Astronomy Picture of the Day |
APOD: 2009 March 14 - Haute Provence Star Trails
Explanation:
Fix your camera to a tripod and you can record the graceful
trails
traced by the stars as planet Earth
rotates on its axis.
For example, this dramatic 5 hour long exposure was
made on February 24 from
Haute-Provence Observatory (OHP)
in southeastern France.
Actually a composite of 300 consecutive 1-minute exposures, the image
nicely shows stars near the celestial equator tracing nearly straight
lines in projection, while stars north and
south of the equator,
respectively, appear to
circle the north and south
celestial
poles.
Domes at the bottom left and right house the OHP telescopes.
Brilliant planet Venus makes the short
bright trail at the lower right, while
trails of stars in the
end near the lower right observatory dome.
Sirius,
alpha star of Canis Major, traces the bright arc over the dome at
the left.
Astronomer Alexandre Santerne also briefly illuminated a foreground
oak tree during the exposure sequence.
APOD: 2009 March 6 - Crescent Moon and Venus
Explanation:
Last Friday, the Moon and Venus shared the early
evening sky in a beautiful conjunction.
Separated by only
about 2 degrees, they also were both in a crescent
phase.
Just like our Moon,
Venus
can appear as a full disk or a
thin crescent.
Frequently the brightest object in the post-sunset or pre-sunrise sky,
Venus is so small that it usually requires
binoculars or a
small telescope to clearly see its phase.
This
telescopic
image of Friday's conjunction shows off the
similar crescent phases, with the tiny
crescent Venus at the upper right.
APOD: 2009 February 12 - Zodiacal Light Vs. Milky Way
Explanation:
Two fundamental planes of planet Earth's sky compete
for attention in this remarkable wide-angle vista,
recorded on January 23rd.
Arcing above the horizon and into the night at the left
is a beautiful band of
Zodiacal Light - sunlight scattered by
dust
in the solar system's ecliptic plane.
Its opponent on the right is composed of the
faint stars, dust clouds, and nebulae along
the plane of our
Milky Way Galaxy.
Both celestial bands stand above the domes and towers of the
Teide Observatory
on the island of Tenerife.
Also out to play in the pristine, dark skies over the Canary Islands,
are brilliant Venus (lower left),
the distant
Andromeda Galaxy (near center),
and the lovely
Pleiades star cluster (top center).
Of course, seasoned skygazers might even spot
M33, the
California Nebula,
IC1805, and the
double star cluster of Perseus.
(Need some help? Just slide your cursor over the picture.)
APOD: 2009 February 4 - A Dangerous Summer on HD 80606b
Explanation:
On the distant planet HD 80606b, summers might be dangerous.
Hypothetic life forms floating in
HD 080606b's
atmosphere or lurking on one of its (presently hypothetical) moons
might fear the 1,500
Kelvin
summer heat, which is hot enough not only to
melt
lead but also
nickel.
Although
summers
are defined for Earth
by the daily amount of sunlight,
summers on HD 80606b are more greatly influenced by how
close the planet gets to its parent star.
HD 80606b, about 200
light years distant, has the most
elliptical orbit of any planet yet discovered.
In comparison to the Solar System, the distance to its parent star
would range from outside the orbit of
Venus to well inside the orbit of
Mercury.
In this sequence, the night side of
HD 80606b
is computer simulated as it might glow in
infrared light in nearly daily intervals as it passed the closest
point in its 111-day orbit around its parent star.
The simulation is based on
infrared data taken
in late 2007 by the
Spitzer
Space Telescope.
APOD: 2009 January 2 - Alpine Conjunction
Explanation:
Did you see it?
The last conjunction
of Moon and bright planets in 2008
featured a young crescent Moon
and brilliant Venus in the west after sunset on December 31st.
Seen here in dark, clear, mountain air from Mönichkirchen,
Austria, are the
two celestial beacons that dominate
planet Earth's night sky.
That pair was hard to miss, but
skygazers
watching lower along
the western horizon in early twilight might also have glimpsed
a pairing of Jupiter and Mercury as they both
wandered closer to the
Sun in the sky at year's end.
Still, while this single, 5 second long exposure seriously
overexposes the Moon's sunlit crescent, it does capture another
planet not visible to the unaided eye.
The tiny pinprick of light just above the photographer's head
in the picture is the distant
planet Neptune.
APOD: 2009 January 1 - Welcome to the International Year of Astronomy
Explanation:
Astronomers all over planet Earth invite you to experience the night sky as part of the
International Year of Astronomy 2009.
This year was picked by the
International Astronomical Union
and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization
because it occurs 400 years after
Galileo
turned one of the first telescopes toward the heavens.
Peering through that small window,
Galileo discovered that the
Moon has craters,
Venus has phases,
Jupiter has moons,
and Saturn has rings.
This year you can discover these and many modern wonders of the amazing overhead tapestry that is shared by all of humanity.
If, like many others, you find the night sky
wondrous and educational, be sure to attend an
IYA2009 event in your area,
and tell any schools and children that might be interested.
Also, please feel free to explore the extensive
IYA2009 web pages to find international media events that include
blogs,
webcasts and
much
much
more.
APOD: 2008 December 13 - The 60 inch Reflector
Explanation:
On the night of December 13, 1908,
100 years ago today,
the 60-inch diameter
reflecting telescope of Mount Wilson Observatory was first
tested
on the stars.
It became the first successful large reflecting
telescope.
The 60-inch reflector demonstrated a scalable design that used a
mirror to gather faint starlight,
rather than a large and more difficult to support lens, becoming the
granddaddy of all, even larger, modern telescopes.
Now-famous astronomers, including
Harlow Shapley and
Edwin Hubble,
were able to use the 60-inch reflector to
embark on a new kind
of exploration of stars, distant galaxies, and
the nature
of the universe.
Still looking skyward
a century after its first light, the
historic
telescope is seen here pointing toward one of the
most recognizable
celestial events of 2008,
the remarkable conjunction of Moon, Venus, and Jupiter.
APOD: 2008 December 6 - Lunar Diamond
Explanation:
Cameras around the globe
pointed skyward this week to
capture the
spectacular conjunction
of a crescent Moon and bright planets Venus and Jupiter.
But astronomer-artist Deirdre Kelleghan
recorded
her observations in
sketches of
the celestial event.
From Greystones, County Wicklow, Ireland, her small telescope
allowed her to follow the
accompanying lunar occultation as a
brilliant Venus disappeared behind the Moon's dark edge, then reappeared
along the bright lunar limb.
Her lovely drawing of the reemergence of Venus was made with
pastels and conte crayons on A3 size paper under very cold conditions.
She remarks, "The view as Venus once again sparkled like a
diamond stuck on the moon was stunning."
APOD: 2008 December 5 - Smile in the Sky
Explanation:
At sunset, Monday's western sky showed off stunning colors
and dramatic clouds reflected in
Brisbane Water on the Central Coast of New South Wales, Australia.
It also featured the
remarkable conjunction
of the crescent Moon,
Venus, and Jupiter forming a twilight smiley face.
While the gathering of the two bright planets and Moon
awed skygazers
around planet Earth, astronomer Mike Salway
reports taking special pains to record
this gorgeous view,
braving mosquitos and rain squalls along a soggy shore.
His southern hemisphere
perspective finds brilliant Venus at the highest point
in the celestial grouping.
For now, a bright pairing of Venus and Jupiter continues
to dominate the western horizon after sunset but the Moon has
moved on and tonight is near its
first quarter phase.
APOD: 2008 December 4 - Venus in the Moon
Explanation:
On December 1, bright planets Venus and Jupiter gathered near the
young crescent Moon, an inspiring
celestial scene
in early evening skies
around
the world.
But from
some locations
the Moon actually passed in front of Venus,
interrupting the tight grouping with a lunar occultation.
Captured from Wildon, Austria,
this twilight view shows the
silvery evening star about five minutes before it
slipped behind
the dark lunar limb and vanished from sight for more than hour.
The image is a combination of long and short exposures showing
details of the lunar surface illuminated by both faint
earthshine
and bright sunlight.
In the inset, recorded later in darkened
skies over Breil-sur-Roya in
southeastern France, a dazzling Venus has reappeared below the
bright lunar crescent.
Of course, Jupiter, at the upper right about 2 degrees from
Venus and Moon, is
sporting moons of its own seen as
tiny pinpricks of light on either side of the bright planet.
APOD: 2008 December 3 - A Happy Sky Over Los Angeles
Explanation:
Sunday, the sky seemed to smile over much of planet Earth.
Visible the world over was an unusual superposition of our Moon and the planets Venus and Jupiter.
Pictures taken at the right time show a crescent Moon that appears to be a smile when paired with the
planetary conjunction of seemingly nearby Jupiter and Venus.
Pictured above is the scene as it appeared from
Mt. Wilson Observatory
overlooking
Los Angeles,
California,
USA
after sunset on 2008 November 30.
Highest in the sky and farthest in the distance is the planet
Jupiter.
Significantly closer and visible to Jupiter's lower left is
Venus,
appearing through Earth's atmospheric clouds as unusually blue.
On the far right, above the horizon, is our Moon, in a
waxing crescent phase.
Thin clouds illuminated by the Moon appear unusually orange.
Sprawling across the bottom of the image are the hills of Los Angeles, many covered by a thin haze, while
LA skyscrapers are visible on the far left.
The conjunction of
Venus and Jupiter will
continue to be
visible
toward the west after sunset during much of this month.
Hours after the taking of this image, however,
the Moon approached the distant duo, briefly
eclipsed Venus, and then moved on.
APOD: 2008 November 29 - Chilean Skyscape
Explanation:
Night skies over Chilean mountain top observatories
can be dark and clear, with
glorious cosmic vistas.
In this recent example, the plane of our Milky Way galaxy stretches
parallel to the horizon,
the galactic center's star clusters,
dark dust clouds, and glowing nebulae hovering in the west.
Recorded after sunset, the wedge of light extending upward
through the scene is Zodiacal light,
sunlight scattered by dust
along the solar system's ecliptic plane.
A faint meteor was also caught in the view, but
approaching a conjunction, brilliant Venus and
bright Jupiter dominate the skyscape.
A close pairing through this weekend, by Monday,
December 1,
they will be joined by the young
crescent Moon.
Look west after sunset and the tight celestial triangle formed by
Moon, Venus, and Jupiter, the three brightest beacons in the night,
will be
a
spectacular sight,
even from bright-sky urban locations all over the world.
APOD: 2008 September 30 - Planets Ahoy
Explanation:
Can you spot the Solar System's four
rocky planets?
In the above
image taken on September 20,
all of them were visible in a single glance,
but some of them may be different than you think.
Pictured above, the brightest and highest object in the sky is the
planet Venus.
The object lowest in the sky is the
planet Mars,
while the object furthest to the left is the
planet Mercury.
The last remaining
point of light is . . . the bright
star Spica, which leaves the question --
where is the fourth rocky planet?
That would be
Earth, specifically part of
Australia,
visible across the entire bottom of the image.
APOD: 2008 September 25 - The Case of the Very Dusty Binary Star
Explanation:
For astronomers,
close binary star system BD+20 307 originally stood out because it
is extremely dusty.
A substantial amount of
warm dust surrounding it causes
the system to appear exceptionally bright at
infrared wavelengths.
Of course, dust associated with planet formation is often
detected
around young stars, stars only a few
million years old.
But the BD+20 307 system has now been found to be at least a few
billion years old,
an age comparable to the age of our own Solar System.
The large amount of warm dust is
likely the debris from a relatively recent
collision of planet-sized
objects on the scale of, say, Earth and Venus,
in the BD+20 307 system.
Reminiscent of the classic scifi novel
When
Worlds Collide,
the dramatic illustration offers a depiction of
the catastrophic event.
Ironically, this indirect evidence of a destructive
planetary collision could also be the first indication that
planetary
systems can form around
close binary stars.
BD+20 307 is about 300 light-years distant toward the headstrong
constellation Aries.
APOD: 2008 September 15 - SN 1006: A Supernova Ribbon from Hubble
Explanation:
What created this unusual space ribbon?
Most assuredly, one of the most
violent explosions
ever witnessed by ancient humans.
Back in the year 1006 AD, light reached Earth from a stellar explosion in the
constellation of the Wolf
(Lupus),
creating a "guest star" in the sky that appeared
brighter than Venus and lasted for over two years.
The supernova, now cataloged at
SN 1006,
occurred about 7,000 light years away and has left a large remnant that continues to expand and fade today.
Pictured above is a small part of that
expanding supernova
remnant dominated by a
thin and outwardly moving
shock front that heats and ionizes
surrounding ambient gas.
SN 1006 now has a diameter of nearly 60
light years.
Within the past year, an
even more powerful explosion
occurred far across the universe that was visible to modern humans,
without any optical aid, for a few seconds.
APOD: 2008 September 12 - Planets over Perth
Explanation:
A bright trio of
terrestrial planets
was joined by a young Moon on September 1st,
in planet Earth's early evening skies.
In this view of the celestial gathering
from Perth,
Western Australia, the Moon's sunlit crescent is
nearly horizontal at Perth's southern latitude of about
32 degrees.
Venus, then
Mercury, and finally
Mars shine above
colorful city lights on the far shore of the Swan River.
The six unlit towers on the left surround a large
cricket stadium.
For now,
the planetary trio still lingers low in the west
just after sunset.
But in the coming days Venus will move farther from the Sun,
climbing higher after sunset,
while Mercury and Mars will steadily sink into the
glare along the western
horizon.
APOD: 2008 August 21 - August Moons
Explanation:
This August was
eclipse season.
The month's first New Moon and Full Moon were both seen in
darkened skies during a
solar and lunar eclipse.
Blocking the Sun, the left panel's New
Moon was captured
during the total solar eclipse of August 1 from the path of
totality overlooking Novosibirsk (Siberia) Reservoir,
locally known as the Ob Sea.
A lovely
solar corona
and bright inner planets Mercury and Venus emerged
during the total eclipse phase, while the flickering view screens
of eclipse watchers' digital cameras dotted the landscape.
On the right, the Full Moon grazed
Earth's shadow nearly
15 days later in a
partial lunar eclipse.
That
serene
view was recorded during an early evening stroll along
the shores of the Odet River near the city of Quimper
in western France.
For planet Earth there are about two seasons each year during
which the orientation of the Moon's orbit is
favorable for solar and lunar eclipses.
The next eclipse season begins in January 2009 with an annular
solar eclipse.
APOD: 2008 August 5 - A Total Solar Eclipse Over China
Explanation:
What's that black dot over the Sun?
The Moon.
This past weekend, the
Sun went dark during the day as the Moon completely covered it.
The total solar eclipse was visible over a
thin swath of
Earth extending from northern Canada to China.
As shown above, many
sky enthusiasts gathered
to witness the total or partial solar eclipse, which lasted only a few minutes.
The above image was taken during totality near
Barkol in
Xinjiang,
China, with the
Barkol Shan
mountain range visible on the horizon.
Although the brightest parts of the Sun are covered, the normally invisible
corona
of hot gas surrounding the Sun became prominent.
Just to the upper left of the Moon darkened Sun are planets
Mercury and Venus.
The increased
darkening of the sky
toward the right indicates the darkened atmosphere created by the passing
shadow cone of the total solar
eclipse.
The next total solar eclipse will occur next July and be visible in parts of India and China.
APOD: 2008 April 23 - Above the Clouds
Explanation:
From the windswept peak of
Mauna Kea, on the
Big Island of
Hawaii, your view of
the world at
night could look like this.
At an altitude of about 13,500 feet, the mountain top
is silhouetted in
the stunning skyscape
recorded near dusk in early December of 2005.
The volcanic
peak
rises just above a sea of storm clouds illuminated
by a bright Moon.
Planet Venus
is setting near the Moon as the brilliant evening star.
The scene also includes the faint,
milky band of our own galaxy's
disk of stars and cosmic dust clouds stretching from the horizon
into the sky along the right edge of the frame.
APOD: 2008 March 10 - Planets Align Over Australian Radio Telescope Array
Explanation:
Last week,
Mercury,
Venus, and the
Moon all appeared close together in Earth's sky.
This picturesque conjunction was caught on camera behind elements of
the Australia Telescope
Compact Array (ATCA) near the town of Narrabri in rural
New South Wales.
The ATCA
consists of six
radio telescopes
in total, each one larger than a house.
Together they form one of the highest resolution
measurement devices in the world.
Impressive
planetary
conjunctions occur every few years.
Involving the brightest objects in the night sky,
this alignment was easy to spot just before sunrise.
In the picture, taken on the morning of March 6,
Mercury is the highest
of the three bright celestial beacons.
APOD: 2008 February 26 - Mysterious Acid Haze on Venus
Explanation:
Why did an acidic haze spread across Venus?
The unusual clouds were discovered last July by
ESA's robotic
Venus Express
spacecraft currently orbiting
Venus.
The bright and smooth
haze was found by Venus Express to be rich in
sulfuric acid, created when an unknown process lifted water vapor and
sulphur dioxide
from lower levels into
Venus' upper atmosphere.
There, sunlight broke these molecules apart and some of them recombined into the
volatile sulfuric acid.
Over the course of just a few days last July, the smooth acidic clouds spread from the
South Pole of Venus across half the planet.
The above false-color picture of Venus was taken last July 23rd in
ultraviolet light,
and shows the unusual haze as relatively smooth regions across the image bottom.
The cause of the dark streaks in the clouds is also not yet understood and is being researched.
APOD: 2008 February 2 - Venus and Jupiter in Morning Skies
Explanation:
These two celestial beacons shining brightly in the east before
sunrise are actually
children of the Sun,
the planets Venus and Jupiter.
The second and third brightest objects in
the sky at Night
after the Moon,
Venus and Jupiter
appeared separated by about 2 degrees
when this picture was taken on January 30th, but closed to within
nearly half a degree early yesterday morning.
In the serene foreground is the
shoreline along the
Miankaleh
Peninsula and Gorgan Bay, an important
bird and wildlife
refuge in the
southeastern Caspian Sea.
Over the next two days, early morning risers around the globe
will be able to enjoy a close pairing of Venus and Jupiter
with an old crescent Moon.
APOD: 2007 December 8 - Star Trails at Dawn
Explanation:
Just fix your camera to a tripod and you too
can make an image of graceful
trails
traced by the stars as
planet Earth rotates on its axis.
Made on September 14 from Montlaux, France, this wide-angle
view nicely
shows
the stars near the celestial equator tracing nearly straight
lines in projection, while stars north and
south of the equator,
respectively, appear to
circle the north and south
celestial poles.
Featured are the stars of Orion (right of center), brilliant Venus
rising (left) as bright star Sirius rises in the south (bottom center),
and a polar orbiting
Iridium satellite (upper left).
Beautiful dawn sky colors seem painted along the horizon.
This remarkable picture was constructed from 477 consecutive 30
second digital exposures recorded over 4.3 hours and later
combined.
APOD: 2007 November 8 - VERITAS and Venus
Explanation:
Early morning risers and late to bed astronomers have recently
enjoyed
bright planets in predawn skies, with
brilliant Venus above the eastern horizon.
On November 5, Venus was joined by the waning crescent
Moon.
This self-portrait by astronomer Larry Ciupik captures the
lovely pairing of the two brightest celestial beacons on the scene,
though the Moon, right of Venus, is strongly over exposed.
Included at the far left in the 30 second exposure is the bright
streak of the International
Space Station still docked with shuttle orbiter
Discovery.
Together in Earth orbit, the
spacefaring combination was momentarily
the third brightest
sky
light in view.
In dim silhouette, a multi-mirrored unit of the
Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System
(VERITAS)
is also visible in the foreground.
VERITAS operates at the Whipple Observatory near Tucson, Arizona
to detect high-energy gamma-rays
from the cosmos.
APOD: 2007 October 11 - Bright Planets, Crescent Moon
Explanation:
Early risers are currently enjoying
the sight of
dazzling Venus,
near the eastern horizon as the
morning star.
Recorded on October 7, this predawn
skyview
does feature Venus at the upper right.
It also includes a crescent Moon and Saturn (lower left).
In fact, holding your fist at arms length would have
easily covered
both planets and the Moon in this 5 degree wide field.
Earthshine,
sunlight reflected from planet Earth's dayside, illuminates
features on the lunar nightside.
A close inspection of Saturn itself reveals
a nearby pinpoint of light corresponding
to
Saturn's large moon Titan.
Though the Moon has moved on,
the tight triangle formed by Venus, Saturn,
and Regulus (top), alpha star in the constellation Leo, will
continue to look impressive
in early morning skies over the next few days.
Early bird astrophotographer Jay Ouellet also described
Mars as a "brilliant red diode" in
his dark country sky east of Quebec City, Canada.
APOD: 2007 October 2 - Tutulemma: Solar Eclipse Analemma
Explanation:
If you went outside at exactly the same time every day and took a
picture that included the Sun, how would the Sun appear to move?
With great planning
and effort, such a series of images can be taken.
The figure-8 path the Sun follows over
the
course of a year
is called an analemma.
With even greater planning and effort,
the series can include a
total eclipse of the Sun as one of the images.
Pictured is such a total solar eclipse
analemma
or Tutulemma -
a term coined by the photographers based on the Turkish word for eclipse.
The composite image sequence was recorded from
Turkey starting
in 2005.
The base image for the sequence is from the
total phase of a solar eclipse as viewed
from Side,
Turkey on 2006 March 29.
Venus was also visible during totality, toward the lower right.
APOD: 2007 July 18 - Planets over Pony Express Lake
Explanation:
Beautiful sunset
sky colors
are reflected in
Pony Express Lake in
this
twilight skyview from
northern Missouri, USA, planet Earth.
Recorded on Monday, a two day old crescent Moon and
brilliant planet Venus shine through thin clouds.
Joining the
conjunction on the right of the Moon's
sunlit crescent is fellow
wanderer Saturn, with Regulus, alpha star of the
constellation Leo, above and right of Venus.
Moonlight and
Venus
light streak the almost-calm lake waters.
APOD: 2007 July 4 - Red, White, and Blue Sky
Explanation:
Contrasting colors in this
beautiful sunset sky
were captured on June 30 from
Clear Creek Canyon Observatory in central Arizona, USA.
The twilight scene includes
brilliant Venus as the
evening
star, with a bright Saturn just above it,
shining through thin clouds.
The two wandering
planets were
a mere 1 degree apart or so,
about twice the width of the full Moon rising above the
eastern horizon on the other side of the sky.
In fact, such serene
skyviews were possible from
all over planet Earth as Venus and Saturn approached a
conjunction.
Regulus, alpha star of the
constellation
Leo, is above and to the left of the close planetary pairing.
At dusk, lights in tonight's sky will also feature
Venus and Saturn low in the west and separated by
about 2 degrees.
APOD: 2007 June 20 - A Daylight Eclipse of Venus
Explanation:
Something was about to happen.
Just two days ago, two of the three celestial objects easily visible during the day appeared to collide.
But actually,
Earth's Moon
passed well in front of the distant
planet Venus.
The occultation was caught from
Switzerland
in the hours before
sunset.
Moments after this image was taken, the Moon, visible as the crescent on the right of the
above image,
eclipsed Venus, appearing near
half phase on the lower left.
Clouds that once threatened to obscure the
whole event, were visible on the far left.
About
90 minutes later,
Venus re-appeared just to the right of the
bright crescent.
APOD: 2007 May 26 - The Moon's Saturn
Explanation:
On May 22nd, just days after sharing the western evening sky
with Venus, the Moon moved
on to Saturn -
actually passing in
front of the ringed planet when viewed in skies over
Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia.
Because the Moon and bright planets wander through the sky
near the ecliptic plane, such
occultation events are
not uncommon, but they are
dramatic, especially in
telescopic views.
For example, in this sharp image Saturn is captured
emerging
from behind the Moon, giving the illusion
that it lies just beyond the Moon's bright edge.
Of course, the Moon is a mere 400 thousand kilometers away,
compared to Saturn's distance of 1.4
billion kilometers.
Taken with
a digital camera and 20 inch diameter telescope
at the Weikersheim Observatory in southern Germany,
the picture is a single exposure adjusted to reduce the
difference in brightness between Saturn and the
cratered lunar surface.
APOD: 2007 May 23 - Venus Near the Moon
Explanation:
The two brightest objects in the night sky appeared to go right past each other last week.
On the night of May 19,
Earth's Moon and the
planet Venus were visible in the same part of the sky,
and at closest approach were less than one degree apart.
The conjunction was captured in the above image taken from near
Quebec City,
Quebec,
Canada.
Venus appears on the lower left of the above photo.
The spires that appear to emanate from
Venus are
diffraction spikes caused by the camera itself.
The image is so clear that
craters on the Moon are resolved.
Of course, the real physical distance between the
two heavenly bodies was not unusually small -- the apparent
conjunction was really just an
illusion of
perspective.
Although Earth's Moon passes Venus once each month, such a
close passing visible in the
evening sky is more rare.
APOD: 2007 May 4 - The Iron Tail of Comet McNaught
Explanation:
Outstanding in
planet Earth's sky early this year,
Comet McNaught
is captured in this view
from the STEREO A spacecraft.
McNaught's
coma is so
bright, it
blooms into the
long horizontal stripe at the bottom of the field.
Brilliant Venus, near the top left corner, also produces a severe
horizontal blemish in the digital image.
But the sensitive camera does accurately record the
striations in McNaught's
famous dust tail along a region
stretching over 30 million kilometers toward the top right of
the field of view.
A separate, fainter, arching tail just to the left of the
dust tail was initially thought to be an example of a
common ion tail,
formed by electrically
charged atoms
carried away from the comet by
the solar wind.
However,
detailed
modeling indicates that tail is actually due to
neutral iron atoms pushed out by the pressure
of sunlight --
the first ever detected neutral iron tail from a comet.
The iron atoms are thought to originate in
dust grains
from the comet nucleus
that contain the iron-sulfur mineral
troilite (FeS).
APOD: 2007 May 2 - Sunrise from the Surface of Gliese 581c
Explanation:
How might a sunrise appear on Gliese 581c? One artistic guess is shown above.
Gliese 581c is the most
Earth-like planet
yet discovered and lies a mere 20
light-years
distant.
The central
red dwarf is small and redder than
our Sun
but one of the orbiting planets has recently been discovered to be in the
habitable zone where liquid water could exist on its surface.
Although this planet is much different from
Earth, orbiting much closer than
Mercury and containing five times the mass of Earth,
it is now a candidate to hold not only
oceans but life
enabled by the oceans.
Were future observations to confirm liquid water,
Gliese 581c might become a worthy destination or
way station for future
interstellar travelers from Earth.
Drawn above in the hypothetical, the red dwarf star
Gliese 581
rises through clouds above a calm ocean of its planet Gliese 581c.
APOD: 2007 May 1 - Swirling Clouds Over the South Pole of Venus
Explanation:
What's happening over the South Pole of Venus?
To find out, scientists sent the
robot Venus Express spacecraft now orbiting
Venus
directly over the lower spin axis of Earth's overheated twin.
Venus Express
confirmed there a spectacular massive swirling storm system with
similarities to the
vortex recently imaged over Saturn's South Pole.
The above composite image in
infrared light features Venus' daytime side on the left,
shining primarily by reflected sunlight, and nighttime side on the right,
shining primarily by
thermal light.
A Venusian polar vortex is visible as
the small circular feature near the center of the thermal infrared image pictured on the right.
Close inspection of
other South Pole images unexpectedly showed a second vortex,
meaning that the unusual swirling clouds are like an
Earth-hurricane that has two eyes.
Why a double vortex has formed is now a topic of
research.
The above image was taken last year, and
more recent images from Venus Express
are being processed that have as much as 100 times more detail.
APOD: 2007 April 28 - Young Moon and Sister Stars
Explanation:
A young crescent Moon shared the western
sky with thin clouds and the
sister
stars of the Pleiades cluster in this
early evening skyscape recorded on April 19th.
Astronomical images of the
well-known Pleiades
often show the
star cluster's alluring blue reflection nebulae, but they
are washed-out here in the clouds and bright moonlight.
While the 3-day old Moon is overexposed, surface features can
be seen on the dim lunar night side, illuminated by
earthshine - light
from sunlit planet Earth.
Only a week earlier, brilliant Venus
also posed near the
sister stars.
Of course, Venus has not yet wandered too far from
the Pleiades and still rules western skies as
the
evening star.
APOD: 2007 April 14 - Venus by the Lake
Explanation:
Finding Venus
in the night sky is not too hard these days.
Now appearing as the evening star, Venus rules as the brightest
celestial beacon in west just
after
sunset.
And if you can find Venus tonight, you can also easily
find the lovely Pleiades star cluster
(aka M45) close by.
In this serene skyview, recorded on Tuesday near
Bolu, Turkey, Venus and
the Pleiades are on the right, with
brilliant Venus reflected in the calm waters
of the small lake in the foreground.
Left of Venus, the bright star
Aldebaran anchors the V-shaped
Hyades star cluster.
Farther left are stars of the familiar constellation Orion with
Rigel, at the foot of Orion, also reflected in the lake.
Meanwhile, Sirius, in Canis Major,
is the brightest star on the
left side of the view.
But the bright terrestrial light below Sirius is not a reflection,
it's just a light near the lake shore.
APOD: 2007 March 24 - Lisbon Moonset
Explanation:
Brilliant Venus, a slender
crescent Moon, and lights along the
Ponte 25
de Abril glow against the western
twilight in this lovely moonset scene from Lisbon, Portugal,
recorded on March 20.
In fact, such serene views were enjoyed across planet Earth
this week, as the
young Moon remained near the
setting Sun following a partial solar eclipse, and Venus ruled as the
evening
star.
Because of
strong Earthshine - light from the
sunlit Earth - even the Moon's night side is clearly visible in the picture.
The Ponte 25 de Abril is a 2.3 kilometer long
suspension bridge across the Tagus river, often
compared to the Golden Gate
bridge in San Francisco, USA.
APOD: 2007 January 27 - Castle and Sky
Explanation:
While Comet McNaught ruled southern skies,
last week's conjunction of the Moon and Venus
could be enjoyed by denizens
of both hemispheres of planet Earth.
The two more commonly viewed celestial beacons
produced this lovely twilight scene, recorded last
Saturday in skies above Almodovar
near Cordoba
in southern Spain.
Brilliant Venus and a slender
crescent Moon seem to overlook the small town, along with a well-lit
Castle
Almodovar.
The impressive castle's construction
began in the 700s on the strategic site of a Roman fort.
It was extensively restored in the 20th century.
APOD: 2007 January 15 - Comet McNaught Over Catalonia
Explanation:
This past weekend Comet McNaught peaked at a brightness that surpassed even Venus.
Fascinated sky enthusiasts in the Earth's northern hemisphere were treated to an
instantly visible comet head and a faint elongated tail
near sunrise and sunset.
Recent brightness estimates had
Comet McNaught
brighter than
magnitude -5 (minus five) over this past weekend, making it the
brightest comet since
Comet Ikeya-Seki in 1965,
which was recorded at -7 (minus seven).
The Great Comet of 2007
reached its brightest as it rounded the Sun well inside the orbit of Mercury.
Over the next week
Comet McNaught
will begin to fade as it moves south and away from the Sun.
The unexpectedly bright comet
should remain visible to
observers in the southern hemisphere with unaided
eyes for the rest of January.
The above image, vertically compressed, was taken at sunset last Friday from
mountains above
Catalonia,
Spain.
APOD: 2006 December 9 - Three Planets in Dawn Skies
Explanation:
Three children of the Sun rise in
the east in this peaceful dawn skyview recorded
December 7th near Bolu, Turkey.
Inner planet Mercury,
fresh from its second transit of the 21st
century, stands highest in the bright sky at the top right.
Gas giant Jupiter lies below the cloud bank near picture center.
A newsworthy Mars is also visible,
right of Jupiter and just above the dark cloud bank.
On Sunday, these planets will form a much
tighter grouping
before
sunrise, while in the coming days the
western sky after sunset will be ruled by brilliant
planet Venus, also
known as the evening star.
APOD: 2006 November 16 - Children of the Sun
Explanation:
For a
moment, planets
Jupiter,
Venus,
Mars, and
Mercury
all posed near their parent star in this Sun-centered view,
recorded on November 11.
The picture, from a coronograph onboard the space-based
SOlar Heliospheric
Observatory, spans 15 degrees with
the Sun's size and position indicated by the white circle.
Background stars are also visible as the otherwise
overwhelming sunlight is blocked by
the coronograph's occulting disk.
But the planets themselves, in particular Jupiter and Venus, are
still bright enough to cause significant horizontal streaks in
the image.
Mercury is actually
moving most rapidly (left to right) through
the field and
days
earlier was seen to
cross
in front of the solar disk.
So what's that bright double star to the left of Mars?
Zubenelgenubi, of course.
APOD: 2006 November 8 - Simulated Transit of Mercury
Explanation:
Mercury, the solar system's innermost planet,
will spend about five hours crossing
in front of the Sun
today - beginning at 1912
UT
(2:12pm EST), November 8.
Specially equipped telescopes are highly recommended to safely
spot the planet's diminutive
silhouette however, as Mercury should
appear about 200 times smaller than the enormous solar disk.
This simulated
view is based on a filtered solar image recorded on November 3rd.
It shows active regions and
the
Mercury transit across the Sun
at six positions
from lower
left to middle right.
Depending on your location, the Sun may not be above
the horizon during the entire transit, but webcasts of
the event are
planned - including one using images from the
sun-staring SOHO spacecraft.
This is the second of 14 transits of Mercury during the
21st century.
The next similar event will be a transit of Venus in
June of 2012.
APOD: 2006 October 30 - Crescent Venus and Moon
Explanation:
There's something behind these clouds.
Those faint graceful arcs, upon inspection, are actually far, far in the distance.
They are the
Earth's Moon and the
planet Venus.
Both the Moon and Venus
are bright enough to be seen during the day, and both are quite capable of showing a
crescent phase.
To see Venus, which appears quite small, in a
crescent phase requires
binoculars or a telescope.
In the
above dramatic daytime image taken from
Budapest,
Hungary, the
Moon and Venus shared a similar crescent
phase a few minutes before the
Moon eclipsed the larger but more distant world.
About an hour later, Venus reappeared.
APOD: 2006 August 28 - Eight Planets and New Solar System Designations
Explanation:
How many planets are in the Solar System?
This popular question now has a new formal answer according the
International Astronomical Union (IAU): eight.
Last week, the IAU voted on a
new definition for planet and
Pluto did not make the cut.
Rather, Pluto was re-classified as a
dwarf planet and is considered as a prototype for a new category of
trans-Neptunian objects.
The eight planets now recognized by the IAU are:
Mercury,
Venus,
Earth,
Mars,
Jupiter,
Saturn,
Uranus, and
Neptune.
Solar System objects now classified as dwarf planets are:
Ceres,
Pluto, and the currently unnamed
2003 UB313.
Planets, by the new IAU definition, must be in orbit around the sun, be nearly spherical,
and must have cleared the neighborhood around their orbits.
The demotion of
Pluto to dwarf planet
status is a source of continuing
dissent and controversy in the astronomical community.
APOD: 2006 July 23 - The Belt of Venus over the Valley of the Moon
Explanation:
Although you've surely seen it, you might not have noticed it.
During a cloudless twilight, just before
sunrise or after
sunset,
part of the atmosphere above the horizon appears
slightly off-color, slightly pink.
Called the Belt of Venus, this off-color band between the dark
eclipsed sky and the
blue sky can be seen in nearly every direction
including that opposite the Sun.
Straight above, blue sky is normal sunlight reflecting off the atmosphere.
In the Belt of Venus, however, the
atmosphere reflects light from the setting (or rising)
Sun which appears more red.
The Belt of Venus can be seen from any location with a
clear horizon.
Pictured above, the Belt of Venus was photographed above
morning fog in the
Valley of the Moon, a famous wine-producing region in northern
California,
USA.
The belt is
frequently
caught
by
accident
in
other
photographs.
APOD: 2006 July 17 - Venus Express Arrives at Venus
Explanation:
Humanity now has a spacecraft orbiting Venus.
The robotic
Venus Express spacecraft
launched by the
European Space Agency in 2005 November arrived at
Venus in 2006 April.
Venus Express is now orbiting Earth's sister planet and returning pictures.
Pictured above is a false-color, time-lapse movie in
ultraviolet light
captured by the Venus Express spacecraft as it flew over
Venus' northern hemisphere in late May.
Venus Express is scheduled to orbit
Venus for three years and collect data that might help in answering
questions that include why Venus continually generates
hurricane-force winds,
why Venus became
so hot in the past, and if there is any current volcanic activity on
Venus.
It is hoped that a better understanding of
Venus's hot and inhospitable climate will help humanity better understand
Earth's climate as well.
APOD: 2006 June 29 - Old Moon and Sister Stars
Explanation:
An old crescent Moon shares the
eastern sky over
Menton, France
with the sister stars
of the Pleiades cluster in this early
morning skyscape
recorded just last Friday, June 23rd.
(Bright Venus was also near the eastern horizon, but
is not pictured here.)
Astronomical images of the
well-known Pleiades often show the
cluster's alluring blue reflection nebulae, but they are washed out here
by the bright moonlight.
Still, while the
crescent Moon is overexposed,
surface features can be seen on the dim lunar night
side illuminated by earthshine - light from sunlit planet
Earth.
Of course, you can spot a young
crescent Moon in the early evening
sky tonight.
Having left the Pleiades behind, a lovely lunar crescent now
appears in the west,
lining up with planets Mars, Saturn,
and Mercury along the solar system's
ecliptic plane.
APOD: 2006 June 15 - Gordel van Venus
Explanation:
Scroll right and
enjoy this 180 degree panorama across the
South African Astronomical
Observatory's hilltop
Sutherland observing station.
Featured are
SAAO
telescope domes and buildings, along
with the dark, wedge-shaped shadow of planet Earth stretching into
the distance, bounded above by the delicately
colored antitwilight arch.
Visible along the antisunward horizon
at sunset,
(or sunrise)
the pinkish
antitwilight arch
is also known as the Belt of Venus.
In order, the significant structures from left to right house;
the giant SALT 11-meter instrument,
the internet telescope
MONET,
the 1.9 meter Radcliffe,
the 1.0 meter Elizabeth,
a 0.75 meter reflector,
a 0.5 meter reflector,
a garage,
YSTAR,
BiSON,
ACT,
IRSF (open),
and a storage building.
(Note to SAAO fans: in this east-facing view the planet-hunter
SuperWASP south
is hidden behind the IRSF.)
APOD: 2006 April 30 - 1006 AD: Supernova in the Sky
Explanation:
A new star, likely the
brightest supernova in recorded
human history,
appeared in planet Earth's sky about 1,000 years ago today,
in 1006 AD.
The expanding debris cloud
from the stellar explosion
is still visible to modern
astronomers, but what did the supernova look like in 1006?
In celebration of the millennial anniversary of SN1006,
astronomer Tunc Tezel
offers this intriguing suggestion, based on a photograph
he took on February 22, 1998 from a site overlooking
the Mediterranean south of Antalya, Turkey.
On that date, bright Venus and a waning crescent Moon
shone in the early morning sky.
Adopting
calculations
which put the
supernova's
apparent brightness
between Venus and the crescent Moon,
he digitally superposed an appropriate new star in the picture.
He placed the star at the supernova's position in the
southerly constellation of Lupus
and used the water's reflection
of moonlight in the final image.
APOD: 2006 March 3 - Venus and Comet Pojmanski
Explanation:
Shining brightly in the east at dawn,
Venus
dominates the sky in this view over a suburban
landscape from Bursa, Turkey.
An otherwise familiar scene for astronomer Tunc Tezel, his
composite picture of the morning sky recorded on March 2nd
also includes a surprise visitor to the inner solar system,
Comet Pojmanski.
Cataloged as C/2006 A1, the comet was discovered
on January 2nd by Grzegorz Pojmanski of Warsaw University
Astronomical Observatory
in Poland.
At the time
very
faint and tracking through
southern skies, the comet
has now moved north and grown just bright enough to be a good target for
early-rising skygazers with binoculars.
Enhanced and framed in this picture, the comet's
tail has
also grown to a length of several degrees.
The comet will be at its closest approach to planet Earth, just
over 100 million kilometers away, on March 5.
For northern hemisphere observers in the next few days, the beginning
of morning twilight really will be the best time to
spot Comet Pojmanski.
APOD: 2006 February 4 - Shadow Set
Explanation:
A nearly full Moon
and planet Earth's shadow
set together in this scene
captured on January 13th from snowy Mt. Jelm, home of the
Wyoming Infrared Observatory.
For early morning risers (and late to bed
astronomers),
shadow set in the western sky is a
daily
apparition whose subtle beauty
is often overlooked in
favor of the more colorful eastern horizon.
Extending through the dense atmosphere,
Earth's setting shadow is seen
in this picture as a dark blue band along the distant horizon,
bounded above
by a pinkish glow or antitwilight arch.
Known as the Belt of Venus, the arch's
lovely color is due to
backscattering of reddened light from the rising Sun.
The setting Moon's light is
also reddened
by the long sight-line through the atmosphere.
APOD: 2006 February 1 - Venus Just After Sunset
Explanation:
Is that Venus or an airplane?
A common ponderable for
sky enthusiasts is deciding if that bright spot
near the horizon is the planet
Venus.
Usually, an airplane will show itself by moving significantly in a few moments.
Venus will set only slowly as the
Earth turns.
Still, the identification would be easier if Venus did not keep
shifting its position each night.
Pictured above,
Venus was captured 38 different nights during 2005 and 2006 over
Bursa,
Turkey, when
Earth's sister planet appeared exclusively in the evening sky.
The average spacing of the images was about five days, while the images
were always taken with the Sun about 7 degrees below the horizon.
Venus' orbit
around the Sun will now confine it to Earth's
morning sky until October 2006.
APOD: 2006 January 10 - The Phases of Venus
Explanation:
Venus goes through phases.
Just like our Moon,
Venus
can appear as full as a disk or as a
thin as a crescent.
Venus, frequently the brightest object in the post-sunset or pre-sunrise sky,
appears so small, however, that it usually requires
binoculars or a
small telescope to clearly see its current phase.
The above time-lapse sequence, however, was taken over the
course of many months and shows not only how Venus changes phase
but how it's apparent
angular size also changes.
In the middle negative image, Venus is in a new phase, the same phase that occurred during its
rare partial eclipse of the Sun in 2004.
APOD: 2006 January 4 - Hauoli Makahiki Hou
Explanation:
Fading sunlight,
a young crescent Moon, and
brilliant
Venus
shared the western sky in this view of 2005's final sunset from
the top of
Mount Haleakala, on Maui, Hawaii.
Also known as the Sacred House of the Sun,
Haleakala,
is Maui's dormant volcano.
At 10,000 feet the summit is an ideal site for
astronomical
observatories, and this scene also features the silhouette
of the northern hemisphere Faulkes Telescope.
Of particular interest to students
the Faulkes
Telescope is a 2-meter diameter instrument, dedicated to
astronomy education, that can be remotely operated over
the internet.
The project is a joint effort between the Dill Faulkes Educational
Trust and the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy.
Of course on Haleakala, "Happy New Year"
would be
"Hauoli Makahiki hou" (how-oh-lee ma-ka-hee-key ho).
APOD: 2005 December 9 - December Moon Meets Evening Star
Explanation:
If you've been outdoors near sunset, then you've probably
noticed Venus low in the west as the
brilliant evening star.
Sometimes mistaken for a tower light
near the horizon,
Venus is the third brightest celestial beacon, after
the Sun and Moon, in planet Earth's sky.
That distinction is particularly easy to appreciate in
this
peaceful scene featuring the crescent Moon, Venus, and
sunset colors captured on
December 4th near Albany, Missouri, USA.
As this season's evening star,
Venus
will be at its most brilliant
tonight, but as December progresses the bright
planet will begin to
fall out of the western sky.
By early next week, December's Moon will have moved on to meet
another bright planet overhead -- Mars.
APOD: 2005 October 31 - A Martian Halloween
Explanation:
From sunset to sunrise, an unusually bright yellowish
orb will hang in the sky this Halloween: Mars.
Yesterday,
Earth passed Mars
as they orbited the Sun, bringing
Mars
closer than it will be for the next thirteen years.
Tonight though, Mars will be nearly as bright as last night,
a beacon of
extraterrestrial spookiness.
Opposite the Sun, Mars will rise just
when the Sun sets, set just when the Sun rises, and be visible
the entire night.
Mars will not always be the
brightest object in tonight's sky, though.
Brighter than even Mars, almost spooky
Venus will light up the western horizon for a brief time just after sunset.
Please have a safe and happy
All Hallows Eve.
APOD: 2005 October 30 - A Dark and Stormy Night
Explanation:
It was a dark and stormy night.
But on 2003 August 29th the red planet Mars, near its
closest
approach
to Earth in almost 60,000 years, shone brightly in the sky against
a background of stars in the
constellation Aquarius.
In the foreground of
this
scary view, huge thunder clouds are
lit by lightning
strokes from within.
Mars,
of course, has nothing to do with storms on Earth, though
both have the power to excite the
imagination and wonder
of
Earthdwellers.
Tonight, the night before
Halloween, Mars will also
pass close to the Earth,
closer than it will come during the next thirteen years.
And once again, the red planet Mars will look particularly bright,
although much smaller and dimmer than the
Moon and even Venus.
APOD: 2005 October 19 - On the Possibility of Ascending to Mars
Explanation:
On another October 19, in 1899, a 17 year-old
Robert Goddard
climbed a cherry tree on a beautiful autumn afternoon
in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Inspired by H.G. Wells'
War of the Worlds and
gazing out across
a meadow, young Goddard imagined it
would be wonderful to make a device that had the possibility
of ascending to Mars.
Forever more he felt his life had a purpose and
in the following years his diary entries record October 19th
as "Anniversary Day", the anniversary of his ascent into the
cherry tree.
By 1926 he had
designed, built, and flown the world's first
liquid fuel rocket.
Mars is just visible through the trees
at the lower right in this dramatic
sky view that also features the Moon
and Venus -- all visited by
liquid fuel rockets constructed
on principles developed by Goddard.
APOD: 2005 September 28 - A Rocket Launch at Sunset
Explanation:
What kind of cloud is that?
Last week, a
sunset rocket launch
lit up the sky and was photographed by
sky enthusiasts as far as hundreds of miles away.
The lingering result was a
photogenic rocket plume.
Not everyone who saw the resulting plume knew its cause to be a
Minotaur rocket
launched from
Vandenberg Air Force Base in
California,
USA.
The cloud was visible after sunset on 22 September.
Fuel particles and water droplets expelled from the rocket swirled in the
winds of the upper atmosphere, creating an expanding
helix.
The noctilucent plume was so high
that it still reflected sunlight, where lower clouds in the foreground appeared dark.
The above image
also captured part of the plume reflecting sunlight as a
rainbow or a colorful
iridescent cloud.
Below the launch plume is the planet
Venus.
APOD: 2005 September 13 - A Quadruple Sky Over Great Salt Lake
Explanation:
This was a sky to show the kids.
All in all, three children, three planets, the Moon, a star, an airplane and a mom were all captured in one image near
Great Salt Lake in
Utah,
USA on September 6.
Minus the airplane and the quadruple on the ground, this busy
quadruple coincidence sky was visible last week all over the world.
The easiest object to spot is the crescent
Moon, which is easily the brightest sky orb in the
above image.
Venus is the highest planet in the sky, with
Jupiter to its right.
The bright star
Spica
completes the quadruple just below
Venus.
The streak on the far right is an
airplane.
Mom is seated.
Grandpa, appreciating the beauty of the moment, took the picture.
APOD: 2005 September 9 - Moon River
Explanation:
Shortly
after
sunset on September 6th, sky gazers around the world
were treated to a lovely
crescent
Moon in western skies --
joined by
bright planets Venus and Jupiter.
In this colorful telephoto view from near Quebec City,
Canada the Moon is nestled just above the wide
St.
Lawrence River.
Lights on the horizon are along the river's southern shore.
Also known as the evening star,
Venus is at the upper left
and Jupiter at the upper right, while
another prominent
celestial
beacon, Spica, can be seen shining
through the twilight below Venus.
Spica, actually a very close pair of hot blue stars some 260 light-years
away, is the brightest star in the
constellation
Virgo.
APOD: 2005 September 3 - Venus Unveiled
Explanation:
The surface of Venus is perpetually
covered by a veil of thick clouds
and remains hidden from even the powerful
telescopic eyes of earth-bound astronomers.
But in the early 1990s, using imaging radar, the Venus orbiting
Magellan
spacecraft was able to lift the veil from the
face of Venus and
produced spectacular high resolution images
of the planet's surface.
Colors used in this
computer generated picture of
Magellan radar data are based on color images from the surface
of Venus transmitted by the
Soviet Venera
13 and 14 landers.
The bright area running roughly across the middle
represents the largest highland region
of Venus known as
Aphrodite Terra.
APOD: 2005 August 17 - Planets over Paranal
Explanation:
Very bright planets and very
large telescopes
are part of this sunset view of
Paranal Observatory.
The observatory's four, massive 8.2 meter telescope units
are situated on top of the 2,600 meter high mountain,
Cerro Paranal,
in the dry Atacama Desert in northern Chile.
The individual unit telescopes can be used separately or in
combination and
are named Antu, Kueyen, Melipal, and
Yepun.
Together they are fittingly known as the European Southern
Observatory's Very Large Telescope.
Of course, the very bright planets are Venus (near center), joined by
Mercury (below) and Saturn (left) in late June's western
evening skies.
APOD: 2005 August 9 - The Belt of Venus over Elwood Beach
Explanation:
Although you've surely seen it, you might not have noticed it.
During a cloudless twilight, just before
sunrise or after
sunset,
part of the atmosphere above the horizon appears
slightly off-color, slightly pink.
Called the Belt of Venus, this off-color band between the dark
eclipsed sky and the
blue sky can be seen in nearly every direction
including that opposite the Sun.
Straight above, blue sky is normal sunlight reflecting off the atmosphere.
In the Belt of Venus, however, the
atmosphere reflects light from the setting (or rising)
Sun which appears more red.
The Belt of Venus can be seen from any location with a
clear horizon.
Pictured above, the Belt of Venus was photographed behind
Elwood
Beach in
Melbourne,
Australia.
The belt is
frequently
caught
by
accident
in
other
photographs.
APOD: 2005 July 15 - Reflections on the Inner Solar System
Explanation:
Only Mars
is missing from this reflective view of the major
rocky bodies of the inner
solar system.
Captured on July 8th, the serene, twilight picture looks out over the
Flat Tops Wilderness area from near Toponas, Colorado, USA and
includes planets Mercury, Venus, Earth,
and Earth's large
natural satellite, the Moon.
The Moon is in a young
crescent
phase about three degrees above
bright planet Venus.
Forest fires contribute to a layer of
smoke in Earth's sky that almost hides
planet Mercury,
still visible very near the horizon.
Just a week earlier
Venus and Mercury were joined by
Saturn, forming a notable grouping in the west also
enjoyed by skygazers
across planet Earth.
APOD: 2005 July 2 - Three Planets by the Sea
Explanation:
On Tuesday, June 28th, the setting Sun flooded the horizon with
a beautiful warm light in
this view from
the beach beside the pier at Brighton in Adelaide,
South Australia.
The Sun also illuminated three planets gathered in the
western sky,
Mercury, Venus, and Saturn.
From this perspective
Mercury is at the
highest point in the celestial triangle, brilliant
Venus
is just below, and Saturn
stands farther to the left and below the
close pair.
Of course, the planets only appear close together on the sky
but are actually quite far apart in space.
The orbits
of Mercury and Venus are both interior to
Earth's orbit, while gas giant
Saturn lies in the outer
solar system, over nine
astronomical units
from the Sun.
Late next week,
Venus and Mercury will share western
skies with the young
crescent Moon.
APOD: 2005 June 30 - Three Planets from Mt Hamilton
Explanation:
Venus, Mercury, and Saturn
wandered close together
in western evening skies last week.
On Saturnday,
June 25, astronomer R. Jay GaBany recorded
this snapshot of their eye-catching planetary conjunction,
from historic Lick Observatory
on Mt. Hamilton,
California, USA.
The view looks toward the Pacific shortly after sunset
with the lights of San Jose and the southern San Francisco
Bay area in the foreground.
Of course, Venus is
the brightest of the trio.
Mercury is nearby on the right
and Saturn is below and left,
closest to the horizon.
Farther to the right of the planetary triangle are
Pollux and Castor,
twin
stars of Gemini, with
Regulus,
bright star
of the constellation Leo, at the very upper left corner of the
picture.
In the
coming days, Venus and Mercury remain close,
while Saturn continues to drop below them, toward the horizon.
APOD: 2005 June 25 - Venus: Just Passing By
Explanation:
Venus, the second closest planet to the Sun,
is by far the brightest of the
three planets gathered in this weekend's
western sky at sunset.
It has also proven to be a popular
way-point for spacecraft headed for the
gas giant planets
in the outer reaches of the solar system.
Why visit Venus first?
Using a gravity assist maneuver,
spacecraft can swing by planets and gain energy during their brief
encounter, saving fuel for use at the end of
their long interplanetary voyage.
This
colorized image of Venus was recorded by the Jupiter-bound
Galileo spacecraft shortly after its gravity assist flyby of Venus
in February of 1990.
Galileo's glimpse of
the veiled planet shows structure in
swirling sulfuric acid clouds.
The bright area is
sunlight glinting off the upper cloud deck.
APOD: 2005 June 24 - Planets in the West
Explanation:
This weekend
three planets will grace
the western sky,
forming a lovely trio easily visible shortly after sunset.
Saturday evening in particular will find
Saturn,
Venus, and
Mercury all within a 2 degree circle
(about the size of your thumb held at arm's length)
above the western horizon.
Recorded last Sunday, June 19, this image shows the same
three planets arrayed along the
ecliptic plane above a Colorado
Rocky Mountain skyline.
Venus is easiest to pick out of the twilight, the brightest
celestial beacon below picture center, with Saturn
above and to the left of Venus, and Mercury closest to the
horizon, right of prominent Pinnacle Peak.
By Saturday, the
wandering planets
will draw even closer together.
For help spotting the planets here, put your cursor over the
picture.
APOD: 2005 June 9 - Venus Returns to the Evening Sky
Explanation:
This serene image
of boats moored in the harbor of
l'Île-Tudy, Bretagne, France was taken on June 1st,
about an hour after sunset.
It also features Venus,
third brightest celestial object
after the Sun and Moon.
For casual skygazers, this month marks
Venus' return
to the evening sky as the
brilliant 'star',
shining low in the west-northwest shortly after sunset.
In the picture,
astrophotographer
and APOD translator
Laurent Laveder notes that Venus is easily mistaken for
a light atop a sailboat's tall mast, giving
the otherwise stunning celestial beacon an unremarkable
appearance.
Of course, a year ago Venus' appearance was quite remarkable.
On June 8, 2004,
Venus crossed the Sun's disk,
the first transit of Venus since 1882.
Late this week
Venus shares the evening sky with the young
crescent Moon, and will next transit the Sun on June 6,
2012.
APOD: 2005 May 3 - Solar System Rising Over Fire Island
Explanation:
If you wait long enough, the entire Solar System will rise before you.
To see such a sight, however, you will need to look in the direction of the
ecliptic.
All of the planets
and their moons orbit the Sun in nearly the same plane, the
ecliptic plane.
From the Earth, this means that each day they will all rise in nearly the same direction - and later set in the opposite direction.
Ten years ago, a series of time exposures caught, left to right, the
Sun,
Venus, the
Moon, and Jupiter, all rising in the
ecliptic plane behind
Fire Island,
New York,
USA.
Exposures were taken every six minutes and
digitally superposed on an image taken from the same location at sunrise.
Smaller members of our Solar System, including most
comets and many
asteroids, do not always move along the
ecliptic plane.
The picturesque Fire Island Lighthouse, visible in the foreground,
was built in 1826 and is still in use today.
APOD: 2005 April 10 - Venus' Once Molten Surface
Explanation:
If you could look at Venus with
radar eyes - this is what you might see.
This computer reconstruction of the surface of
Venus was created from data from the
Magellan spacecraft.
Magellan orbited Venus and used
radar to map our
neighboring planet's surface between 1990 and 1994.
Magellan found many interesting surface features,
including the large circular domes,
typically 25-kilometers across, that are depicted above.
Volcanism
is thought to have created the
domes, although the precise mechanism remains unknown.
Venus' surface is so hot and
hostile that no surface probe
has lasted more than a few minutes.
APOD: 2005 January 27 - Shadow Set
Explanation:
A nearly full Moon
and planet Earth's shadow
set together in this scene
captured Monday from snowy Mt. Jelm, home of the
Wyoming Infrared Observatory.
For early morning risers (and late to bed
astronomers),
shadow set in the western sky is a
daily
apparition whose subtle beauty
is often overlooked in
favor of the more colorful eastern horizon.
Extending through the dense atmosphere,
Earth's setting shadow is seen
in this picture as a dark blue band along the distant horizon, bounded above
by a pinkish glow or antitwilight arch.
Also known as the Belt of Venus, the arch's
lovely color is due to
backscattering of reddened light from the rising Sun.
The setting Moon's light is
also reddened by the long sight-line
through the atmosphere and echoes the
dawn sky's yellow-orange hues.
APOD: 2005 January 7 - S is for Venus
Explanation:
Planet Venus
traced out this
S
shape in Earth's sky during 2004.
Following the second planet from the Sun in a series
of 29 images recorded from April 3rd
through August 7th
(top right to bottom left) of that year, astronomer Tunc Tezel
constructed this composite illustrating the
wandering planet's
path against the background stars.
The series reveals Venus' apparent
retrograde motion
transporting it from a brilliant evening star to
morning's celestial beacon.
Of course, in 2004, after sinking into the
evening twilight
but before rising above the predawn
horizon, Venus
was seen in silhouette against
the Sun (near center) - the first
transit of Venus since 1882.
The next time Venus will wander across the
solar disk is in 2012.
APOD: 2004 November 13 - Moon Over Shiraz
Explanation:
Early morning risers
around the world have enjoyed the
sight of bright planets
in this week's predawn skies -
further enhanced by the celestial spectacle of the waning
crescent Moon.
From some locations the Moon was seen to pass in front
of
Jupiter or Venus, a lunar occultation.
Recorded near sunrise on November 10th from
Shiraz, Iran, this
eastern horizon view finds Jupiter (top) and a brilliant Venus
in line with
the Moon, a lovely conjunction of the three brightest
objects in the night sky.
Although the Moon has
now
fallen out of the early morning
scene,
Venus and Jupiter (along with a much fainter Mars) still precede
the rising Sun above the eastern horizon.
APOD: 2004 November 8 - Jupiter and Venus at Sunrise
Explanation:
What are those bright objects in the
morning sky?
Early morning dog walkers, among many others across our world's Northern Hemisphere,
have likely noticed tremendously bright
Venus hanging in the
eastern sky just before sunrise.
Looking a bit like an approaching airplane,
Venus holds its place in the sky and never seems to land.
Last week, impressive but less bright
Jupiter appeared within a degree of the
Venusian orb, creating a
dazzling sky that you might appreciate a bit more than your dog.
This night sky early show will
change slightly over the next week, with the
planets moving past each other,
Mars moving into the picture, guest stars like
Spica appearing to shift in the background, and even a crescent Moon stopping in for a cameo.
Pictured above last week, Jupiter and Venus were photographed rising before the Sun over the city of Bursa,
Turkey.
APOD: 2004 August 14 - Messenger Launch
Explanation:
Streaking
into the early morning sky on August 3rd, a
Delta II rocket launches NASA's
Messenger
spacecraft on an interplanetary voyage to
Mercury.
Scheduled to become the first probe to orbit Mercury, Messenger
will begin by
looping through the inner Solar System in a
series of close flybys of planet Earth and Venus.
The flybys are designed as trajectory changing
gravity
assist encounters to ultimately achieve the goal of orbiting
Mercury in 2011.
Prior to entering orbit, Messenger will also flyby Mercury
in 2008 and 2009 as the first spacecraft to visit
the Solar System's innermost planet since
Mariner 10 in the
mid 1970s.
This dramatic view
of the Messenger launch was recorded from
a pier in Jetty Park at the north end of Cocoa Beach
about 2.5 miles from the
Cape
Canaveral launch site.
So what's that erratic blue streak on the right?
It's the reflection from a camera
blurred in the time exposure.
APOD: 2004 July 26 - A Large Active Region Crosses the Sun
Explanation:
An unexpectedly large sunspot region is now crossing the Sun.
The active region is home to rivers of hot
plasma, explosive
flares,
strong magnetic fields, a powerful
Coronal Mass Ejection
(CME), and a
sunspot group
so large it can be seen by the protected eye without magnification.
In fact,
this region appears larger than
Venus did when it crossed the Sun last month.
Pictured above is a close-up of this
sunspot group, officially tagged
AR 10652, taken just four days ago.
The region is now nearing the
Sun's eastern limb and will
disappear from view in a few days.
Energetic ions from sunspot group 652 continue to impact the
Earth and create rare
purple auroras.
APOD: 2004 July 20 - Space Station, Venus, Sun
Explanation:
On June 8,
Venus was not the only celestial object to pass in front of the Sun.
A few well-situated photographers caught the
International Space Station
also crossing the Sun simultaneously.
Pictured above is a unique time-lapse image of the unprecedented double transit, a rare event that was visible for less than a
second from a narrow band on
Earth.
The above image is a combination of
12 frames taken 0.033 seconds apart and each
themselves lasting only 1/10,000 th of a second.
The image was taken from the small village of
Stupava in
Slovakia.
The next time Venus will
appear to
cross the Sun from
Earth will be in 2012.
APOD: 2004 July 17 - Transit of Venus Stereogram
Explanation:
Venus glides in front of an
enormous solar disk in these two frames from the
TRACE satellite imaging
of the inner planet's 2004 transit.
Arranged in a "right/left" stereogram, the
frames are intended
to be viewed at a comfortable distance from the
screen with your eyes gently crossed, allowing the images
to merge and produce a pleasing stereo effect.
Shown during the ingress (beginning) phase of the transit,
the silhouetted portion of the planet appears to
float dramatically
in front of the Sun's granulated surface.
Of course, the dense
Cytherian
(Venusian) atmosphere also scatters
and refracts the intense sunlight.
The effect is visible across the portion of the planet
still beyond
the Sun's edge and
viewed against
the blackness of space.
APOD: 2004 July 3 - Cassini to Venus
Explanation:
Saturn
Orbiter Cassini with
Titan
Probe Huygens attached
rocketed into early morning
skies on October 15, 1997.
The mighty Titan 4B Centaur rocket
is
seen here across the water, arcing away
from Launch Complex 40 at
Cape Canaveral Air Station.
Cassini, a sophisticated
robot
spacecraft was actually headed toward
inner planet Venus,
the first way point in its 7 year, 2.2 billion mile
interplanetary journey to Saturn.
In fact, Cassini swung by Venus during
April 1998 and June 1999, Earth
in August 1999, and Jupiter
in December 2000.
During each of these
"gravity assist" encounters the six ton
spacecraft picked up speed,
reaching Saturn only three days ago.
Cassini is now orbiting the ringed gas giant, with
the Huygens Probe scheduled to separate from the spacecraft
in December.
The probe's descent to the surface of
Saturn's large moon
Titan
will be the most distant
landing ever attempted.
APOD: 2004 June 27 - Galaxy Cluster Abell 1689 Warps Space
Explanation:
Two billion
light-years away, galaxy cluster Abell 1689 is
one of the most massive objects in the Universe.
In
this view from the Hubble Space Telescope's
Advanced Camera for Surveys,
Abell 1689 is seen to warp space as predicted by
Einstein's
theory of gravity -- bending light
from individual galaxies which lie
behind the cluster to produce multiple, curved images.
The power of this enormous
gravitational lens depends on its mass, but
the visible matter,
in the form of the cluster's yellowish galaxies, only accounts
for about one percent of the mass needed to make the observed
bluish arcing images of background galaxies.
In fact, most of the gravitational mass required
to
warp space enough to explain this cosmic scale lensing is in the
form of still mysterious
dark matter.
As the dominant source of the cluster's gravity,
the dark matter's
unseen presence is mapped out
by the lensed arcs and
distorted
background galaxy images.
APOD: 2004 June 23 - A Picturesque Venus Transit
Explanation:
The rare
transit of Venus across the face of the Sun earlier this month was one of the better-photographed events in sky history.
Both scientific and artistic images have been flooding in from the areas that could see the transit: Europe and much of Asia, Africa, and North America.
Scientifically, solar photographers confirmed that the
black drop effect
is really better related to the viewing clarity of the camera or telescope than the atmosphere of Venus.
Artistically, images might be divided into several categories.
One type captures the
transit in front of a highly detailed Sun.
Another category captures a double coincidence such as both Venus and an airplane simultaneously silhouetted, or Venus and the International Space Station in low Earth orbit.
A third image type involves a fortuitous arrangement of interesting looking clouds, as shown by example in the
above image
taken from
North Carolina,
USA.
There the distant orb of giant
Venus might have been mistaken, at first glance, for a small but unusually circular cloud.
APOD: 2004 June 15 - A Rare Annular Venusian Solar Eclipse
Explanation:
An unusual type of solar eclipse occurred last week.
Usually it is the
Earth's Moon that
eclipses
the Sun.
Last week, for the first time in over 100 years, the planet
Venus took a turn.
Like a solar eclipse by the Moon, the phase of Venus became a continually thinner
crescent as Venus became increasingly
better aligned with the Sun.
Eventually the alignment became perfect and the
phase of Venus dropped to zero.
The dark spot of Venus crossed our parent star.
The situation could technically be labeled a Venusian
annular eclipse with an extraordinarily large
ring of fire.
From above the
thick cloud tops of Venus,
the Earth appeared in its fullest phase, brighter in the
Venusian sky than even
Mars appeared from Earth last August.
Hours later, as Venus continued in its orbit,
a slight crescent phase appeared again.
The next Venusian solar eclipse will occur in 2012.
APOD: 2004 June 11 - Venus and the Chromosphere
Explanation:
Enjoying the 2004
Transit of Venus from Stuttgart, Germany,
astronomer Stefan Seip recorded
this fascinating, detailed image of the Sun.
Revealing a network of cells and dark
filaments against
a bright solar disk with spicules and
prominences along
the Sun's limb, his telescopic picture
was taken through an H-alpha filter.
The filter
narrowly transmits only the red light from
hydrogen atoms and emphasizes the
solar chromosphere --
the region of the Sun's atmosphere immediately above
its photosphere or normally visible surface.
Here, the dark disk of Venus seems to be imitating a giant
sunspot that looks perhaps a little too round.
But in H-alpha pictures
like this one, sunspot regions
are usually dominated by bright splotches (called
plages) on the
solar chromosphere.
APOD: 2004 June 10 - Venus at the Edge
Explanation:
With Venus in transit at the Sun's edge on June 8th, astronomers
captured this tantalizing
close-up view
of the bright solar surface
and partially silhouetted disk.
Enhanced in the sharp picture, a delicate arc of sunlight
refracted through the Venusian atmosphere is
also visible
outlining the planet's edge against the blackness of space.
The arc is part of a luminous ring or atmospheric
aureole, first noted and offered as evidence that Venus
did posses an atmosphere following observations of
the planet's 1761 transit.
The image was recorded using the 1-meter
Swedish Solar Telescope
located on La Palma in the Canary Islands.
For the Institute for Solar Physics,
Dan Kiselman, Goran Scharmer, Kai Langhans, and Peter Dettori were
at the telescope, while Mats Lofdahl produced the final image.
Excellent movies of
the
transit - including one of the emergence of
Venus' atmospheric aureole - are
available from the
Dutch Open Telescope, also observing
from La Palma.
APOD: 2004 June 9 - Venus Transit at Sunrise
Explanation:
Did you see the transit?
While some watched by webcast, sky gazers in Europe, the Middle
East, Africa, and Asia were
able
to witness the complete
6 hour journey of Venus' silhouetted disk across the face
of the Sun.
As seen
from North America, the much heralded
Venus Transit of 2004 was
nearing its final stages at sunrise yesterday in this
telescopic image.
The view looks across the Atlantic from Tybee Island near
Savannah, Georgia, USA.
In fact, many in eastern North America
experienced
a dramatic view of a perfect, dark, round Venus against a
reddened Sun filtered by banks of low clouds.
Ironically, the Sun takes on the appearance of
a cloud covered planet itself as
Venus marches
toward the right through this dreamlike scene.
APOD: 2004 June 8 - A Planet Transits the Sun
Explanation:
Today an astronomical event will occur that no living person has ever seen:
Venus will cross directly in front of the Sun.
A Venus crossing, called a transit, last occurred in 1882 and was
front-page
news
around the world.
Today's transit will be visible in its entirety throughout
Europe and most of Asia and Africa.
The northeastern half of
North America will see the Sun rise with the
dark dot of Venus already superposed.
Never look directly at the Sun, even when
Venus is in front.
Mercury's closer proximity to the Sun cause it to transit every few years.
In fact, the above image mosaic of Mercury
crossing the Sun is from
two
transits
ago, in November 1999.
Will anyone living see the next Venus transit? Surely yes since it occurs in 2012.
APOD: 2004 June 7 - Mammatus Clouds Over Mexico
Explanation:
When do cloud bottoms appear like bubbles?
Normal cloud bottoms are flat because moist warm air
that rises and cools will
condense into water droplets at a very specific temperature,
which usually corresponds to a very specific height.
After water
droplets form that air becomes an opaque cloud.
Under some conditions, however,
cloud pockets can develop that contain large droplets
of water or ice that fall into clear air as they evaporate.
Such pockets may occur in
turbulent air near a
thunderstorm, being seen near the top of an
anvil cloud, for example.
Resulting mammatus clouds can appear especially dramatic if sunlit from the side.
The above
mammatus clouds were photographed last month over Monclova,
Mexico.
APOD: 2004 June 6 - Mercury Spotting
Explanation:
Can you spot the planet?
The diminutive disk of Mercury, the solar system's
innermost planet,
spent about five hours crossing in front of the enormous solar disk
on 2003 May 7,
as
viewed from the general vicinity of planet Earth.
The Sun was above the horizon during
the entire transit for observers
in Europe, Africa, Asia, or Australia, and the horizon was
certainly
no problem for the sun-staring SOHO spacecraft.
Seen as a dark spot,
Mercury progresses from left to right
(top panel to bottom) in these four images from SOHO's extreme
ultraviolet camera.
The panels' false-colors correspond to different wavelengths in
the extreme ultraviolet which highlight regions above the Sun's
visible surface.
This
was the first of 14 transits of Mercury which will occur during the 21st
century,
but the next similar event will be a much more rare
transit of Venus this coming Tuesday.
Need help spotting Mercury?
Just click on the picture.
APOD: 2004 June 4 - Sedna at Noon
Explanation:
Standing on Sedna - the solar system's most
distant known
planetoid - your view of the Sun at high noon might look
something like this.
An artist's dramatic vision, the picture shows the
Sun suspended above the nearby horizon as a bright star
immersed in
the dusty ecliptic plane.
Within the
dust-scattered sunlight are more familiar
members of the solar system, including planet Earth.
But at a distance of about 13 billion kilometers
(8 billion miles) Earth would only be visible in
binoculars or a small telescope.
In Sedna's dark, daytime skies,
the noonday Sun is also joined by
the faint stars and obscuring dust clouds of the Milky Way,
suspended on the left above stark, ruddy terrain.
For Sedna-based sky gazers, all planets have interior
orbits and would remain close to the Sun in Sedna's skies.
Of course, for earthbound astronomers, interior planets
Venus and Mercury
also remain near the Sun, with
Venus scheduled
for a rare crossing of the solar disc
on June 8.
APOD: 2004 May 24 - Planets Over Easter Island
Explanation:
It isn't every day that planets line up behind a stone giant.
For one thing, it helps to have a good
planet line-up,
such as occurred in the sky just last month.
For another, it helps to be on
Easter Island, where over 800 large stone statues exist.
The Easter Island statues, stand, on the average, over
twice as tall as a person and have over 200 times as much mass.
Few specifics are known about the history or meaning of the
unusual statues,
but many believe that they were created about
500 years ago in the images of local leaders of a lost civilization.
Pictured above, the
Moon,
Venus, and
Mars
can be seen behind
Ahu Tahai, a famous Easter Island statue.
The bright star
Aldebaran is also visible.
APOD: 2004 May 21 - Phases of Venus
Explanation:
Venus is currently
falling out of the
western evening sky.
Second planet from the Sun and
third brightest celestial object after the Sun and Moon,
Venus has been appreciated by casual sky gazers as a brilliant beacon
above the horizon after sunset.
But telescopic
images have also revealed its dramatic phases.
In fact, this thoughtful composite of
telescopic views nicely illustrates the
progression of phases
and increase in apparent size undergone by Venus over
the past few weeks.
Gliding along its interior orbit, Venus has been
catching up with planet Earth, growing larger as it draws
near.
At the same time, just as the Moon goes
through phases,
Venus' visible sunlit hemisphere has presented an
increasingly slender, crescent shape.
Now sharing the sky with a crescent Moon, on
June 8th Venus
will actually cross the face of the Sun, the first such
transit since 1882.
APOD: 2004 May 16 - Venus: Earth's Cloudy Twin
Explanation:
This picture by the
Galileo spacecraft shows just how cloudy
Venus is.
Venus is very similar to Earth in size
and mass - and so is sometimes referred to as Earth's sister planet - but
Venus
has a quite different climate.
Venus' thick clouds and closeness to the
Sun
(only Mercury is closer) make it
the hottest planet - much hotter than the
Earth.
Humans could not survive there, and no life of any sort has ever been found.
When Venus is visible it is usually the brightest object in the sky
after the Sun and the Moon.
More than 20 spacecraft have visited
Venus
including Venera 9, which landed on the surface, and
Magellan,
which used radar to peer through the clouds and make a map of the
surface.
This visible light picture of Venus
was taken by the Galileo spacecraft
that orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003.
Many things about Venus remain unknown, including the cause of
mysterious bursts of radio waves.
APOD: 2004 May 1 - A Western Sky at Twilight
Explanation:
On April 23rd, the Moon along with planets Saturn, Mars, and Venus
(and planet Earth of course ...)
were all visible
in the west at twilight,
captured here
from a site near Saylorvillle Lake north of Des Moines, Iowa, USA.
Putting your cursor
over the image will label our fellow
solar system wanderers
and also reveal the approximate trajectory of the
ecliptic plane - defined
by Earth's orbit around the Sun - angling
above the western horizon.
After sunset tonight, the western sky will present a
similar arrangement of planets, although the Moon will
have moved east out of the picture,
passing bright Jupiter along the ecliptic and heading for
May
4th's total lunar eclipse.
May
could also be a good month
for comets.
APOD: 2004 April 29 - Titan's X-Ray
Explanation:
This June's rare and much heralded
transit of Venus will
feature our currently brilliant evening
star in silhouette,
as the inner planet glides across the face of the Sun.
But on January 5, 2003 an even rarer transit took place.
Titan, large moon
of ringed gas giant Saturn, crossed
in front of the Crab
Nebula, a supernova remnant some 7,000
light-years away.
During Titan's transit,
the orbiting Chandra Observatory's
x-ray detectors recorded the shadowing of cosmic x-rays generated
by the Crab's amazing pulsar
nebula, pictured above, in a situation analogous to a
medical
x-ray.
The resulting image (inset at left) probes the extent of
Titan's
atmosphere.
So, how rare was Titan's transit of the Crab?
While Saturn itself passes within a few degrees of the Crab
Nebula every 30 years, the next similar transit is reportedly
due in 2267.
And since the stellar explosion which gave birth to the Crab was
seen in 1054, the 2003 Titan transit may have been
the first to occur ... ever.
APOD: 2004 April 15 - Venus and the Pleiades
Explanation:
Venus still rules
the western skies after sunset as the
brilliant evening star.
While wandering the ecliptic
with its fellow naked-eye planets
earlier this month, it passed
near
the Pleiades star cluster,
providing a striking photo opportunity for earthbound skygazers.
Cataloged as M45, the
Pleiades stars make for
a lovely sight on their own,
often shown in long exposure images immersed in hazy
blue reflection nebulae.
In
this picture though, recorded on the evening of
April 3rd, brilliant Venus closes with the
Seven Sisters
and overwhelms the light from the delicate cosmic clouds.
The view offers a study in contrasts as Venus
appears about 700
times brighter than Alcyone, the
Pleiades
brightest star.
With Venus just over 5 light-minutes from Earth, Alcyone and the
other Pleiades cluster stars are about 400 light-years distant.
Formed out of the contracting nebula which gave birth to
the Sun, Venus is also roughly 4.5 billion years old.
The stars of the Pleiades are likely aged a mere hundred
million years.
APOD: 2004 April 2 - Mercury and Venus in the West
Explanation:
Doing their part in the
ongoing dance of the planets,
Mercury and Venus both reached their greatest
elongation or maximum apparent distance from the Sun
only a few days ago, on March 29th.
Eager to record their celestial accomplishment, astronomer
Jimmy Westlake snapped this view of the two
inner most planets
shining in western twilight skies above Yampa,
Colorado, USA.
The picture was taken using a digital camera mounted on a tripod.
Mercury is easily the brightest
celestial object near the horizon, appearing to the right of the
foreground structure and
just above a thin cloud silhouetted by fading sunlight.
Still, near the top of the picture
brilliant Venus dominates the scene as the
magnificent evening star.
After climbing in western skies throughout the month of March,
Venus lies just
below the Pleiades star cluster.
Tonight and tomorrow night,
skygazers can spot Venus
at the southern edge of the Pleiades.
APOD: 2004 March 26 - Moon and Planets Sky
Explanation:
Look up into the sky tonight and without a telescope
or binoculars you might have
a
view like this one of Moon, planets and stars.
The lovely
photo was taken on March 23rd,
and captures the crescent Moon on the horizon with Venus above it.
Both brilliant celestial bodies are over-exposed.
Farther above Venus is the tinted glow of Mars with
the Pleiades star cluster just to the red planet's right.
The V-shaped arrangement of
stars to the left of Mars is the Hydaes star cluster.
Bright red giant
Aldebaran, not itself a member of the Hyades
cluster, marks the top left of the V.
During
the next week, all five naked-eye planets,
Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, along with
the Moon
will grace the evening sky together - a
lunar and planetary spectacle that can be
enjoyed by skygazers
around the world.
But look just after sunset, low on the western horizon,
to see Mercury before it sets.
The next similar gathering
of the planets will be in 2008.
APOD: 2004 March 23 - Lava Flows on Venus
Explanation:
The hot surface of
Venus shows clear signs of ancient
lava flows.
Evidence of this was bolstered by the
robot spacecraft Magellan, which orbited
Venus in the early 1990s.
Using imaging radar,
Magellan
was able to peer beneath the thick perpetual
clouds
that cover Earth's closest planetary neighbor.
Picture above, lava apparently flowed down from
the top of the image and pooled in the light colored
areas visible across the image middle and bottom.
The lava cut a channel across the darker ridge that
runs horizontally across the image center.
The picture covers about 500 kilometers across.
The lava originates from a caldera named Ammavaru that lies about 300 kilometers off the
image top.
The hot dense climate makes Venus a more difficult planet on which to
land spacecraft and
rovers.
Venus currently
sparkles as the brightest object in the western sky after sunset.
APOD: 2004 March 8 - Moon and Venus over Corona Del Mar Beach
Explanation:
The crescent Moon passed nearly in front of Venus two weeks ago.
The close conjunction of the
night sky's
two brightest objects created a striking pose for many
viewing the evening sky just after sunset.
Such a pose, shown above, was captured between clouds over
Corona Del Mar Beach in
California,
USA.
To be precise, the Moon
appeared to pass only about three degrees from
Venus
on February 23.
A similar conjunction will occur later this month,
on March 24, when
Venus appears near its furthest from the
Sun while the
Moon passes only about 2 degrees away.
APOD: 2004 March 1 - Cassini Closes in on Saturn
Explanation:
Are they gone? They were not originally predicted to even be there.
The mystery revolves around strange shadow-like spokes that appeared on
Saturn's large B-ring, the large middle ring in the
complex system of particles that orbits
Saturn.
The spokes were discovered 23 years ago by the passing
Voyager spacecraft and attributed to very
fine dust of unknown origin.
The missing
spokes were noted in the
above image, taken last month, from the
robot Cassini spacecraft now
approaching Saturn.
Launched in 1997,
the distance remaining between Cassini and Saturn is
now less than half that between the Earth and the Sun.
Cassini is expected to enter orbit around the
ringed Jovian giant
planet in July and drop a probe onto
Titan, Saturn's largest moon.
APOD: 2004 February 14 - Solar System Portrait
Explanation:
On another
Valentine's Day
(February 14, 1990), cruising four billion
miles from the Sun, the
Voyager 1
spacecraft looked back to make this
first ever family portrait
of our Solar System.
The complete portrait is a
60 frame mosaic
made from a vantage point 32 degrees above the
ecliptic plane.
Voyager's wide angle camera frames sweep through the
inner Solar System (far left) linking up with
gas giant Neptune, at the time
the
Solar System's outermost planet (scroll right).
Positions
for Venus,
Earth, Jupiter,
Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune
are indicated by the corresponding letters while the Sun is the
bright spot near the center of the circle of frames.
The inset frames
for each of the planets are
from Voyager's narrow field camera.
Unseen in the portrait are
Mercury, too close to the Sun
to be detected, and Mars, unfortunately hidden by sunlight
scattered in the camera's optical system.
Small, faint Pluto's
position was not covered.
APOD: 2003 December 25 - Venus and the 37 Hour Moon
Explanation:
At Table
Mountain Observatory, near Wrightwood California, USA
on October 26, wild fires were approaching
from the east.
But looking toward the west just
after sunset,
astronomer James Young could still enjoy this comforting
view of a
young
crescent Moon and brilliant
Venus through the the fading twilight.
Setting over the horizon of Mt. Baden-Powell, the thin crescent
was only about 37 hours "old", or 37 hours after its exact New
Moon phase.
After disappearing from morning
twilight in August,
Venus was
becoming prominent in its role
in western skies as the
evening star.
A similar lovely pairing of thin crescent Moon and stunning
evening star can be seen toward the west in
today's evening twilight.
Happy Holidays and Best Wishes from
APOD!
APOD: 2003 December 4 - New Horizons at Jupiter
Explanation:
Headed for the first close-up exploration of the
Pluto-Charon
system and the icy denizens of
the
Kuiper belt, NASA's
New Horizons
spacecraft is pictured here in an artist's vision of the
robot probe outward bound.
The dramatic scene
depicts the 465 kilogram spacecraft about
one year after
a planned 2006 launch, following a flyby of
gas giant Jupiter.
While the Jupiter flyby
will be used as a
gravity
assist maneuver to
save fuel and cut travel time to the outer reaches of
the Solar System,
it will also provide an opportunity to test
instruments and study the giant planet, its moons, and magnetic
fields.
The Sun is seen from eight hundred million kilometers away,
with inner planets Earth, Venus, and Mercury
aligned on the left.
A dim crescent of outermost Galilean moon
Callisto, orbiting Jupiter
just inside of the spacecraft's trajectory, appears to the
upper right of the fading Sun.
Left of Jupiter itself is Europa and
in the distant background are the faint, unresolved stars and
dust clouds of the
Milky Way.
New Horizons' planned arrival at
Pluto-Charon is in
the summer of 2015.
APOD: 2003 November 30 - A Venus Landing
Explanation:
This image is part of the first color panoramic view from
Venus.
A TV camera on the
Soviet Venera 13 lander that parachuted to the surface on 1982 March 1 transmitted it.
Venus' clouds are composed of
sulfuric acid droplets while its surface temperature
is about 482 degrees
Celsius at an atmospheric pressure of 92 times that of
sea-level on Earth.
Despite these harsh conditions, the
Venera 13 lander survived long enough to
send back a series of images and perform an analysis of the
Venusian soil.
Part of the lander itself is visible in the
lower right portion of the image.
An earlier Soviet Venus lander,
Venera 7 (1970), was the first spacecraft
to return data from the surface of another planet.
APOD: 2003 October 21 - The Belt of Venus over the Valley of the Moon
Explanation:
Although you've surely seen it, you might not have noticed it.
During a cloudless twilight, just before
sunrise or after
sunset,
part of the atmosphere above the horizon appears
slightly off-color, slightly pink.
Called the Belt of Venus, this off-color band between the dark
eclipsed sky and the
blue sky can be seen in nearly every direction
including that opposite the Sun.
Straight above, blue sky is normal sunlight reflecting off the atmosphere.
In the Belt of Venus, however, the
atmosphere reflects light from the setting (or rising)
Sun which appears more red.
The Belt of Venus can be seen from any location with a
clear horizon.
Pictured above, the Belt of Venus was photographed above
morning fog in the
Valley of the Moon, a famous wine-producing region in northern
California,
USA.
The belt is
frequently
caught
by
accident
in
other
photographs.
APOD: 2003 August 22 - Shadow Rise
Explanation:
As the Sun sets, the Earth's
shadow rises up from the east.
The subtle beauty of
this
daily apparition is often overlooked
in favor of the brighter, more colorful
western horizon.
But while gazing toward a nearly full rising Moon on August 9,
astronomer Steve Mandel admired the shadow rise from his driveway
near Soquel, California, USA.
His view looks east from the northern tip of Monterey Bay toward
Fremont Peak, the highest point in the small mountain range on
the horizon.
The
Earth's rising shadow is cast through the
dense atmosphere and is seen in his picture as the dark blue band
along the horizon, bounded above by a pinkish purple glow or
antitwilight arch.
Also known as the Belt of Venus,
the arch's lovely color is due
to backscattering of
reddened
light from the setting Sun.
APOD: 2003 August 13 - Mars Rising Behind Poodle Rock
Explanation:
Have you seen Mars lately?
As Earth and
Mars near their
closest approach in nearly 60,000 years on August 27, the
red planet
has begun to appear dramatically bright and show
interesting details
through telescopes and binoculars.
Although not yet visible at sunset,
Mars can be
seen rising increasingly earlier in the evening.
Once above the horizon,
Mars is easy to spot, as it sports a distinct
orange-red hue and it is the brightest object in the sky after the
Sun, the nearby
Moon, and
Venus.
After Earth overtakes Mars in their respective solar orbits,
Mars will be visible right from sunset,
although its historic brightness will then
begin to fade.
Pictured above,
Mars was captured rising in the south east next to Poodle Rock in
Valley of Fire State Park,
Nevada,
USA.
APOD: 2003 May 14 - The North Pole of Venus
Explanation:
If you could look down on the
North Pole of Venus what would you see?
The Magellan probe that orbited
Venus from 1990 to 1994 was able to peer through the
thick Venusian clouds
and build up the
above image by emitting and re-detecting cloud-penetrating
radar.
Visible as the bright patch below central North is Venus'
highest mountain
Maxwell Montes.
Other notable features include numerous mountains,
coronas,
impact craters, tessera, ridges, and lava flows.
Although the size and mass of
Venus are similar to the Earth, its thick carbon-dioxide atmosphere has
trapped heat so efficiently that surface temperature usually exceeds 700 kelvins, hot enough to melt
lead.
APOD: 2003 May 8 - Mercury Spotting
Explanation:
Can you spot the planet?
The diminutive disk of Mercury, the solar system's
innermost planet,
spent about five hours crossing in front of the enormous solar disk
yesterday (Wednesday, May 7th),
as
viewed from the general vicinity of planet Earth.
The Sun was above the horizon during
the entire transit for observers
in Europe, Africa, Asia, or Australia, and the horizon was
certainly
no problem for the sun-staring SOHO spacecraft.
Seen as a dark spot,
Mercury progresses from left to right
(top panel to bottom) in these four images from SOHO's extreme
ultraviolet camera.
The panels' false-colors correspond to different wavelengths in
the extreme ultraviolet which highlight regions above the Sun's
visible surface.
This
is the first
of 14 transits of Mercury which
will occur during the 21st
century,
but the next similar event will be a
transit
of Venus in June of 2004.
Need help spotting Mercury?
Just click on the picture.
APOD: 2003 April 27 - Venus' Once Molten Surface
Explanation:
If you could look at Venus with
radar eyes - this is what you might see.
This computer reconstruction of the surface of
Venus was created from data from the
Magellan spacecraft.
Magellan orbited
Venus and used
radar to map our
neighboring planet's
surface between 1990 and 1994.
Magellan found many interesting surface features,
including the
large circular domes,
typically 25-kilometers across, that are depicted above.
Volcanism
is thought to have created the
domes, although the
precise mechanism remains unknown.
Venus'
surface is so hot and hostile that no
surface probe
has lasted more than a few minutes.
APOD: 2003 March 28 - 1006 AD: Supernova in the Sky
Explanation:
A new star, likely the
brightest supernova in recorded
human history,
appeared in planet Earth's sky in the year 1006 AD.
The expanding debris cloud
from the stellar explosion is still
visible to modern astronomers, but what did the supernova look
like in 1006?
Astronomer
Tunç Tezel
offers this suggestion, based on a photograph
he took on February 22, 1998 from a site overlooking
the Mediterranean south of Antalya, Turkey.
On that date, bright Venus and a waning crescent Moon
shone in the early morning sky.
Adopting
recent
calculations which put the supernova's apparent
brightness between Venus and the crescent Moon,
he digitally superposed an appropriate new star in the picture.
He placed the star at the supernova's position in the
southerly constellation of Lupus
and used the water's reflection
of moonlight in the final image.
Tezel hopes to view the total solar eclipse of
29
March 2006 from
this same site -- on the 1,000th anniversary of
Supernova
1006.
APOD: 2003 March 17 - SN 1006: History's Brightest Supernova
Explanation:
Suddenly, in the year 1006 AD, a
new star appeared in the sky.
Over the course of just a few days, the rogue star
became brighter than the planet
Venus.
The star, likely the talk of everyone who could see it,
was recorded by people who lived in areas now known as
China,
Egypt,
Iraq,
Italy,
Japan, and Switzerland.
The celestial newcomer, now known to be a
supernova,
took months to fade.
Modern observations have been used to measure the speed of the
still-expanding shock wave,
allowing a better estimate of its
distance and hence a better estimate of the
true brightness of the
supernova.
It turns out
SN 1006 likely achieved an apparent visual
magnitude of -7.5, making it the brightest
supernova on record.
The shock wave was imaged in 1998 from
CTIO
(left panel), and then subtracted from a similar
image taken in 1986 (right panel), highlighting the
relative expansion.
APOD: 2002 December 4 - Moon, Mars, Venus, and Spica
Explanation:
Gliding toward today's total eclipse
of the Sun,
the crescent Moon has been rising early, just before dawn.
And as a prelude to its close solar alignment,
the Moon also completed a lovely celestial triangle, closing
with bright planets
Mars and Venus
on the morning of December 1.
While the total solar eclipse
can only
be seen
from a
narrow corridor, skygazers around the globe could
appreciate this
lunar-planetary conjunction.
This view is from near Nashville Tennessee, USA, and finds
brilliant Venus at the lowest corner of the triangle with a much fainter
Mars immediately to the right of the Moon.
The Moon's sunlit crescent is overexposed, but details of the lunar night side
are revealed by earthshine.
Above and to the right of the trio is
Spica, brightest star in
the constellation Virgo.
APOD: 2002 September 29 - Venus: Just Passing By
Explanation:
Venus,
the second closest planet to the Sun, is a popular
way-point for spacecraft headed for the
gas giant planets
in the outer reaches of the solar system.
Why visit Venus first?
Using a "gravity assist " maneuver,
spacecraft can swing by planets and gain energy during their brief
encounter saving fuel for use at the end of
their long interplanetary voyage.
This colorized image of Venus was recorded by the Jupiter-bound
Galileo spacecraft shortly after its gravity assist flyby of Venus in
February of 1990.
Galileo's glimpse of
the veiled planet shows structure in
swirling sulfuric acid clouds.
The bright area is sunlight
glinting off the upper cloud deck.
A recent intriguing but controversial
hypothesis holds that living
microbes might exist in the
upper clouds of
Venus.
APOD: 2002 September 10 - Venus Beyond the Storm
Explanation:
A thunderstorm, lightning, a bright star and
a bright planet all graced an evening sky for a short while near
Bismarck,
North Dakota,
USA two weeks ago.
Thick thunderclouds from a passing storm are the
origin of a strong cloud to ground
lightning strike.
Small areas of rain darken portions of the orange
sunset,
visible at the horizon above the vast prairie.
The planet Venus peeks below the clouds
on the lower left of the image.
Blue sky shines high above the distant storm,
streaked with high white cirrus clouds.
The bright star
Arcturus glitters near the image top, just left of center.
Just a few minutes later, only a memory and this picture remained.
APOD: 2002 July 26 - Clearing Skies
Explanation:
Clear evening skies are a welcome sight for
stargazers worldwide,
but clearing skies are good too.
Just such a glorious occasion was recorded in this dramatic
photo taken by
Dominic Cantin during a recent
gathering of
Canadian astronomers at
St-Nérée
Observatory, located about 60 kilometers southeast of the city of Quebec.
Looking toward the west on
July
13th, the exposure captured
a distant lightning
flash from a passing thunderstorm at the far left.
On the right, the storm clouds' retreat has uncovered
an overexposed crescent Moon
sharing the evening twilight
with bright Venus
only a few degrees away (below and far right).
In the darkening sky above the young Moon
is a familiar right triangle of stars in the
constellation Leo.
Cantin reports that clear skies followed, all night long.
APOD: 2002 June 25 - Venus and Jupiter Over Belfast
Explanation:
Venus and Jupiter appeared to glide right
past each other earlier this month.
In a slow day-by-day march,
Jupiter sank into the sunset horizon
while Venus remained high and bright.
The conjunction ended the
five-planet party
visible over the last two months.
Jupiter, of course,
is much further away from the
Earth and
Sun than
Venus, so the passing was really just an
angular illusion.
Pictured above on June 3, a fading sunset finds
Venus shining over Jupiter above clouds, mountains, and the city lights of
Belfast,
Northern Ireland.
APOD: 2002 June 19 - The Moon and Venus Over Geneva
Explanation:
The Moon, fresh from a
biting encounter with the
Sun last week,
appeared next to threaten Venus.
The waxing Moon appeared to glide right past, however, just a
few degrees away.
Venus, of course,
is much further away from the
Earth than the Moon,
so the passing was really just an
angular illusion.
Pictured above on June 13, a fading sunset finds the
crescent Moon and
Venus between clouds and above
the city lights of
Geneva,
Switzerland.
APOD: 2002 May 24 - Love and War by Moonlight
Explanation:
Venus,
named for the Roman goddess of love, and
Mars,
the war god's namesake, approach each other by
moonlight
in this lovely sky view
recorded on May 14th from Dunkirk, Maryland, USA.
The four second time exposure made in twilight with a digital camera
also records
earthshine
illuminating the otherwise dark surface
of the young crescent Moon.
Venus shines as the third brightest object in Earth's sky,
after the Sun and the Moon itself, and has been appearing
as the brilliant
evening star in the
pantheon of planets
arrayed in the west during April and May.
Here, Venus' light is so intense that it produces a noticeable spike
in the sensitive camera's image.
Much fainter Mars is lower in the picture, caught between tree
limbs swaying in a gentle evening breeze.
By early June, Mars will be harder to
spot as it wanders toward the horizon, but Venus and
father
Jupiter will draw closer together,
presenting a spectacular pair of bright
planets in the west.
APOD: 2002 May 22 - Moon and Planets by the Eiffel Tower
Explanation:
The great evening grouping of planets
is coming to an end.
Before all the
planets went their own
separate directions, however, the
Moon was kind enough to
pose with some of them.
The planets in the
above picture, taken last week, are
Venus and
Jupiter.
Mars,
Saturn, and even
Mercury appear to the lower right of
Venus but are too dim to be seen.
Over the next two weeks, the
Moon will rise later and later passing a
full phase on May 26.
Venus and Jupiter will continue to shine,
moving together until their closest approach on June 3.
The Eiffel Tower, however, is expected to remain right where it is.
APOD: 2002 May 10 - Trailing Planets
Explanation:
Positioning his camera and tripod on
planet Earth,
near Maricopa, Arizona, USA,
astrophotographer
Joe Orman created this trailing display of the ongoing
sky-full-of-planets
on May 3rd.
He initially captured the grouping in a 20 second
long time exposure
recording the positions of the bright planets and stars.
Covering the camera lens for five minutes, he then exposed the same
frame for 45 minutes,
tracing the gentle arcs of the celestial
wanderers
as the Earth's rotation carried them toward the western
horizon.
Of course these planets,
Mercury,
Venus,
Mars,
Jupiter, and
Saturn all
still dazzle
in western skies near sunset,
but sky gazers who want to see Mercury should look soon.
Mercury starts the evening closest to the horizon -
visible here
above the wide bright trail left by Venus - and in the coming days
Mercury will be the first to leave the evening sky entirely as it moves
closer to the setting Sun.
Tonight Venus and Mars
will appear very close
together, separated by only one third of a degree.
APOD: 2002 May 9 - Planets Over Stonehenge
Explanation:
Stonehenge,
four thousand year old monument
to the Sun,
provides an appropriate setting for
this delightful snapshot
of the
Sun's children
gathering in planet Earth's sky.
While the
massive stone
structure dates from around 2000
B.C.,
this arrangement of
the visible planets was
recorded only a few days ago on the evening of May 4th, 2002 A.D.
Bright Jupiter stands highest above the horizon at the upper left.
A remarkable, almost
equilateral triangle
formed by Saturn (left),
Mars (top), and Venus (right) is placed just above the stones
near picture center.
Fighting the glow of the setting sun, Mercury can be spotted closest
to the horizon, below and right of the planetary triad.
Still
easy to enjoy for casual sky gazers, this photogenic and slowly shifting
planetary grouping
will be joined by a young crescent
Moon beginning Monday, May 13.
APOD: 2002 April 29 - Dusk of the Planets
Explanation:
A great grouping of
planets is
now visible to the west just after sunset.
Over the next two weeks,
Mercury,
Venus,
Earth,
Mars,
Jupiter, and
Saturn -- the innermost six planets of our
Solar System -- can be seen in a single knowing glance.
The image on the left captured them all in one frame.
Connecting the planetary dots delineates the edge-on
ecliptic,
the plane in which the planets orbit the
Sun.
The shot was taken on April 23 near Chatsworth,
New Jersey,
USA, and even includes scattered
light from the Sun and the
Moon.
Besides the planets, the
Pleiades and
Hyades
open clusters
of stars are visible.
APOD: 2002 April 18 - Planets in the West
Explanation:
Have you seen any bright planets lately?
Chances are if you've been outside
under clear skies
just after sunset, then you have.
Now shining in the west as bright
"stars"
in the night sky, are all five planets of the solar
system known to ancient astronomers -
Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn, and
Jupiter.
Recorded from Holt, Michigan, USA about 40 minutes after sunset
on April 14th,
this
digital image captures three of them, Venus,
Mars, and Saturn, along with a young
crescent Moon.
Also indicated are the Pleiades
star cluster and
bright red giant star Aldebaran in Taurus.
Mercury,
setting, is lost in the trees and glow along the horizon,
while Jupiter is off the top of this view.
The coming weeks
will see photo opportunities galore
as all five planets gradually move closer together, posing
after sunset with the Moon and stars in the western
sky.
Venus, Mars,
and Saturn will form the closest trio,
drawing within a 5 degree circle (about the apparent
size of your fist with arm extended) above Aldebaran by May 3rd.
APOD: 2002 March 30 - Venus Unveiled
Explanation:
The surface of Venus is perpetually
covered by a veil of thick clouds
and remains hidden from even the powerful
telescopic eyes of earth-bound astronomers.
But in the early 1990s, using imaging radar, the Venus orbiting
Magellan
spacecraft was able to lift the veil from the
face of Venus and
produced spectacular high resolution images
of the planet's surface.
Colors used in this
computer generated picture of
Magellan radar data are based on color images from the surface
of Venus transmitted by the
Soviet Venera 13 and 14 landers.
The bright area running roughly across the middle
represents the largest highland region
of Venus known as
Aphrodite Terra.
APOD: 2002 March 12 - Atete Corona on Venus
Explanation:
What could cause a huge cylindrical mountain
to rise from the surface of
Venus?
Such features that occur on
Venus are known as
coronas.
Pictured above in the foreground is 500-kilometer wide
Atete Corona found in a region of Venus known as the Galindo.
The image was created by combining multiple
radar maps of the region to form a
computer-generated three-dimensional perspective.
The series of dark rectangles that crosses the image from
top to bottom were created by the imaging procedure and are not real.
The origin of massive
coronas remains a mystery although
speculation holds they result from some form of
volcanism.
Studying Venusian coronas help scientists better understand the
inner structure of both Venus and
Earth.
APOD: 2002 February 14 - Solar System Portrait
Explanation:
On another
Valentine's Day
(February 14, 1990), cruising four billion
miles from the Sun, the
Voyager 1
spacecraft looked back to make this
first ever family portrait
of our Solar System.
The complete portrait is a
60 frame mosaic
made from a vantage point 32 degrees above the
ecliptic plane.
Voyager's wide angle camera frames sweep through the
inner Solar System (far left) linking up with
gas giant Neptune, at the time
the
Solar System's outermost planet (scroll right).
Positions
for Venus,
Earth, Jupiter,
Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune
are indicated by the corresponding letters while the Sun is the
bright spot near the center of the circle of frames.
The inset frames
for each of the planets are
from Voyager's narrow field camera.
Unseen in the portrait are
Mercury, too close to the Sun
to be detected, and Mars, unfortunately hidden by sunlight
scattered in the camera's optical system.
Small, faint Pluto's
position was not covered.
APOD: 2002 January 11 - Sunbather
Explanation:
Intense and overwhelming, the direct glare
of the Sun
is blocked by the smooth disk centered
in
this image from the sun-staring
SOHO spacecraft.
Taken on January 8, the picture shows streamers of
solar wind billowing radially
outward for millions of kilometers above the
Sun's surface indicated by the white circle.
Below and right is inner planet Venus,
so bright that its image is marred by
a sharp horizontal stripe, a digital imaging artifact.
Also impressively bright is a periodic visitor to the inner
Solar System, sunbathing comet
96/P Machholz 1 (above and left).
This comet is definitely not a member of the more suicidal
sungrazer
comet family often spotted
approaching the Sun by SOHO.
Seen here
only 18 million kilometers from
the Sun (about one eighth the Earth-Sun distance)
with a substantial
coma and foreshortened tail,
Machholz 1 has now passed
perihelion and is outbound in
its orbit,
to return again in just over 5 years.
APOD: 2001 December 11 - Venusian Half Shell
Explanation:
Venus,
second planet from the Sun, appears above imaged for
the first time ever in x-rays (left) by the
orbiting Chandra Observatory.
Chandra's smoothed, false-color, x-ray
view is compared to
an optical image (right) from a small earthbound telescope.
Both show Venus illuminated by the Sun from the right, with
only half the sunward hemisphere visible, but at least one
striking difference is apparent.
While the optical image in
reflected sunlight is filled and
bright at the center, Venus in x-rays is bright around the edge.
Venus' x-rays are produced
by
fluorescence rather than reflection.
About 120 kilometers or so above the surface,
incoming solar x-rays
excite atoms in the Venusian atmosphere
to unstable energy levels.
As the atoms
rapidly decay back to their stable ground states they emit
a "fluorescence" x-ray, creating a glowing x-ray
half-shell above the sunlit hemisphere.
More x-ray emitting
material can be seen looking at the edge
of the shell, so the edge appears brighter in the x-ray image.
APOD: 2001 December 9 - The Belt of Venus
Explanation:
Although you've surely seen it, you might not have noticed it.
During a cloudless
twilight, just before sunrise or after sunset, part of the atmosphere above the
horizon appears slightly off-color, slightly pink.
Visible in the
above photograph, this off-color band between the
dark eclipsed sky and the
blue sky can best be seen in the direction opposite the Sun
and is called the Belt of
Venus.
Straight above,
blue sky is normal sunlight reflecting off the atmosphere.
In the Belt of Venus, however, the atmosphere reflects light
from the
setting (or rising) Sun which
appears more red.
The Belt of Venus can be seen from any location
with a clear horizon.
It is frequently
caught
by
accident
in
other
photographs.
APOD: 2001 October 15 - The Earth and Moon Planetary System
Explanation:
How similar in size are the
Earth and the
Moon?
A dramatic visual answer to this question
is found by combining photographs taken by the
Mariner 10 spacecraft that headed out toward
Venus and Mercury in 1973.
The Moon can be seen to have a diameter over one quarter that of
Earth,
relatively large compared to its
planetary companion.
In our Solar System, only
Pluto and Charon
are closer together in size.
Striking features of the
Earth
visible to the passing spacecraft include
blue oceans and
white clouds,
showing the Earth
to be truly a water world.
APOD: 2001 September 16 - Venus Once Molten Surface
Explanation:
If you could look at Venus with radar eyes -
this is what you might see.
This computer reconstruction of the surface of
Venus was created from data from the
Magellan spacecraft.
Magellan orbited
Venus
and used radar to map our
neighboring planet's
surface between 1990 and 1994.
Magellan found many interesting surface features,
including the
large circular domes,
typically 25-kilometers across, that are depicted above.
Volcanism
is thought to have created the
domes, although the
precise mechanism remains unknown.
Venus'
surface is so hot and hostile that no
surface probe
has lasted more than a few minutes.
APOD: 2001 August 26 - Uranus: The Tilted Planet
Explanation:
Uranus is the third largest planet in our
Solar System after
Jupiter and
Saturn.
Uranus
is composed mostly of rock and ices,
but with a thick
hydrogen and
helium atmosphere.
The blue hue of Uranus' atmosphere arises from the small amount of
methane which preferentially absorbs red light.
This picture was snapped by the
Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1986 -
the only spacecraft ever to visit Uranus.
Uranus has many
moons and a
ring system.
Uranus, like
Venus, has a rotation axis that
is greatly tilted and sometimes points near the Sun.
It remains an astronomical mystery why
Uranus' axis is so tilted.
Uranus and
Neptune are quite similar:
Uranus is slightly larger but less massive.
APOD: 2001 August 7 - A July Dawn
Explanation:
Those up before dawn in late July in the
northern hemisphere could
see planets, stars, and a spacecraft in a
single quick glance before starting their day.
Near the eastern horizon was bright
Jupiter, and not far above and to its right was the very bright
Venus.
Connecting the dots will point you just right of
Saturn.
Far in the distance but near the top right of the frame
is the Pleiades star cluster.
Orbiting the
Earth well in the foreground, the
International Space Station
reflected sunlight to cause the faint line segment.
In the very close foreground, the bright red and yellow lines
were caused by a passing van.
The above picture was taken on July 26 from
Quebec,
Canada.
Why are bushes
visible through the van?
The van was present for only a few of the
25 seconds of the total exposure.
APOD: 2001 June 1 - Venus' Evening Loop
Explanation:
From September 2000 through March 2001, astronomer Tunc Tezel
patiently photographed the planet Venus on 25 different dates
as it wandered through the evening twilight.
The pictures were taken from the same spot on the campus of
the Middle East Technical University near Ankara, Turkey, and
timed so that for each photo
the
Sun was 7 degrees below the horizon.
Carefully registering and combining the pictures, he produced
this composite image -- a stunning demonstration of
Venus' grand looping
sky motion
during its recent stint as planet Earth's
evening star.
As indicated, the first picture, taken September 28, 2000,
finds Venus close to the western
horizon and drifting south (left)
with the passing days.
By December however, Venus
was climbing well above the horizon after sunset and
in January 2001 it reached its maximum apparent distance
(elongation) from the Sun.
March found Venus falling from
the evening sky while
moving rapidly north, finally appearing (far right) as
a faint dot against the sunset glow on March 24.
This month, Venus rises before dawn as the brilliant
morning star.
APOD: 2001 May 15 - A Radar Image of Venus
Explanation:
The largest radio telescopes in the world are working
together to create a new map of the surface of Venus.
The surface of
Venus
is unusually hidden by a thick atmosphere of mostly
carbon dioxide gas.
These
thick clouds are transparent,
however, to radar signals sent and received from Earth.
The two
radio telescopes generating the
most powerful radar ever are the
Arecibo Telescope in
Puerto Rico and the new
Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in
West Virginia.
The new survey will resolve details as fine a one-kilometer across,
and will be inspected for changes since the
last major radar map was made by NASA's
Magellan spacecraft that orbited
Venus from 1990 to 1994.
Pictured above is part of a preliminary image showing
details as small as five-kilometers across.
APOD: 2001 May 7 - One Hundred Kilometer Terrain on Venus
Explanation:
Even the hot and cracked surface of
Venus has rolling hills.
Although never actually photographed from up-close,
images of the
Venusian surface like that shown above have been
constructed in recent years by digitally merging distant photographs from
height-sensitive radar.
Isolated
above is a 100-kilometer wide swath
inside a volcanic region
known as Yavine Corona.
Visible in
the frame are
numerous fractures
in the surface.
Data is missing from the dark lane on the upper right.
The surface of Venus is so hot and oppressive that
robot spacecraft
landed there
have lasted for only a few hours.
APOD: 2001 March 8 - Bright Venus
Explanation:
Have you seen a bright evening star
in the western sky lately?
That's no star, that's planet Venus the second "rock"
from the Sun.
Blazing at -4.6
magnitude, Venus, after the Sun and Moon,
is the third brightest celestial body in
planet Earth's sky.
Venus is closer to the Sun than Earth and
as Venus orbits
the Sun it is seen to go through
phases similar to the Moon.
But unlike the Moon, as
Venus waxes and wanes
its distance from Earth and hence its apparent size changes drastically.
This causes
Venus to look brighter
as it looms large in its
crescent phases than when it is smaller and nearly full.
Taken on January 28th, this dramatic picture finds a crescent
Venus near its brightest to the right of a crescent Moon.
The brilliant rivals seem poised above a satellite dish of the
Scripps Satellite Oceanography Facility.
Closer to the horizon,
just below and to the right of the satellite dish,
Mercury pierces the twilight glow.
APOD: 2001 February 9 - Nashville Four Planet Skyline
Explanation:
So far this February,
evening skies have been blessed with
a glorious Moon and three bright planets;
Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn.
But just last week, on January 30th,
an extreme wide-angle lens allowed
astrophotographer Larry Koehn to capture this twilight view
of Moon and four
planets above Nashville, Tennessee, USA.
These major
solar system
bodies lie along the ecliptic plane and
so follow a diagonal line through the picture.
Starting near the upper left corner is bright
Jupiter, which takes
on a slightly triangular shape due to the lens distortion.
Just below and right of Jupiter
is Saturn.
Continuing along the diagonal toward the lower right
is an overexposed, six day
old Moon
and brilliant Venus seemingly
embedded in clouds.
The fourth planet pictured is Mercury.
Notoriously hard to see from planet Earth because it never
wanders far from the Sun,
Mercury is visible just above
the lower right corner.
The line from Jupiter to Mercury spans about 92 degrees
across the Nashville sky.
APOD: 2000 December 14 - International Space Station Trail
Explanation:
Still under construction, the
International
Space Station is becoming one
of
the brightest, fastest moving "stars" in the heavens.
Despite illuminated clouds and bright light from a
nearly full moon (lower left),
this 5 minute time exposure easily captures
the Space Station's trail as it arcs through early evening skies
above Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, USA
on December 9.
At the time,
the
Space Shuttle Endeavour had undocked
and moved away from the orbiting platform,
the shuttle crew having just completed
the installation
of large solar panels to power the Space Station's systems.
Sunlight glinting off the large, shiny panels is likely the source
of the brief flare visible along the track.
Astrophotographer Doug Murray and colleague report that both
Shuttle and Space Station
were
visible separately and on
close inspection
of this image they do produce distinct, parallel arcs.
At the extreme right hand edge of the picture,
the
trails pass
very near the brightest "star" in the night sky,
Venus.
APOD: 2000 November 8 - October Skylights
Explanation:
With brilliant
Venus above the western horizon at sunset and
Jupiter and
Saturn
high in the east by early evening,
November's night sky is filled with bright planets.
October's sky featured bright planets as well and, triggered
by the active Sun, some lovely
auroral displays.
This colorful aurora was recorded by
astrophotographer Wade Clark in skies
above Hamilton, Washington, USA on the night of October 4th.
Through the shimmering
northern lights Jupiter and Saturn
are easy to spot flanking the
V-shaped head of
Taurus the Bull.
Of course, just above lies the lovely Pleiades star cluster.
Solar activity will
also produce auroral shows in November,
particularly at high northern and southern latitudes.
Plus, November skygazers can certainly anticipate a celestial
performance on the evening of the 17th/18th -- the
moonlit
Leonid meteor shower.
APOD: 2000 September 27 - Yepun
Explanation:
Pictured above on September 3rd, the enclosure
for the 8.2 meter telescope christened Yepun
glints dramatically in the light of the setting sun.
Later that evening,
under dark skies at Paranal Observatory,
Chile,
astronomers and engineers successfully captured
Yepun's first light images,
making Yepun the fourth and final unit of
the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT)
array to reach this milestone.
Ultimately, the light from the three other 8.2 meter
unit telescopes (Antu, Kueyen,
and Melipal) will be combined with Yepun's to achieve
an effective
aperture
of 16.4 meters -- creating the
world's largest
optical
telescope.
But the next major step will be to combine beams from two of the telescopes
creating an interferometer.
The upper part of the mostly subterranean interferometer lab is the
building in front of the telescope enclosure.
The VLT unit telescope names have been taken from the
Mapuche
language.
Originally thought to refer to the bright star Sirius,
the
word Yepun is now
believed by linguists to mean Venus or
evening star.
APOD: 2000 July 28 - Moon And Venus Share The Sky
Explanation:
July is drawing to a close and in the past few days,
some early morning risers could have
looked east and seen a crescent Moon
sharing the pre-dawn skies with planets Jupiter and Saturn.
Planet Mercury will also pass
about 2 degrees from
the thin waning crescent
Moon
just before sunrise near the eastern horizon
on Saturday, July 29.
And finally, on the evening of July 31st, Venus will take its turn
near the crescent Moon.
But this time it will be a day-old crescent Moon near the western horizon,
shortly after sunset.
In
fact, on July 31 (August 1 Universal Time)
the Moon will occult
(pass in front of) Venus for
northwestern observers in North America.
This telescopic picture taken on 31 December 1997, shows a lovely young
crescent Moon and brilliant crescent
Venus in the early evening sky near
Bursa,
Turkey.
And what about the Sun? On Sunday, July 30, a
partial eclipse of the Sun will be visible from
some locations in North America.
APOD: 2000 July 17 - Lightning on Earth
Explanation:
Nobody knows what causes lightning.
It is known that
charges slowly separate in some
clouds causing rapid
electrical discharges (lightning), but how
electrical charges get separated in
clouds remains a topic of much research.
Nevertheless,
lightning
bolts are common in clouds during rainstorms,
and on average 6000 lightning bolts occur between clouds
and the Earth every minute.
Above, several lightning strokes were photographed behind
Kitt Peak National Observatory in
Arizona.
Lightning has also been found on the planets
Venus,
Jupiter,
Saturn, and
Uranus.
NASA launched the
TRMM mission
in 1997 that continues to measure rainfall and
lightning
on planet Earth.
APOD: 2000 May 24 - Pleiades, Planets, And Hot Plasma
Explanation:
Bright stars of the Pleiades, four planets, and erupting solar plasma are
all captured in this
spectacular image from
the space-based SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).
In the foreground of the 15 degree wide field of view, a bubble
of hot plasma, called a Coronal Mass Ejection
(CME), is blasting away from the
active Sun whose position
and relative size is indicated
by the central white circle.
Beyond appear four of the
five naked-eye
planets --
courtesy of
the planetary alignment which
did not destroy the world!
In the background are distant stars and the famous
Pleiades star cluster,
also easily visible to the unaided eye when it shines in the
night sky.
Distances for these
familiar celestial objects are;
the Sun,
150 million kilometers away;
Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn,
about 58, 110, 780, and 1,400 million kilometers beyond the Sun
respectively; and the
Pleiades
star cluster at a mere 3,800 trillion kilometers
(400 light-years).
SOHO itself orbits 1.5 million kilometers sunward of planet Earth.
The image
was recorded by the Large Angle and Spectrometric COronagraph (LASCO)
instrument on board SOHO on Monday, May 15 at 10:42 UT.
APOD: 2000 May 5 - Planets In The Sun
Explanation:
Today,
all five naked-eye
planets
(Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn)
plus the Moon and the Sun will at least approximately line-up.
As viewed
from planet Earth, they will be clustered
within about 26 degrees, the closest alignment for all
these celestial bodies since
February 1962, when there was a
solar eclipse!
Such
planetary
alignments are not dangerous,
except of course that the Sun might hurt your eyes when
you look at it.
So it might
be easier to
appreciate today's
solar system spectacle
if you use a space-based coronagraph ... like
the LASCO
instrument onboard the SOHO observatory.
In this recent
LASCO image, an occulting disk supported by a structure
seen projecting from the lower left blocks out the overwhelming
sunlight.
It shows three of the planets along with the Sun's location and
bright solar wind regions against a background of stars,
but Mars and Venus are unfortunately outside LASCO's roughly
15 degree field of view.
The horizontal bars through the planets are digital image artifacts.
And what about the Moon?
The SOHO spacecraft is
positioned
well beyond lunar orbit where its view of the Sun is
never interrupted by the Moon.
APOD: 2000 April 6 - Venus, Moon, and Neighbors
Explanation:
Rising before the Sun on February 2nd,
astrophotographer Joe Orman
anticipated this apparition of the bright
morning star
Venus near a lovely crescent Moon above a neighbor's house
in suburban Phoenix, Arizona, USA.
Fortunately, the alignment of bright planets and the Moon is
one of the most inspiring sights in the
night sky and one
that is often easy to enjoy and share without any special equipment.
Take tonight, for example.
Those blessed with clear skies can simply step
outside near sunset
and view a young crescent Moon very near three bright planets
in the west
Jupiter,
Mars, and
Saturn.
Jupiter will be the unmistakable brightest star near the Moon
with a reddish Mars just to Jupiter's north and pale yellow
Saturn directly above.
Of course, these
sky
shows create an
evocative picture but the
planets and Moon just appear to be near each other --
they are actually only approximately lined up and
lie in widely separated orbits.
Unfortunately, next month's highly publicized
alignment of planets on May 5th will be lost from
view in the Sun's glare but such
planetary
alignments occur repeatedly and
pose no danger to planet Earth.
APOD: 2000 March 26 - Venus Once Molten Surface
Explanation:
If you could look at Venus with radar eyes -
this is what you might see.
This computer reconstruction of the surface of
Venus was created from data from the
Magellan spacecraft.
Magellan orbited
Venus
and used radar to map our
neighboring planet's
surface between 1990 and 1994.
Magellan found many interesting surface features,
including the
large circular domes,
typically 25-kilometers across, that are depicted above.
Volcanism is thought to have created the domes, although the
precise mechanism remains unknown.
Venus'
surface is so hot and hostile that no
surface probe
has lasted more than a few minutes.
APOD: 2000 March 10 - Sky and Planets
Explanation:
On February 10th, an
evocative
evening sky above Rocklin, California, USA
inspired astrophotographer Steve Sumner
to record this remarkable sight - five planets and the Moon.
Near its first quarter phase, the bright
Moon was intentionally overexposed
but Saturn,
Jupiter,
Mars, and
Mercury
(and, of course,
planet Earth's horizon)
are all clearly visible in the deepening twilight.
Notably absent in this grouping of naked-eye planets is
Venus which
is still putting in an early appearance as the
morning star.
This month, Mercury has joined Venus in the dawn twilight while
Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars still shine brightly in the western sky at
nightfall
making another gorgeous close grouping with the crescent
Moon.
APOD: November 28, 1999 - Beneath Venus Clouds
Explanation:
If the thick clouds covering Venus were removed,
how would the surface appear?
Using an imaging radar technique, the Magellan spacecraft was able to
lift the veil from the Face of Venus and produce this spectacular high resolution image of
the planet's surface.
Red, in this false-color map, represents
mountains, while blue represents valleys.
This 3-kilometer resolution
map is a composite of Magellan images compiled between 1990 and 1994.
Gaps were filled in by the Earth-based
Arecibo Radio Telescope.
The large yellow/red area in the north is
Ishtar Terra featuring Maxwell Montes,
the largest mountain on Venus.
The large highland regions are analogous to continents on Earth.
Scientists are particularly interested in
exploring the geology of
Venus because of its similarity to Earth.
APOD: November 10, 1999 - The Belt of Venus
Explanation:
Although you've surely seen it, you might not have noticed it.
During a cloudless
twilight, just before sunrise or after sunset, part of the atmosphere above the
horizon appears slightly off-color, slightly pink.
Visible in the
above photograph, this off-color band between the
dark eclipsed sky and the
blue sky can best be seen in the direction opposite the Sun
and is called the Belt of
Venus.
Straight above,
blue sky is normal sunlight reflecting off the atmosphere.
In the Belt of Venus, however, the atmosphere reflects light
from the
setting (or rising) Sun which
appears more red.
The Belt of Venus can be seen from any location
with a clear horizon.
APOD: November 6, 1999 - X ray Transit of Mercury
Explanation:
This sequence of
false color X-ray images captures a rare event -
the passage or
transit of planet Mercury in front of the Sun.
Mercury's small disk is
silhouetted against the bright background of X-rays from the hot
Solar Corona.
It appears just to the right of center in the
top frame and moves farther right as the sequence progresses toward
the bottom.
The dark notch is
a coronal hole near
the Solar South Pole, while
a flaring coronal bright point can be seen to the left of the notch
in the top frames.
The frames were recorded on November 6, 1993 by the
Soft X-ray Telescope
on board
the orbiting Yohkoh satellite.
Transits of Mercury (and Venus) were historically used to discover
the geometry of the solar system and to
map planet Earth itself.
The next transit of Mercury will occur on November 15.
APOD: September 3, 1999 - Venus Falls Out of the Evening Sky
Explanation:
Orbiting closer to the Sun than planet Earth,
bright Venus
always appears to be near the Sun's position
in our sky and
often shines near the
horizon in
twilight hours.
In fact, after posing as the brilliant
evening star
for the first half of this year, Venus has now
swung around its orbit and is emerging in the predawn twilight as the
morning star.
Taken during its stint as the evening star, this
imaginative long-exposure photo,
of Venus and a 2-day-old crescent Moon gives the
illusion of the pair "falling out" of the western sky.
After an initial short exposure captured the Moon and
Venus, the lens was covered for a few minutes, then left uncovered to
record the
trails until the Moon had set.
APOD: June 19, 1999 - Venus on the Horizon
Explanation:
Venus can appear as a brilliant evening star.
Besides the sun and moon,
Venus is the brightest object visible in Earth's sky.
Because it is closer to the sun than Earth, Venus never strays far
from the sun in
its apparent position and is seen during the year as either
a bright morning or evening star.
This beautiful sunset imaged from low earth orbit by the
Atlantis space shuttle crew
in May 1989 also reveals the planet Venus blazing above Earth's horizon.
It is a fitting image for this
mission and crew.
It was recorded following the successful release of the
robot Venus-explorer Magellan,
the first planetary probe to be deployed from a space shuttle.
APOD: June 12, 1999 - Venus: Just Passing By
Explanation:
Venus,
the second closest planet to the Sun, is a popular
way-point for spacecraft headed for the
gas giant planets
in the outer reaches of the solar system.
Why visit Venus first?
Using a " gravity assist " maneuver,
spacecraft can swing by planets and gain energy during their brief
encounter saving fuel for use at the end of
their long interplanetary voyage.
This colorized image of Venus was recorded by the Jupiter-bound
Galileo spacecraft shortly after its gravity assist flyby of Venus in
February of 1990.
Galileo's glimpse of
the veiled planet shows structure in
swirling sulfuric acid clouds.
The bright area is sunlight
glinting off the upper cloud deck.
The Saturn-bound Cassini spacecraft will
complete its own second flyby of
Venus on June 24th.
Launched in October of 1997,
Cassini should reach Saturn in July 2004.
APOD: May 21, 1999 - Star Party Trails
Explanation:
Stargazing is fun!
If you'd like to try it, this weekend may be your chance as many
astronomy clubs and organizations will be
hosting public celebrations of
Astronomy Day on
Saturday, May 22nd.
In recent years, open house nights
at observatories,
astronomy club gatherings, and
star parties have become increasingly popular.
They offer great opportunities for beginners to
view the sky through a variety of telescopes
and veterans to swap
stories and
ideas.
This time exposure of
star trails
was made last month
at the Sentinel, Arizona "Stargaze" star party.
On the right, a
brilliant trail tracks the setting evening star,
Venus.
Stars in Orion
are near the center and bright Sirius
produced the prominent trail at the left.
City lights from nearby Yuma glow on the horizon while
party-goers' red filtered flashlights create
the eerie foreground effect.
The red flashlights are courteously used to
provide a safe level of illumination but
still preserve night
vision for enjoyable stargazing.
APOD: May 18, 1999 - A Laguna Triangle
Explanation:
High above
Laguna Beach last month hung bright celestial orbs.
Visible after the California sunset were,
from left to right, the
Moon,
Saturn, and
Venus.
Tonight and for the next few days,
Venus and the Moon
will again be
visible together. Nearby stars will include
Pollux, Castor, and Procyon.
Venus now sets hours after the Sun and is so bright it might be mistaken for an
airplane or
UFO. Binoculars should enable the viewing of
craters on the Moon, and phases for Venus.
APOD: May 5, 1999 - A Solar System Portrait
Explanation:
As the
Voyager 1 spacecraft headed out of our
Solar System,
it looked back and took a parting family portrait of the
Sun and planets.
From beyond
Pluto,
our Solar System looks like a bright star
surrounded by faint dots. In the
above picture, the Sun is so bright
it is blocked out for contrast.
The innermost dots visible, labeled E and V for
Earth and
Venus, are particularly hard to discern.
Gas giants
Jupiter (J) and
Saturn (S) are much more noticeable.
The outermost planets visible are
Uranus (U) and
Neptune (N).
Each planet is shown labeled and
digitally enhanced in an inset image.
Voyager 1 is only one of four
human-made objects to leave our Solar System,
the other three being Voyager 2,
and Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11.
APOD: April 18, 1999 - Moon Over California
Explanation:
The Moon, Saturn, and Venus shine above while city lights twinkle
below in the deepening
twilight of March 19.
Taken from outside Indio, California, the
photo shows the
city lights of Indio and nearby Palm Springs.
The brilliant lunar crescent
is over exposed here with Saturn
about 4 degrees away to the upper right and bright Venus still farther
to the right only another 2 degrees or so.
This Sunday evening, April 18, another dramatic lunar spectacle
should be easily
visible to stargazers in the western and midwestern US
when the crescent moon passes
in front of the bright star Aldebaran.
APOD: March 25, 1999 - March of the Planets
Explanation:
This March stargazers have been treated to
eye-catching formations of
bright planets in western evening skies.
On March 3rd, looking toward a beautiful sunset from a beach on
the Hawaiian isle of Maui, photographer Rick Scott recorded
this fleeting, four-planet "hockey stick"
array.
Mercury, closest to the horizon and immersed in fading sunlight,
is easily visible between silhouetted clouds.
To the left and up in the deepening blue is Jupiter
with a brilliant Venus above
and Saturn shining in the darkened sky near the top of the image.
The planets are seen to lie close to
the ecliptic - the
apparent path of the sun - which is nearly perpendicular to the
horizon for
Hawaiian latitudes at this time of year.
APOD: March 8, 1999 - A Jupiter Venus Conjunction
Explanation:
Venus and
Jupiter appeared unusually close together in the sky last month.
The conjunction was easily visible to the unaided eye because
Venus
appears brighter than any background star.
The two planets were not significantly closer in space -
Venus just passed nearly in front of Jupiter as seen from the
Earth.
Visible in the
above photograph are actually five planets.
The faint dot near the top is
Saturn.
Venus is the brightest spot near the center, and
Jupiter is just above it.
Perhaps the hardest to see is Mercury,
visible below Venus but above the foreground
Earth.
A single line nearly connects all the
planets,
a result of all planets orbiting the
Sun in a single plane called the
ecliptic.
APOD: January 24, 1999 - A Venus Landing
Explanation:
This image is part of the first color panoramic view from
Venus.
It was transmitted by a TV camera on the
Soviet Venera 13 lander
which parachuted to thesurface
on March 1, 1982.
Venus' clouds
are composed of sulfuric acid droplets
while its surface temperature is about 900 degrees Fahrenheit
(482 degrees C) at an atmospheric
pressure of 92 times that of sea-level on Earth.
Despite these harsh conditions, the
Venera 13 lander survived
long enough to send back a series of images
and perform an analysis of the
Venusian soil.
Part of the lander itself
is visible in the lower right portion of the image.
An earlier Soviet Venus lander,Venera 7 (1970), was the first spacecraft to return data
from the surface of another planet.
APOD: January 10, 1999 - Venus Once Molten Surface
Explanation:
If you could look at Venus with radar eyes - this is what you might see.
This computer reconstruction of the surface of
Venus
was created from data from the
Magellan
spacecraft.
Magellan orbited
Venus
and used radar to map our neighboring planet's surface between 1990 and 1994.
Magellan found many interesting surface features, including the
large circular domes, typically
25-kilometers across, that are
depicted
above. Volcanism is thought to have created the domes, although the
precise mechanism remains unknown.
Venus'
surface is so hot and hostile that no
surface probe has lasted more than a few minutes.
APOD: September 13, 1998 - Galileo Demonstrates the Telescope
Explanation:
Galileo Galilei made a good discovery great. Upon hearing at age 40 that a
Dutch optician had invented a glass that made distant objects appear
larger,
Galileo crafted his own
telescope and turned it toward the
sky.
Galileo quickly discovered that our
Moon had
craters, that
Jupiter had its own
moons, that the
Sun has
spots,
and that
Venus has phases like our
Moon.
Galileo, who lived from 1564 to 1642, made many more discoveries.
Galileo
claimed that his observations only made sense if all the planets revolved
around the
Sun, as championed by
Aristarchus and Copernicus, not the
Earth,
as was commonly believed then. The powerful
Inquisition made
Galileo publicly
recant this conclusion, but today we know he was correct.
APOD: August 25, 1998 - Moon, Venus, Jupiter, Phoenix
Explanation:
Before a relaxing sunrise, the sky begins to glow
with unusual delights. Such was the view from Papago Park in
Phoenix,
Arizona this April.
The glittering objects visible in
this photograph are, from lower left to upper right:
Phoenix, our Moon,
Venus, and
Jupiter.
Such proximity is somewhat unusual. Jupiter will be
visible in the evening sky through the rest of the year,
while Venus can be seen in the early morning sky during the month of
September.
APOD: July 2, 1998 - X-ray Transit of Mercury
Explanation:
This sequence of
false color X-ray images captures a rare event -
the passage or
transit of planet Mercury in front of the Sun.
Mercury's small disk is
silhouetted against the bright background of X-rays from the hot
Solar Corona.
It appears just to the right of center in the
top frame and moves farther right as the sequence progresses toward
the bottom.
The dark notch is
a coronal hole near
the Solar South Pole, while
a flaring coronal bright point can be seen to the left of the notch
in the top frames.
The frames were recorded on November 6, 1993 by the
Soft X-ray Telescope
on board
the orbiting Yohkoh satellite.
Transits of Mercury (and Venus) were historically used to discover
the geometry of the solar system and to
map planet Earth itself.
APOD: May 17, 1998 - Our Solar System from Voyager
Explanation:
After taking spectacular pictures of our Solar
System's outer planets, Voyager 1 looked back at six planets
to take our Solar System's first family portrait.
Here Venus,
Earth, Jupiter,
Saturn,
Uranus, and Neptune, were all visible across the sky.
Each, however, was now just a small speck of light,
dimmer than many of the stars in the sky. Voyager
1 is only one of four human-made objects to leave our Solar System,
the other three being Voyager 2,
and Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11.
APOD: May 13, 1998 - Occultations and Rising Moons
Explanation:
On April 23, the rising crescent Moon
occulted (passed in front of) Venus and Jupiter.
The double occultation was a rare event
and only visible from certain
locations tracing a path across Earth's surface.
This dramatic telephoto picture was
taken at one such location,
Ascension Island in the South Atlantic.
The sunlit crescent is over-exposed revealing the rest of the lunar surface
illuminated by faint earthshine.
Venus is emerging just beyond the crescent's tip
and Jupiter is trailing above the dark lunar edge with a spot of light,
Jupiter's moon Ganymede, between the lunar limb and the planet's disk.
Look closely at Jupiter and you can see yet another
Jovian moon,
Io, just visible against Jupiter's glare!
APOD: May 1, 1998 - Venus: Just Passing By
Explanation:
Venus,
the second closest planet to the Sun, is a popular
way-point for spacecraft headed for the
gas giant planets
in the outer reaches of the solar system.
Why visit Venus first?
Using a " gravity assist " maneuver,
spacecraft can swing by planets and gain energy during their brief
encounter saving fuel for use at the end of
their long interplanetary voyage.
This colorized image of Venus was recorded by the Jupiter-bound
Galileo spacecraft shortly after its gravity assist flyby of Venus in
February of 1990.
Galileo's glimpse of
the veiled planet shows structure in
swirling sulfuric acid clouds.
The bright area is sunlight
glinting off the upper cloud deck.
The Saturn-bound Cassini spacecraft just
completed its own flyby of
Venus on April 26.
Launched in October of 1997,
Cassini should reach Saturn in July 2004.
APOD: April 28, 1998 - A Rare Double Conjunction Eclipse
Explanation:
The crescent
Moon,
Venus, and
Jupiter all appeared together in the early morning hours of April 23rd.
Some locations on
Earth were able to
witness a rare double
conjunction eclipse, where the
Moon occulted both
Jupiter and
Venus at the same time. The
next
double conjunction
eclipse will involve
Mercury and Mars and will occur on February 13, 2056.
APOD: January 20, 1998 - Arachnoids on Venus
Explanation:
Arachnoids are large structures of unknown origin
that have been found only on the surface of
Venus. Arachnoids get their name from their resemblance to
spider-webs.
They appear as concentric ovals surrounded
by a complex network of fractures,
and can span 200 kilometers.
Radar echoes from the
Magellan spacecraft that orbited Venus from 1990 to 1994 built up this image.
Over 30 arachnoids have been identified on
Venus, so far.
The Arachnoid might be a strange relative to the
volcano,
but possibly different
arachnoids are formed by different processes.
APOD: December 4, 1997 - A Sky Full Of Planets
Explanation:
Look up tonight.
Just after sunset, the crescent moon and
all five "naked-eye" planets
(Mercury,
Venus,
Mars,
Jupiter,
and Saturn)
will be visible (depending on your latitude), lying near
our solar system's ecliptic plane.
Venus and Jupiter will shine brilliantly as the brightest "stars"
in the sky, but Mercury will be near the horizon and hard to see.
A pair of binoculars will also reveal Uranus and Neptune and
observers with a telescope and a good site may even be able
to glimpse faint Pluto just above the
Western horizon in the fading twilight (not shown on the chart above).
Enjoy this lovely spectacle
any clear night through about December 8.
A similar gathering is expected in May 2000
but the planets will be hidden from view by the solar glare.
A night sky as full of planets as this one will occur
again though ... in about 100 years.
APOD: October 16, 1997 - Cassini To Venus
Explanation:
NASA's Saturn Explorer Cassini with
ESA's Titan Probe Huygens attached
successfully rocketed into the skies early yesterday morning.
The mighty Titan 4B Centaur rocket
is seen here across the water gracefully arcing away
from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Station.
Cassini, a sophisticated,
bus-sized robot spacecraft
is now on its way ... to Venus,
the first planetary way point in its 7 year, 2.2 billion mile
journey to Saturn.
The mission profile calls for Cassini to swing by Venus during
April 1998 and June 1999, Earth in August 1999,
and Jupiter in December 2000.
During each of these
"gravity assist" encounters the six ton
spacecraft will pick up energy needed to
reach Saturn in July 2004.
Cassini's mission is the most ambitious voyage of
interplanetary exploration ever mounted
by humanity and the Huygens Probe's planned descent to
the surface of Titan
will be the most distant landing ever attempted.
APOD: October 14, 1997 - Venus On The Horizon
Explanation:
The month of October features a sky full of planets, including Venus
as the brilliant evening star.
Besides the sun and moon,
Venus is the brightest object visible in Earth's sky.
This month,
Venus appears in early evening near the
red planet Mars
and Mars' red giant
rival Antares
above the southwestern horizon.
Because it is closer to the sun than Earth, Venus never strays far
from the sun in
its apparent position and is seen during the year as either
a bright morning or evening star.
This beautiful sunset imaged from low earth orbit by the
Atlantis space shuttle crew
in May 1989 also reveals the planet Venus blazing above Earth's horizon.
It is a fitting image for this
mission and crew.
It was recorded following the successful release of the
robot Venus-explorer Magellan,
the first planetary probe to be deployed from a space shuttle.
APOD: June 9, 1997 - An Auroral Ring on Jupiter
Explanation:
Do other planets have aurora?
Terrestrial
and spacecraft observations have found evidence for aurora on
Venus,
Mars,
Jupiter,
Saturn,
Uranus, and
Neptune.
In the
above
false-color photograph, a good portion of an
auroral ring was captured recently in optical light by the
Galileo spacecraft
in orbit around
Jupiter.
Auroral rings
encircle a planet's magnetic pole, and result from charged particles
spiraling down magnetic field lines. Although the surroundings near
Jupiter are much different than
Earth, the
auroral rings appear similar.
APOD: June 3, 1997 - Venus' Once Molten Surface
Explanation:
If you could look at Venus with radar eyes - this is what you might see.
This computer reconstruction of the surface of
Venus
was created from data from the
Magellan
spacecraft.
Magellan orbited
Venus
and used radar to map our neighboring planet's surface between 1990 and 1994.
Magellan
found many interesting surface features, including the
large circular domes, typically
25-kilometers across, that are
depicted
above. Volcanism is thought to have created the domes, although the
precise mechanism remains unknown.
Venus'
surface is so hot and hostile that no
surface probe has lasted more than a few minutes.
APOD: May 12, 1997 - Lightning on Jupiter
Explanation:
Does lightning occur only on Earth? Spacecraft in our
Solar System have detected radio signals consistent with
lightning on other planets, including
Venus,
Jupiter,
Saturn,
Uranus, and
Neptune.
In the
above photograph,
optical flashes from
Jupiter were photographed recently by the
Galileo orbiter.
Each of the circled dots indicates
lightning.
The numbers label lines of
latitude.
The size of the largest spot is about 500 kilometers across and
might be high clouds illuminated by several bright lightning strokes.
APOD: May 7, 1997 - Ultraviolet Venus
Explanation:
The forecast for Venus is cloudy, cloudy, cloudy. Although similar to the
Earth in size and mass,
Venus'
slightly closer orbit to the
Sun create for it a much thicker
atmosphere and a much hotter surface. The thick atmosphere was
photographed above in
ultraviolet light in 1979 by the
Pioneer
Venus Orbiter. Whether or not
Venus has a moon was the center of a
great
controversy in the 1700s and 1800s. Today we know
Venus has no natural satellites.
Venus's extremely
uncomfortable climate was likely caused by a runaway
greenhouse
effect. Could Earth ever undergo
runaway greenhouse
heating like Venus?
APOD: December 26, 1996 - Carl Sagan 1934-1996
Explanation: Carl Sagan died last Friday at the age of
62. Sagan
was the world's most famous astronomer. Among his many activities
as a scientist, he contributed to the discovery that the atmosphere
of Venus is prohibitively hot and
dense, and found evidence that Saturn's
moon Titan contains oceans stocked with the building blocks of life.
Sagan
was an outspoken proponent of the search for extra-terrestrial life,
including sending probes to other planets and
listening with large radio telescopes
for signals from intelligent aliens. Sagan's
outstanding ability to explain allowed almost a billion people
to better understand the cosmos in which they live.
APOD: December 14, 1996 - Our Solar System from Voyager
Explanation: After taking spectacular pictures of our Solar
System's outer planets, Voyager 1 looked back at six planets
to take our Solar System's first family portrait. Here Venus,
Earth, Jupiter,
Saturn,
Uranus, and Neptune,
were all visible across the sky. Each, however, was now just a
small speck of light,
dimmer than many of the stars in the sky. Voyager
1 is only one of four human-made objects to leave our Solar System,
the other three being Voyager 2,
and Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11.
APOD: September 24, 1996 - Beneath Venus' Clouds
Explanation: If the thick clouds covering Venus were removed,
how would the surface appear? Using an imaging radar
technique, the Magellan spacecraft
was able to lift the veil from the Face of Venus
and produce this spectacular high resolution imageof
the planet's surface. Red, in this false-color map, represent
mountains, while blue represents valleys This 3-kilometer resolution
map is a composite of Magellan
images compiled between 1990 and 1994. Gaps were filled in by
the Earth-based Arecibo Radio Telescope.
The large yellow/red area in the north is Ishtar Terra
featuring Maxwell Montes,
the largest mountain on Venus. The
large highland regions are analogous to continents on Earth. Scientists
are particularly interested in exploring the geology of Venus
because of its similarity to Earth.
APOD: September 23, 1996 - Venus: Earth's Cloudy Twin
Explanation: If Venus weren't so cloudy it would be more
similar to Earth. This picture by the Galileo spacecraft
shows just how cloudy Venus
is. Venus
is very similar to Earth in size
and mass - and so is sometimes referred to as Earth's sister planet
- but Venus
has a quite different climate. Venus'
thick clouds and closeness to the Sun
(only Mercury is closer) make it
the hottest planet - much hotter than the Earth. Humans could
not survive there, and no life of any sort has ever been found.
When Venus is visible
it is usually the brightest object in the sky after the Sun and
the Moon. More than 20 spacecraft
have visited Venus
including Venera 9,
which landed on the surface, and Magellan,
which used radar to peer through the clouds and make a map of
the surface. This visible light picture of Venus
was taken by the Galileo spacecraft now
in orbit around Jupiter. Many things about Venus remain unknown,
including the cause of mysterious bursts of radio waves.
APOD: August 30, 1996 - Galileo Demonstrates the Telescope
Explanation:
Galileo Galilei made a good discovery great. Upon hearing at age 40 that a
Dutch optician had invented a glass that made distant objects appear
larger,
Galileo crafted his own
telescope and turned it toward the
sky.
Galileo quickly discovered that our
Moon had
craters, that
Jupiter had it's own
moons, that the
Sun has
spots,
and that
Venus has phases like our
Moon.
Galileo, who lived from 1564 to 1642, made many more discoveries.
Galileo
claimed that his observations only made sense if all the planets revolved
around the
Sun, as championed by Aristarchus and Copernicus, not the
Earth,
as was commonly believed then. The powerful
Inquisition made
Galileo publicly
recant this conclusion, but today we know he was correct.
APOD: June 24, 1996 - A View from Venus: Rift Valley
Explanation:
Color information from the
Soviet Venera landers and radar data from
the Magellan spacecraft
were used to construct this striking perspective view of the
Venusian landscape. (In this computer
generated image, the vertical scale has been exagerated.)
In the foreground is the edge of a rift valley created by faulting in
the crust of
Venus.
The valley runs all the way to the base of
Gula Mons, a 2 mile high volcano seen here on the right,
some 450 miles in the distance.
On the left is another volcano, Sif Mons.
Using radar to pierce the dense clouds continuously shrouding
the Face of Venus, Magellan was
able to explore over 98% of the Venusian surface, revealing a a diverse and
tantalizing topography.
APOD: April 23, 1996 - Comet Hyakutake on a Starry Night
Explanation:
It was a starry night in April
(April 9th, 1996, 9:32 pm CDT to be exact)
near Lone Jack, Missouri when Comet Hyakutake graced
this astronomically rich field. Making an appearance as the
brilliant evening star, Venus
is overexposed at the far left.
Just below Venus and slightly to the right,
the Pleiades star cluster (M45) glistens.
On the right hand
side of the image, the comet itself shows
a bright blue tail extending
upwards past the nearby star cluster in
the constellation Perseus (top right, the Alpha Persei Group).
Hyakutake, receding from
the Earth and appoaching the Sun, will sink into the western horizon
at sunset in
late April,
disappearing from Northern Hemisphere skies.
APOD: April 18, 1996 - Hyakutake, Venus, Orion, and Pond
Explanation:
Can you find
Comet
Hyakutake in the above picture? In this gorgeous
photo, the starry
night sky of April 9th is pictured with its new comet visitor.
In the foreground is a pond
with the lights of Kansas City, Missouri on the western horizon.
On the upper left, the constellation of
Orion is visible.
At the center, the
brightest object in the picture is the
planet Venus. Venus's reflection
can be seen in the pond. On the right - halfway between Venus and the
photograph's edge - can be seen two bright objects fairly close to each
other. Of these two, look closely at lower right object. See the tail?
Comet Hyakutake is
still visible for Northern observers
in the Western sky and now has begun to
brighten again as it nears the Sun.
APOD: March 15, 1996 - The McMath-Pierce Solar Observatory
Explanation:
This odd-looking structure silhouetted in the foreground
houses the three largest solar telescopes in the
world. Located in
Kitt Peak,
Arizona, the largest telescope inside the
McMath-Pierce Facility
is 1.6-meters in diameter and contains only mirrors.
The telescope contains no windows or lenses because focusing bright
sunlight would overheat them. Visible in the background of this sunrise
photo are the Moon and
Venus. The telescopes are used in many research
projects including
determining the Sun's structure, researching the cause
of the solar corona,
monitoring
Sun-spots and
solar flares, and observing bright planets and
comets near the
Sun. The telescopes even help monitor the Earth's
atmospheric content of
ozone and
CFCs!
APOD: December 14, 1995 - An Atlas Centaur Rocket Launches
Explanation:
Atlas Centaur rockets have
launched over 75 successful unmanned missions.
These missions included the
Surveyor series - the first vehicles to make soft
landings on the
Moon,
Pioneer 10 and
11 - the first missions to fly by
Jupiter and
Saturn and the first man-made
objects able to leave our
Solar System, the
Viking missions which landed on
Mars, several satellites in the
High Energy Astrophysics
Observatory (HEAO)
series,
Pioneer Venus which circled and mapped the surface of
Venus, and
numerous
Intelsat
satellites. Of recent scientific interest was the
Atlas
launched
SOHO
mission which will continually observe the
Sun. Atlas rockets are
manufactured by
Lockheed Martin Co.
APOD: November 10, 1995 - Lightning and the Space Shuttle
Explanation:
There are many things about
lightning
that are not understood. Lightning has been seen in the atmospheres of
Venus,
Earth,
Jupiter, and
Saturn. A leading theory is that collisions of
particles in clouds cause large areas of positive and negative charge.
When large oppositely charged areas get close enough together, electrons
and/or ions race between them and create a path where more charged
particles can follow - lightning. On average, over 100 lightning strikes
occur every second over the surface of the
Earth. Here lightning strikes
near a Space Shuttle before
launch. Lightning can be
extremely dangerous -
stay out of open areas during thunderstorms.
APOD: September 28, 1995 - A Venusian Landscape
Explanation:
This computer generated view of a Venusian volcano was created using data
from NASA's Magellan spacecraft.
Magellan used its onboard radar to
map the surface of Venus which is hidden from telescopic observations
by a perpetual cloud cover. Using this radar data to provide three
dimensional information, a computer was then able to produce this
view of Maat Mons, a 5 mile high volcano, from a dramatic
perspective. The colors used to render the surface are based on earlier
color images transmitted by TV cameras on the
Soviet Venera 13 and 14 Venus landers.
APOD: September 27, 1995 - A Venus Landing
Explanation:
This image is part of the first color panoramic view from
Venus.
It was transmitted by a TV camera on the
Soviet Venera 13 lander
which parachuted to the
surface
on March 1, 1982. Venus' clouds
are composed of sulfuric acid droplets
while its surface temperature is about 900 degrees Fahrenheit
(482 degrees C) at an atmospheric
pressure of 92 times that of sea-level on Earth.
Despite these harsh conditions, the
Venera 13 lander survived
long enough to send back a series of images
and perform an analysis of the Venusian soil. Part of the lander itself
is visible in the lower right portion of the image.
An earlier Soviet Venus lander,
Venera 7 (1970), was the first spacecraft to return data
from the surface of another planet.
APOD: August 25, 1995 - A World Explorer
Explanation:
Ferdinand Magellan was a world explorer. Many consider him
the greatest navigator of Europe's 16th century age of sea going
exploration and credit his expedition with the first circumnavigation
of planet Earth.
NASA's Venus probe, the aptly named
Magellan spacecraft
shown above in
an artist's conception, provided a global view of the poorly known
surface of Venus - just as Magellan's expedition provided the
beginnings of a global perspective of the Earth.
APOD: August 24, 1995 - A Radar Image of Planet Earth
Explanation:
This image of
Mt. Rainier, Washington USA, planet Earth,
was produced by the
Spaceborne Radar Laboratory
which flew on the
Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1994.
Radar, short for RAdio Detection And Ranging, is a technique which
coordinates the operation of a radio transmitter and receiver to
measure the direction, strength, and timing of radio echos from the surface
of distant objects. An actual image of an object can be constructed by
recording and analyzing many echos.
One advantage of using radar imaging in planetary studies
is that images can be made regardless of cloud cover
or lighting conditions.
During the early 90s, NASA's
Magellan spacecraft
was able to use radar imaging to produce similar high resolution maps of
the surface of Venus.
APOD: August 23, 1995 - A Venusian Tick
Explanation:
Data from the
Magellan spacecraft
has shown the
Face of Venus
to contain a host of volcanic features. This image shows
an example of a fairly common type of
venusian volcanic feature.
Known as a "tick"
it represents a volcano about 20 miles wide at the
summit with ridges and valleys radiating down its sides lending it
an insect like appearance.
APOD: August 22, 1995 - Venus UnVeiled
Explanation:
The surface of Venus is perpetually
covered by a veil of thick clouds and remains hidden from even the powerful
telescopic eyes of earth-based astronomers. However, using an
imaging radar
technique, the
Magellan
spacecraft was able
to lift the veil from the
Face of Venus
and produce spectacular high resolution images
of the planet's surface. The bright area running across the middle
of this picture represents the largest highland region of Venus
known as
Aphrodite
Terra. The large highland regions are
analogous to continents on Earth. Scientists are particularly interested
in exploring the geology of Venus because of its similarity
to Earth. For more information about Venus and this image see the
Overview
of Venus.
APOD: August 19, 1995 - Our Solar System from Voyager
Explanation:
After taking its spectacular pictures of the outer solar system planets,
Voyager 1
looked back at six planets
from the inner solar system. Here
Venus,
Earth,
Jupiter,
Saturn,
Uranus, and
Neptune,
were all visible across the sky. Each, however, was now just a small speck
of light, dimmer than many of the stars in the sky. Voyager 1 is only one
of four human-made objects to leave our Solar System, the other three being
Voyager 2, and
Pioneer 10 and 11.
APOD: August 15, 1995 - Venus: Earth's Sister Planet
Explanation:
This picture in visible light was taken by the
Galileo spacecraft.
Venus is very similar to
Earth in size and mass - and so is sometimes referred to as
Earth's sister planet - but Venus has a quite different climate.
Venus'
thick clouds and closeness to the
Sun (only
Mercury is closer) make it the hottest planet - much hotter than
the Earth. Humans could not survive
there, and no life of any sort has ever been found. When
Venus is visible
it is usually the brightest object in the sky after the Sun and the Moon.
More than 20 spacecraft have visited Venus including
Venera 9, which landed on the surface, and
Magellan, which used radar to peer through the clouds
and make a map of the surface. There are still many things about Venus's
unusual atmosphere that astronomers don't understand.
APOD: August 14, 1995 - Mercury: Closest Planet to the Sun
Explanation:
This picture was compiled from images
taken by the NASA spacecraft Mariner 10 which flew by the
planet three times in 1974.
Mercury is the closest planet to the
Sun, the
second hottest planet (Venus
gets hotter), and the second smallest planet (Pluto is smaller).
Mercury rotates so slowly that one day there - "day" meaning the
normal time it takes from sunset to sunset - lasts 176 days on
Earth. It is
difficult to see
Mercury not because it is dim but because it always
appears near the Sun, and is therefore only visible for a short time just
after sunset or just before sunrise. Mercury is made of rocky material
like Earth. No one knows why Mercury has the magnetic field that it does.