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Новости, фотографии, статьи о космосе. #Книги #Статьи #Новости Научные журналы: @scientificmagazine
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Pluto in True Color
2024-01-28
What color is Pluto, really? It took some effort to figure out. Even given all of the images sent back to Earth when the robotic New Horizons spacecraft sped past Pluto in 2015, processing these multi-spectral frames to approximate what the human eye would see was challenging. The result featured here, released three years after the raw data was acquired by New Horizons, is the highest resolution true color image of Pluto ever taken. Visible in the image is the light-colored, heart-shaped, Tombaugh Regio, with the unexpectedly smooth Sputnik Planitia, made of frozen nitrogen, filling its western lobe. New Horizons found the dwarf planet to have a surprisingly complex surface composed of many regions having perceptibly different hues. In total, though, Pluto is mostly brown, with much of its muted color originating from small amounts of surface methane energized by ultraviolet light from the Sun.
Halloween and the Wizard Nebula
2023-10-31
Halloween's origin is ancient and astronomical. Since the fifth century BC, Halloween has been celebrated as a cross-quarter day, a day halfway between an equinox (equal day / equal night) and a solstice (minimum day / maximum night in the northern hemisphere). With a modern calendar however, even though Halloween occurs today, the real cross-quarter day will occur next week. Another cross-quarter day is Groundhog Day. Halloween's modern celebration retains historic roots in dressing to scare away the spirits of the dead. Perhaps a fitting tribute to this ancient holiday is this closeup view of the Wizard Nebula (NGC 7380). Visually, the interplay of stars, gas, and dust has created a shape that appears to some like a fictional ancient sorcerer. Although the nebula may last only a few million years, some of the stars being conjured from the gas by the great gravitational powers may outlive our Sun.
Copyright:
Richard McInnis
Dust and the Western Veil Nebula
2023-10-18
It's so big it is easy to miss. The entire Veil Nebula spans six times the diameter of the full moon, but is so dim you need binoculars to see it. The nebula was created about 15,000 years ago when a star in the constellation of the Swan (Cygnus) exploded. The spectacular explosion would have appeared brighter than even Venus for a week - but there is no known record of it. Pictured is the western edge of the still-expanding gas cloud. Notable gas filaments include the Witch's Broom Nebula on the upper left near the bright foreground star 52 Cygni, and Fleming's Triangular Wisp (formerly known as Pickering's Triangle) running diagonally up the image middle. What is rarely imaged -- but seen in the featured long exposure across many color bands -- is the reflecting brown dust that runs vertically up the image left, dust likely created in the cool atmospheres of massive stars.
Copyright:
Jiang Wu
The Deep Lagoon
2023-09-28
Ridges of glowing interstellar gas and dark dust clouds inhabit the turbulent, cosmic depths of the Lagoon Nebula. Also known as M8, The bright star forming region is about 5,000 light-years distant. It makes for a popular stop on telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius toward the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Dominated by the telltale red emission of ionized hydrogen atoms recombining with stripped electrons, this deep telescopic view of the Lagoon's central reaches is about 40 light-years across. The bright hourglass shape near the center of the frame is gas ionized and sculpted by energetic radiation and extreme stellar winds from a massive young star.
Copyright: Josep Drudis
A Season of Saturn
2023-08-25
Ringed planet Saturn will be at its 2023 opposition, opposite the Sun in Earth's skies, on August 27. While that puts the sixth planet from the Sun at its brightest and well-placed for viewing, its beautiful ring system isn't visible to the unaided eye. Still, this sequence of telescopic images taken a year apart over the last six years follows both Saturn and rings as seen from inner planet Earth. The gas giant's ring plane tilts from most open in 2018 to approaching edge-on in 2023 (top to bottom). That's summer to nearly the autumn equinox for Saturn's northern hemisphere. In the sharp planetary portraits, Saturn's northern hexagon and a large storm system are clearly visible in 2018. In 2023, ice moon Tethys is transiting, casting its shadow across southern hemisphere cloud bands, while Saturn's cold blue south pole is emerging from almost a decade of winter darkness.
Copyright: Andy Casely
A Cosmic Zoo in Cepheus
2023-08-17
Sprawling emission nebulae IC 1396 and Sh2-129 mix glowing interstellar gas and dark dust clouds in this nearly 12 degree wide field of view toward the northern constellation Cepheus the King. Energized by its central star IC 1396 (left), is hundreds of light-years across and some 3,000 light-years distant. The nebula's intriguing dark shapes include a winding dark cloud popularly known as the Elephant's Trunk below and right of center. Tens of light-years long, it holds the raw material for star formation and is known to hide protostars within. Located a similar distance from planet Earth, the bright knots and swept back ridges of emission of Sh2-129 on the right suggest its popular name, the Flying Bat Nebula. Within the Flying Bat, the most recently recognized addition to this royal cosmic zoo is the faint bluish emission from Ou4, the Giant Squid Nebula. Near the lower right edge of the frame, the suggestive dark marking on the sky cataloged as Barnard 150 is also known as the dark Seahorse Nebula. Notable submissions to APOD: Perseids Meteor Shower 2023
Copyright: Yann Sainty
Young Stars, Stellar Jets
2023-07-28
High-speed outflows of molecular gas from a pair of actively forming young stars shine in infrared light, revealing themselves in this NIRcam image from the James Webb Space Telescope. Cataloged as HH (Herbig-Haro) 46/47, the young stars are lodged within a dark nebula that is largely opaque when viewed in visible light. The pair lie at the center of the prominent reddish diffraction spikes in the NIRcam image. Their energetic stellar jets extend for nearly a light-year, burrowing into the dark interstellar material. A tantalizing object to explore with Webb's infrared capabilities, this young star system is relatively nearby, located only some 1,140 light-years distant in the nautical constellation Vela.
WR 134 Ring Nebula
2023-05-18
Made with narrowband filters, this cosmic snapshot covers a field of view about the size of the full Moon within the boundaries of the constellation Cygnus. It highlights the bright edge of a ring-like nebula traced by the glow of ionized sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen gas. Embedded in the region's interstellar clouds of gas and dust, the complex, glowing arcs are sections of bubbles or shells of material swept up by the wind from Wolf-Rayet star WR 134, brightest star near the center of the frame. Distance estimates put WR 134 about 6,000 light-years away, making the frame over 50 light-years across. Shedding their outer envelopes in powerful stellar winds, massive Wolf-Rayet stars have burned through their nuclear fuel at a prodigious rate and end this final phase of massive star evolution in a spectacular supernova explosion. The stellar winds and final supernovae enrich the interstellar material with heavy elements to be incorporated in future generations of stars.
Copyright: Craig Stocks
M16: Eagle Nebula Deep Field
2023-05-15
From afar, the whole thing looks like an eagle. A closer look at the Eagle Nebula, however, shows the bright region is actually a window into the center of a larger dark shell of dust. Through this window, a brightly-lit workshop appears where a whole open cluster of stars is being formed. In this cavity, tall pillars and round globules of dark dust and cold molecular gas remain where stars are still forming. Already visible are several young bright blue stars whose light and winds are burning away and pushing back the remaining filaments and walls of gas and dust. The Eagle emission nebula, tagged M16, lies about 6500 light years away, spans about 20 light-years, and is visible with binoculars toward the constellation of the Serpent (Serpens). This picture involved long and deep exposures and combined three specific emitted colors emitted by sulfur (colored as yellow), hydrogen (red), and oxygen (blue).
Copyright: Gianni Lacroce
The Spanish Dancer Spiral Galaxy
2023-05-08
If not perfect, then this spiral galaxy is at least one of the most photogenic. An island universe containing billions of stars and situated about 40 million light-years away toward the constellation of the Dolphinfish (Dorado), NGC 1566 presents a gorgeous face-on view. Classified as a grand design spiral, NGC 1566 shows two prominent and graceful spiral arms that are traced by bright blue star clusters and dark cosmic dust lanes. Numerous Hubble Space Telescope images of NGC 1566 have been taken to study star formation, supernovas, and the spiral's unusually active center. Some of these images, stored online in the Hubble Legacy Archive, were freely downloaded, combined, and digitally processed by an industrious amateur to create the featured image. NGC 1566's flaring center makes the spiral one of the closest and brightest Seyfert galaxies, likely housing a central supermassive black hole wreaking havoc on surrounding stars and gas. Almost Hyperspace: Random APOD Generator
Centaurus A: A Peculiar Island of Stars
2023-05-03
Galaxies are fascinating. In galaxies, gravity alone holds together massive collections of stars, dust, interstellar gas, stellar remnants and dark matter. Pictured is NGC 5128, better known as Centaurus A. Cen A is the fifth brightest galaxy on the sky and is located at a distance of about 12 million light years from Earth. The warped shape of Cen A is the result of a merger between an elliptical and a spiral galaxy. Its active galactic nucleus harbors a supermassive black hole that is about 55 million times more massive than our Sun. This central black hole ejects a fast jet visible in both radio and X-ray light. Filaments of the jet are visible in red in the upper left. New observations by the Event Horizon Telescope have revealed a brightening of the jet only towards its edges -- but for reasons that are currently unknown and an active topic of research. At NASA it's: Black Hole Week
Copyright: Marco LorenziNatalia LewandowskaSUNY Oswego
Carina Nebula North
2023-05-01
The Great Carina Nebula is home to strange stars and iconic nebulas. Named for its home constellation, the huge star-forming region is larger and brighter than the Great Orion Nebula but less well known because it is so far south -- and because so much of humanity lives so far north. The featured image shows in great detail the northernmost part of the Carina Nebula. On the bottom left is the Gabriela Mistral Nebula consisting of an emission nebula of glowing gas (IC 2599) surrounding the small open cluster of stars (NGC 3324). Above the image center is the larger star cluster NGC 3293, while to its right is the emission nebula Loden 153. The most famous occupant of the Carina Nebula, however, is not shown. Off the image to the lower right is the bright, erratic, and doomed star known as Eta Carinae -- a star once one of the brightest stars in the sky and now predicted to explode in a supernova sometime in the next few million years.
Copyright: Carlos Taylor
Solar Eclipse from a Ship
2023-04-29
Along a narrow path that mostly avoided landfall, the shadow of the New Moon raced across planet Earth's southern hemisphere on April 20 to create a rare annular-total or hybrid solar eclipse. From the Indian Ocean off the coast of western Australia, ship-borne eclipse chasers were able to witness 62 seconds of totality though while anchored near the centerline of the total eclipse track. This ship-borne image of the eclipse captures the active Sun's magnificent outer atmosphere or solar corona streaming into space. A composite of 11 exposures ranging from 1/2000 to 1/2 second, it records an extended range of brightness to follow details of the corona not quite visible to the eye during the total eclipse phase. Of course eclipses tend to come in pairs. On May 5, the next Full Moon will just miss the dark inner part of Earth's shadow in a penumbral lunar eclipse. Total Solar Eclipse of 2023 April Gallery: Notable Submissions to APOD
The Tarantula Nebula from SuperBIT
2023-04-27
The Tarantula Nebula, also known as 30 Doradus, is more than a thousand light-years in diameter, a giant star forming region within nearby satellite galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud. About 160 thousand light-years away, it's the largest, most violent star forming region known in the whole Local Group of galaxies. The cosmic arachnid is near the center of this spectacular image taken during the flight of SuperBIT (Super Pressure Balloon Imaging Telescope), NASA's balloon-borne 0.5 meter telescope now floating near the edge of space. Within the well-studied Tarantula (NGC 2070), intense radiation, stellar winds and supernova shocks from the central young cluster of massive stars, cataloged as R136, energize the nebular glow and shape the spidery filaments. Around the Tarantula are other star forming regions with young star clusters, filaments, and blown-out bubble-shaped clouds. SuperBIT's wide field of view spans over 2 degrees or 4 full moons in the southern constellation Dorado.
The Great Carina Nebula
2024-04-19
A jewel of the southern sky, the Great Carina Nebula is more modestly known as NGC 3372. One of our Galaxy's largest star forming regions, it spans over 300 light-years. Like the smaller, more northerly Great Orion Nebula, the Carina Nebula is easily visible to the unaided eye. But at a distance of 7,500 light-years it lies some 5 times farther away. This stunning telescopic view reveals remarkable details of the region's glowing filaments of interstellar gas and obscuring cosmic dust clouds. The Carina Nebula is home to young, extremely massive stars, including the still enigmatic variable Eta Carinae, a star with well over 100 times the mass of the Sun. Eta Carinae is the bright star above the central dark notch in this field and left of the dusty Keyhole Nebula (NGC 3324).
Copyright: Demison Lopes
Along the Taurus Molecular Cloud
2023-11-23
The cosmic brush of star formation composed this interstellar canvas of emission, dust, and dark nebulae. A 5 degree wide telescopic mosaic, it frames a region found north of bright star Aldebaran on the sky, at an inner wall of the local bubble along the Taurus molecular cloud. At lower left, emission cataloged as Sh2-239 shows signs of embedded young stellar objects. The region's Herbig-Haro objects, nebulosities associated with newly born stars, are marked by tell-tale reddish jets of shocked hydrogen gas. Above and right T Tauri, the prototype of the class of T Tauri variable stars, is next to a yellowish nebula historically known as Hind's Variable Nebula (NGC 1555). T Tauri stars are now generally recognized as young, less than a few million years old, sun-like stars still in the early stages of formation.
Copyright: Yuexiao Shen
Encke and the Tadpoles
2023-10-27
History's second known periodic comet is Comet Encke (2P/Encke). As it swings through the inner Solar System, Encke's orbit takes it from an aphelion, its greatest distance from the Sun, inside the orbit of Jupiter to a perihelion just inside the orbit of Mercury. Returning to its perihelion every 3.3 years, Encke has the shortest period of the Solar System's major comets. Comet Encke is also associated with (at least) two annual meteor showers on planet Earth, the North and South Taurids. Both showers are active in late October and early November. Their two separate radiants lie near bright star Aldebaran in the head-strong constellation Taurus. A faint comet, Encke was captured in this telescopic field of view imaged on the morning of August 24. Then, Encke's pretty greenish coma was close on the sky to the young, embedded star cluster and light-years long, tadpole-shaped star-forming clouds in emission nebula IC 410. Now near bright star Spica in Virgo Comet Encke passed its 2023 perihelion only five days ago, on October 22.
Copyright: Dan Bartlett
Mu Cephei
2023-10-12
Mu Cephei is a very large star. An M-class supergiant some 1500 times the size of the Sun, it is one of the largest stars visible to the unaided eye, and even one of the largest in the entire Galaxy. If it replaced the Sun in our fair Solar System, Mu Cephei would easily engulf Mars and Jupiter. Historically known as Herschel's Garnet Star, Mu Cephei is extremely red. Approximately 2800 light-years distant, the supergiant is seen near the edge of reddish emission nebula IC 1396 toward the royal northern constellation Cepheus in this telescopic view. Much cooler and hence redder than the Sun, this supergiant's light is further reddened by absorption and scattering due to intervening dust within the Milky Way. A well-studied variable star understood to be in a late phase of stellar evolution, Mu Cephei is a massive star too, destined to ultimately explode as a core-collapse supernova. APOD editor to speak: in Houghton, Michigan tonight, Thursday, October 12, at 6 pm
Copyright: David Cruz
Star Formation in the Pacman Nebula
2023-08-28
Look through the cosmic cloud cataloged as NGC 281 and you might miss the stars of open cluster IC 1590. Formed within the nebula, that cluster's young, massive stars ultimately power the pervasive nebular glow. The eye-catching shapes looming in the featured portrait of NGC 281 are sculpted dusty columns and dense Bok globules seen in silhouette, eroded by intense, energetic winds and radiation from the hot cluster stars. If they survive long enough, the dusty structures could also be sites of future star formation. Playfully called the Pacman Nebula because of its overall shape, NGC 281 is about 10,000 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. This sharp composite image was made through narrow-band filters. It combines emission from the nebula's hydrogen and oxygen atoms to synthesize red, green, and blue colors. The scene spans well over 80 light-years at the estimated distance of NGC 281.
Copyright:
Craig Stocks
Meteors along the Milky Way
2023-08-24
Under dark and mostly moonless night skies, many denizens of planet Earth were able to watch this year's Perseid meteor shower. Seen from a grassy hillside from Shiraz, Iran these Perseid meteors streak along the northern summer Milky Way before dawn on Sunday, August 13. Frames used to construct the composited image were captured near the active annual meteor shower's peak between 02:00 AM and 04:30 AM local time. Not in this night skyscape, the shower's radiant in the heroic constellation Perseus is far above the camera's field of view. But fans of northern summer nights can still spot a familiar asterism. Formed by bright stars Deneb, Vega, and Altair, the Summer Triangle spans the luminous band of the Milky Way.
Copyright: Under dark
Phobos over Mars
2023-07-31
Why is Phobos so dark? Phobos, the largest and innermost of the two Martian moons, is the darkest moon in the entire Solar System. Its unusual orbit and color indicate that it may be a captured asteroid composed of a mixture of ice and dark rock. The featured assigned-color picture of Phobos near the edge of Mars was captured in late 2021 by ESA's robot spacecraft Mars Express, currently orbiting Mars. Phobos is a heavily cratered and barren moon, with its largest crater located on the far side. From images like this, Phobos has been determined to be covered by perhaps a meter of loose dust. Phobos orbits so close to Mars that from some places it would appear to rise and set twice a day, while from other places it would not be visible at all. Phobos' orbit around Mars is continually decaying -- it will likely break up with pieces crashing to the Martian surface in about 50 million years. Your Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday? (post 1995)
Galaxies in the River
2023-07-27
Large galaxies grow by eating small ones. Even our own galaxy engages in a sort of galactic cannibalism, absorbing small galaxies that are too close and are captured by the Milky Way's gravity. In fact, the practice is common in the universe and illustrated by this striking pair of interacting galaxies from the banks of the southern constellation Eridanus, The River. Located over 50 million light years away, the large, distorted spiral NGC 1532 is seen locked in a gravitational struggle with dwarf galaxy NGC 1531, a struggle the smaller galaxy will eventually lose. Seen nearly edge-on, spiral NGC 1532 spans about 100,000 light-years. The merging galaxies are captured in this sharp image from the Dark Energy Camera mounted on the National Science Foundation’s Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The NGC 1532/1531 pair is thought to be similar to the well-studied system of face-on spiral and small companion known as M51.
Sunspot with Light Bridge
2023-05-17
Why would a small part of the Sun appear slightly dark? Visible is a close-up picture of sunspots, depressions on the Sun's surface that are slightly cooler and less bright than the rest of the Sun. The Sun's complex magnetic field creates these cool regions by inhibiting hot material from entering the spots. Sunspots can be larger than the Earth and typically last for about a week. Part of active region AR 3297 crossing the Sun in early May, the large lower sunspot is spanned by an impressive light bridge of hot and suspended solar gas. This high-resolution picture also shows clearly that the Sun's surface is a bubbling carpet of separate cells of hot gas. These cells are known as granules. A solar granule is about 1000 kilometers across and lasts for only about 15 minutes. Your Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday? (post 1995)
Copyright: Mark Johnston
To Fly Free in Space
2023-05-14
What would it be like to fly free in space? At about 100 meters from the cargo bay of the space shuttle Challenger, Bruce McCandless II was living the dream -- floating farther out than anyone had ever been before. Guided by a Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), astronaut McCandless, pictured, was floating free in space. During Space Shuttle mission 41-B in 1984, McCandless and fellow NASA astronaut Robert Stewart were the first to experience such an "untethered space walk". The MMU worked by shooting jets of nitrogen and was used to help deploy and retrieve satellites. With a mass over 140 kilograms, an MMU is heavy on Earth, but, like everything, is weightless when drifting in orbit. The MMU was later replaced with the SAFER backpack propulsion unit.
Astronomy Picture of the Day
2023-05-07
Will our Sun look like this one day? The Helix Nebula is one of brightest and closest examples of a planetary nebula, a gas cloud created at the end of the life of a Sun-like star. The outer gasses of the star expelled into space appear from our vantage point as if we are looking down a helix. The remnant central stellar core, destined to become a white dwarf star, glows in light so energetic it causes the previously expelled gas to fluoresce. The Helix Nebula, given a technical designation of NGC 7293, lies about 700 light-years away towards the constellation of the Water Bearer (Aquarius) and spans about 2.5 light-years. The featured picture was taken with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) located atop a dormant volcano in Hawaii, USA. A
Flat Rock Hills on Mars
2023-05-02
Why are there so many flat rocks on Mars? Some views of plains and hills on Mars show many rocks that are unusually flat when compared to rocks on Earth. One reason for this is a process that is common to both Mars and Earth: erosion. The carbon-dioxide wind on Mars can act like sandpaper when it blows around gritty Martian sand. This sand can create differential erosion, smoothing over some rocks, while wearing down the tops of other long-exposed stones. The featured image capturing several hills covered with flat-topped rocks was taken last month by NASA's Curiosity Rover on Mars. This robotic rover has now been rolling across Mars for ten years and has helped uncover many details of the wet and windy past of Earth's planetary neighbor. After taking this and other images, Curiosity carefully navigated stones and slippery sand to climb up Marker Band Valley.
Copyright: NASAJPL-CaltechMSSSNeville Thompson
Saturn's Moon Helene in Color
2023-04-30
Although its colors may be subtle, Saturn's moon Helene is an enigma in any light. The moon was imaged in unprecedented detail in 2012 as the robotic Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn swooped to within a single Earth diameter of the diminutive moon. Although conventional craters and hills appear, the above image also shows terrain that appears unusually smooth and streaked. Planetary astronomers are inspecting these detailed images of Helene to glean clues about the origin and evolution of the 30-km across floating iceberg. Helene is also unusual because it circles Saturn just ahead of the large moon Dione, making it one of only four known Saturnian moons to occupy a gravitational well known as a stable Lagrange point.
Runaway Star Alpha Camelopardalis
2023-04-28
Like a ship plowing through cosmic seas, runaway star Alpha Camelopardalis has produced this graceful arcing bow wave or bow shock. The massive supergiant star moves at over 60 kilometers per second through space, compressing the interstellar material in its path. At the center of this nearly 6 degree wide view, Alpha Cam is about 25-30 times as massive as the Sun, 5 times hotter (30,000 kelvins), and over 500,000 times brighter. About 4,000 light-years away in the long-necked constellation Camelopardalis, the star also produces a strong stellar wind. Alpha Cam's bow shock stands off about 10 light-years from the star itself. What set this star in motion? Astronomers have long thought that Alpha Cam was flung out of a nearby cluster of young hot stars due to gravitational interactions with other cluster members or perhaps by the supernova explosion of a massive companion star.
The Medulla Nebula Supernova Remnant
2023-04-24
What powers this unusual nebula? CTB-1 is the expanding gas shell that was left when a massive star toward the constellation of Cassiopeia exploded about 10,000 years ago. The star likely detonated when it ran out of elements near its core that could create stabilizing pressure with nuclear fusion. The resulting supernova remnant, nicknamed the Medulla Nebula for its brain-like shape, still glows in visible light by the heat generated by its collision with confining interstellar gas. Why the nebula also glows in X-ray light, though, remains a mystery. One hypothesis holds that an energetic pulsar was co-created that powers the nebula with a fast outwardly moving wind. Following this lead, a pulsar has recently been found in radio waves that appears to have been expelled by the supernova explosion at over 1000 kilometers per second. Although the Medulla Nebula appears as large as a full moon, it is so faint that it took many hours of exposure with a telescope in Seven Persons, Alberta, Canada to create the featured image.
Copyright: Kimberly Sibbald
