Contributor Posts

Stéphane Breitwieser is a French art thief and author, born in 1971. He has admitted to stealing more than 250 artworks while traveling around Europe between 1995 and 2001, from 172 museums and other exhibits. His collection of stolen art has been estimated to be more than $2 Billion Dollars. Breitwieser was arrested several times and did confess to most of his crimes. He did served relatively short sentences. His last trial was held in March, 2023 in Sarreguemines, France. He was found guilty and was sentenced to house arrest and is required to wear an ankle monitor.  Read more at Priceless Blog at Squarespace

Crash landing of a U.S. Navy Grumman F6F-3 Hellcat (Number 30) of Fighting Squadron 2 (VF-2) aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CV-6), into the carrier's port side 20mm gun gallery, 10 November 1943. Lieutenant Walter L. Chewning, Jr., USNR, the Catapult Officer, is seen climbing up the plane's side to assist the pilot from the burning aircraft. The pilot, Ensign Byron M. Johnson, escaped without significant injury. Enterprise was then en route to support the Gilberts Operation. Note the plane's ruptured belly fuel tank. Today is Veterans Day in the United States.

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What created an unusual dark streak in Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas's tail? Some images of the bright comet during mid-October not only caught its impressively long tail and its thin anti-tail, but a rather unexpected feature: a dark streak in the long tail. The reason for the dark streak is currently unclear and a topic of some debate. Possible reasons include a plume of dark dust, different parts of the bright tail being unusually superposed, and a shadow of a dense part of the coma on smaller dust particles. The streak is visible in the featured image taken on October 14 from Texas, USA. To help future analyses, if you have taken a good image of the comet that clearly shows this dark streak, please send it in to APOD. Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS has now faded considerably and is returning to the outer Solar System. Gallery: Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS in 2024

Photo by Bray Falls

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

The largest canyon in the Solar System cuts a wide swath across the face of Mars. Named Valles Marineris, the grand valley extends over 3,000 kilometers long, spans as much as 600 kilometers across, and delves as much as 8 kilometers deep. By comparison, the Earth's Grand Canyon in Arizona, USA is 800 kilometers long, 30 kilometers across, and 1.8 kilometers deep. The origin of the Valles Marineris remains unknown, although a leading hypothesis holds that it started as a crack billions of years ago as the planet cooled. Several geologic processes have been identified in the canyon. The featured mosaic was created from over 100 images of Mars taken by Viking Orbiters in the 1970s.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Ice giant Neptune is faint in Earth's night sky. Some 30 times farther from the Sun than our fair planet, telescopes are needed to catch a glimpse of the dim and distant world. This dramatic view of Neptune's night just isn't possible for telescopes in the vicinity of planet Earth though. Peering out from the inner Solar System they can only bring Neptune's day side into view. In fact this night side image with Neptune's slender crescent next to the crescent of its large moon Triton was captured by Voyager 2. Launched from planet Earth in 1977 the Voyager 2 spacecraft made a close fly by of the Solar System's outermost planet in 1989, looking back on Neptune at night as the robotic spacecraft continued its voyage to interstellar space.

Photo by Voyager

Saratoga Passage, island County, WA

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Drifting near the plane of our Milky Way galaxy these dusty molecular clouds seem to extend a helping hand on a cosmic scale. Part of a local complex of star-forming interstellar clouds they include LDN 1358, 1357, and 1355 from American astronomer Beverly Lynds' 1962 Catalog of Dark Nebulae. Presenting a challenging target for astro-imagers, the obscuring dark nebulae are nearly 3,000 light-years away, toward rich starfields in the northern constellation Cassiopeia. At that distance, this deep, telescopic field of view would span about 80 light-years.

Photo by Francesco Radici

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

This spectacular intergalactic skyscape features Arp 227, a curious system of galaxies from the 1966 Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. Some 100 million light-years distant within the boundaries of the constellation Pisces, Arp 227 consists of the two galaxies prominent above and left of center, the shell galaxy NGC 474 and its blue, spiral-armed neighbor NGC 470. The readily apparent shells and star streams of NGC 474 are likely tidal features originating from the accretion of another smaller galaxy during close gravitational encounters that began over a billion years ago. The large galaxy on the bottom righthand side of the deep image, NGC 467, appears to be surrounded by faint shells and streams too, evidence of another merging galaxy system. Intriguing background galaxies are scattered around the field that also includes spiky foreground stars. Of course, those stars lie well within our own Milky Way Galaxy. The telescopic field of view spans 25 arc minutes or just under 1/2 degree on the sky.

Photo by George Williams