Magazine Posts

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Why is Polaris called the North Star? First, Polaris is the nearest bright star toward the north spin axis of the Earth. Therefore, as the Earth turns, stars appear to revolve around Polaris, but Polaris itself always stays in the same northerly direction -- making it the North Star. Since no bright star is near the south spin axis of the Earth, there is currently no bright South Star. Thousands of years ago, Earth's spin axis pointed in a slightly different direction so that Vega was the North Star. Although Polaris is not the brightest star on the sky, it is easily located because it is nearly aligned with two stars in the cup of the Big Dipper. Polaris is near the center of the five-degree wide featured image, a digital composite of hundreds of exposures that brings out faint gas and dust of the Integrated Flux Nebula (IFN) all over the frame. The surface of Cepheid Polaris slowly pulsates, causing the famous star to change its brightness by a few percent over the course of a few days. Today: Zoom APOD Lecture hosted by the Amateur Astronomers of Association of New York

Photo by Davide Coverta

Mute swan (Cygnus olor) at Lake Geneva during the golden hour of sunset.

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

www.flickr.com/photos/bobnoblephotography
www.facebook.com/bobnoblephotography

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Comet ATLAS is really bright now, but also really close to the Sun. Outside the glow of the Sun, Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) would be one of the more remarkable comet sights of recent years, reflecting about as much sunlight to Earth as Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS did in October, and now rivaling even planet Venus. But the giant snowball is now so close to the Sun that it can only be seen through the light of the early morning dawn or the early evening dusk. Today, Comet ATLAS is at perihelion -- its closest ever to the Sun. Although the future brightness of comets is notoriously hard to predict, there is hope that Comet ATLAS will survive its close pass near the Sun and remain bright enough to be seen with the unaided eye over the next few days -- and possibly a good camera comet for weeks. The featured image was taken early yesterday morning near Tornaľa, Slovakia. Tomorrow: Zoom APOD Lecture hosted by the Amateur Astronomers of Association of New York

Photo by Petr Horalek / Institute of Physics in Opava

Heavy snowfall brought by Storm Filomena hit Spain in January 2021, and persisted on the ground for many days across much of the country, as this Copernicus Sentinel-3 satellite image shows.

European Space Agency, Attribution, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Albert Camus ~ (1913 – 1960) French philosopher, author, dramatist and journalist. He was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44.  His works include The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall and The Rebel.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Whatever hit Mimas nearly destroyed it. What remains is one of the largest impact craters on one of Saturn's smallest round moons. Analysis indicates that a slightly larger impact would have destroyed Mimas entirely. The huge crater, named Herschel after the 1789 discoverer of Mimas, Sir William Herschel, spans about 130 kilometers and is featured here. Mimas' low mass produces a surface gravity just strong enough to create a spherical body but weak enough to allow such relatively large surface features. Mimas is made of mostly water ice with a smattering of rock - so it is accurately described as a big dirty snowball. The featured image was taken during the closest-ever flyby of the robot spacecraft Cassini past Mimas in 2010 while in orbit around Saturn. Interactive: Take a trek across Mimas January 14: Zoom APOD Lecture hosted by the Amateur Astronomers of Association of New York

Olive-bellied sunbird (Cinnyris chloropygius) starting to fly at Kibale National Park, Uganda.

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