Magazine Posts

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What's happening with these clouds? While it may seem that these long and thin clouds are pointing toward the top of a hill, and that maybe a world-famous observatory is located there, only part of that is true. In terms of clouds, the formation is a chance superposition of impressively periodic undulating air currents in Earth's lower atmosphere. Undulatus, a type of Asperitas cloud, form at the peaks where the air is cool enough to cause the condensation of opaque water droplets. The wide-angle nature of the panorama creates the illusion that the clouds converge over the hill. In terms of land, there really is a world-famous observatory at the top of that peak: the Carnegie Science's Las Campanas Observatory in the Atacama Desert of Chile. The two telescope domes visible are the 6.5-meter Magellan Telescopes. The featured coincidental vista was a surprise but was captured by the phone of a quick-thinking photographer in late September. Your Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday? (post 1995)

Photo by Yuri Beletsky

Sparassis crispa in natural habitat. Focus stack of 20 photos.

Dominicus Johannes Bergsma, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Stars can create huge and intricate dust sculptures from the dense and dark molecular clouds from which they are born. The tools the stars use to carve their detailed works are high energy light and fast stellar winds. The heat they generate evaporates the dark molecular dust as well as causing ambient hydrogen gas to disperse and glow. Pictured here, a new open cluster of stars designated IC 1590 is nearing completion around the intricate interstellar dust structures in the emission nebula NGC 281, dubbed the Pac-man Nebula because of its overall shape. The dust cloud just above center is classified as a Bok Globule as it may gravitationally collapse and form a star -- or stars. The Pacman Nebula lies about 10,000 light years away toward the constellation of Cassiopeia.

Photo by Malcolm Loro

Mugger crocodile (Crocodylus palustris), Gal Oya Reservoir, Sri Lanka.

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

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What is the cause of this unusual parabolic structure? This illuminated cavity, known as LDN 1471, was created by a newly forming star, seen as the bright source at the peak of the parabola. This protostar is experiencing a stellar outflow which is then interacting with the surrounding material in the Perseus Molecular Cloud, causing it to brighten. We see only one side of the cavity -- the other side is hidden by dark dust. The parabolic shape is caused by the widening of the stellar-wind blown cavity over time. Two additional structures can also be seen either side of the protostar; these are known as Herbig-Haro objects, again caused by the interaction of the outflow with the surrounding material. What causes the striations on the cavity walls, though, remains unknown. The featured image was taken by NASA and ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope after an original detection by the Spitzer Space Telescope. Explore Your Universe: Random APOD Generator

Ice crystals on barbed wire in Hausdülmen, Dülmen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.

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

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

The night side of Pluto spans this shadowy scene. In the stunning spacebased perspective the Sun is 4.9 billion kilometers (almost 4.5 light-hours) behind the dim and distant world. It was captured by far flung New Horizons in July of 2015 when the spacecraft was at a range of some 21,000 kilometers from Pluto, about 19 minutes after its closest approach. A denizen of the Kuiper Belt in dramatic silhouette, the image also reveals Pluto's tenuous, surprisingly complex layers of hazy atmosphere. Near the top of the frame the crescent twilight landscape includes southern areas of nitrogen ice plains now formally known as Sputnik Planitia and rugged mountains of water-ice in the Norgay Montes.

Entrance to the Shazdeh Garden (meaning the Prince`s Garden in Mahan), a historical garden near Mahan, Iran. The 5.5 hectares big garden was built for Mohammad Hassan Khan Sardari Iravani ca. 1850 and was entirely remodeled and extended around 1870 during the eleven years of his governorship in the Qajar dynasty.

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