it saw included flat rocks, vast empty terrain, and a featureless sky above Phoebe Regio near Venus' equator. On the lower left is the spacecraft's penetrometer used to make scientific measurements, while the light piece on the right is part of an ejected lens-cap. Enduring temperatures near 450 degrees Celsius and pressures 75 times that on Earth, the hardened Venera spacecraft lasted only about an hour. Although data from Venera 14 was beamed across the inner Solar System over 40 years ago, digital processing and merging of Venera's unusual images continues even today. Recent analyses of infrared measurements taken by ESA's orbiting Venus Express spacecraft indicate that active volcanoes may currently exist on Venus. Jigsaw Fun: Astronomy Puzzle of the Day

Photo by Donald Mitchell

Barn swallow juvenile (Hirundo rustica rustica) at the Ormož Basins nature reserve, Slovenia. Taken during a period when the storm Boris blocked migration routes, and low temperatures left the swallows struggling to find prey and stay warm in that area. This one was visibly weak, nevertheless, it had just caught a moth, with remains visible around the beak, and its scales on the face.

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

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

This picture from July 1997 shows a ramp from the Pathfinder lander, the Sojourner robot rover, deflated landing airbags, a couch, Barnacle Bill and Yogi Rock appear together in this 3D stereo view of the surface of Mars. Barnacle Bill is the rock just left of the house cat-sized, solar-paneled Sojourner. Yogi is the big friendly-looking boulder at top right. The "couch" is the angular rock shape visible near center on the horizon. Look at the image with red/blue glasses (or just hold a piece of clear red plastic over your left eye and blue or green over your right) to get the dramatic 3D perspective. The stereo view was recorded by the remarkable Imager for Mars Pathfinder (IMP) camera. The IMP had two optical paths for stereo imaging and ranging and was equipped with an array of color filters for spectral analysis. Operating as the first astronomical observatory on Mars, the IMP also recorded images of the Sun and Deimos, the smallest of Mars' two tiny moons.

Crooked doors and decaying brickwork of a building in Savannakhet, Laos.

Dominic Nelson, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

How do black holes create X-rays? Answering this long-standing question was significantly advanced recently with data taken by NASA’s IXPE satellite. X-rays cannot exit a black hole, but they can be created in the energetic environment nearby, in particular by a jet of particles moving outward. By observing X-ray light arriving from near the supermassive black hole at the center of galaxy BL Lac, called a blazar, it was discovered that these X-rays lacked significant polarization, which is expected when created more by energetic electrons than protons. In the featured artistic illustration, a powerful jet is depicted emanating from an orange-colored accretion disk circling the black hole. Understanding highly energetic processes across the universe helps humanity to understand similar processes that occur on or near our Earth. Put it All Together: Astronomy Puzzle of the Day

Interior of the Estates Theatre in Prague, Czechia.

Jorge Royan, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.