**Astronomy Picture of the Day**
06 May 2025
**The Doubly Warped World of Binary Black Holes**
https://www.youtube.com/embed/rQcKIN9vj3U?rel=0
*Image creditor details unavailable via API. Visit linked page below for full info.*
If one black hole looks strange, what about two? Light rays from accretion disks around a pair of orbiting supermassive black holes make their way through the warped space-time produced by extreme gravity in this detailed computer visualization. The simulated accretion disks have been given different false color schemes, red for the disk surrounding a 200-million-solar-mass black hole, and blue for the disk surrounding a 100-million-solar-mass black hole. For these masses, though, both accretion disks would actually emit most of their light in the ultraviolet. The video allows us to see both sides of each black hole at the same time. Red and blue light originating from both black holes can be seen in the innermost ring of light, called the photon sphere, near their event horizons. In the past decade, gravitational waves from black hole collisions have actually been detected, although the coalescence of supermassive black holes remains undiscovered. Hole New Worlds: It's Black Hole Week at NASA!
#APOD #Astrophotography #Astrochemistry #Astrofans #Astroeducation
**Astronomy Picture of the Day**
05 May 2025
**Planet Lines Across Water**
Image Credit & Copyright:
Jose Antonio Hervas
What’s causing those lines? Objects in the sky sometimes appear reflected as lines across water — but why? If the water’s surface is smooth, then reflected objects would appear similarly -- as spots. But if the water is choppy, then there are many places where light from the object can reflect off the water and still come to you -- and so together form, typically, a line. The same effect is frequently seen for the Sun just before sunset and just after sunrise. Pictured about 10 days ago in Ibiza, Spain, images of the setting Moon, Venus (top), and Saturn (right, faint) were captured both directly and in line-reflected forms from the Mediterranean Sea. The other bright object on the right with a water-reflected line is a beacon on a rock to warn passing boats. Explore Your Universe: Random APOD Generator
#APOD #RocketScience #Astrodata #Astroeducation #Astrochemistry
**Astronomy Picture of the Day**
04 May 2025
**Astronomy Picture of the Day**
*Image creditor details unavailable via API. Visit linked page below for full info.*
How fast can a black hole spin? If any object made of regular matter spins too fast -- it breaks apart. But a black hole might not be able to break apart -- and its maximum spin rate is really unknown. Theorists usually model rapidly rotating black holes with the Kerr solution to Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which predicts several amazing and unusual things. Perhaps its most easily testable prediction, though, is that matter entering a maximally rotating black hole should be last seen orbiting at near the speed of light, as seen from far away. This prediction was tested by NASA's NuSTAR and ESA's XMM satellites by observing the supermassive black hole at the center of spiral galaxy NGC 1365. The near light-speed limit was confirmed by measuring the heating and spectral line broadening of nuclear emissions at the inner edge of the surrounding accretion disk. Pictured here is an artist's illustration depicting an accretion disk of normal matter swirling around a black hole, with a jet emanating from the top. Since matter randomly falling into the black hole should
#APOD #RocketScience #Universe #RocketLaunch #Astroinformatics
**Astronomy Picture of the Day**
03 May 2025
**Titan: Moon over Saturn**
*Image creditor details unavailable via API. Visit linked page below for full info.*
Like Earth's moon, Saturn's largest moon Titan is locked in synchronous rotation with its planet. This mosaic of images recorded by the Cassini spacecraft in May of 2012 shows its anti-Saturn side, the side always facing away from the ringed gas giant. The only moon in the solar system with a dense atmosphere, Titan is the only solar system world besides Earth known to have standing bodies of liquid on its surface and an earthlike cycle of liquid rain and evaporation. Its high altitude layer of atmospheric haze is evident in the Cassini view of the 5,000 kilometer diameter moon over Saturn's rings and cloud tops. Near center is the dark dune-filled region known as Shangri-La. The Cassini-delivered Huygens probe rests below and left of center, after the most distant landing for a spacecraft from Earth.
#APOD #AstronomyFacts #SpaceResearch #AstronomyLovers #SpaceTech
**Astronomy Picture of the Day**
02 May 2025
**Young Star Cluster NGC 346**
*Image creditor details unavailable via API. Visit linked page below for full info.*
The most massive young star cluster in the Small Magellanic Cloud is NGC 346, embedded in our small satellite galaxy's largest star forming region some 210,000 light-years distant. Of course the massive stars of NGC 346 are short lived, but very energetic. Their winds and radiation sculpt the edges of the region's dusty molecular cloud triggering star-formation within. The star forming region also appears to contain a large population of infant stars. A mere 3 to 5 million years old and not yet burning hydrogen in their cores, the infant stars are strewn about the embedded star cluster. This spectacular infrared view of NGC 346 is from the James Webb Space Telescope's NIRcam. Emission from atomic hydrogen ionized by the massive stars' energetic radiation as well as molecular hydrogen and dust in the star-forming molecular cloud is detailed in pink and orange hues. Webb's sharp image of the young star-forming region spans 240 light-years at the distance of the Small Magellanic Cloud.
#APOD #Astrotheory #Stargazing #AstronomyLovers #SpaceTravel
**Astronomy Picture of the Day**
01 May 2025
**MESSENGER's Last Day on Mercury**
*Image creditor details unavailable via API. Visit linked page below for full info.*
The first to orbit inner planet Mercury, the MESSENGER spacecraft came to rest on this region of Mercury's surface on April 30, 2015. Constructed from MESSENGER image and laser altimeter data, the projected scene looks north over the northeastern rim of the broad, lava filled Shakespeare basin. The large, 48 kilometer (30 mile) wide crater Janacek is near the upper left edge. Terrain height is color coded with red regions about 3 kilometers above blue ones. MESSENGER'S final orbit was predicted to end near the center, with the spacecraft impacting the surface at nearly 4 kilometers per second (over 8,700 miles per hour) and creating a new crater about 16 meters (52 feet) in diameter. The impact on the far side of Mercury was not observed by telescopes, but confirmed when no signal was detected from the spacecraft given time to emerge from behind the planet. Launched in 2004, the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemisty and Ranging spacecraft completed over 4,000 orbits after reaching the Solar System's innermost planet in 2011.
#APOD #SpaceFacts #AstronomyFacts #Exploration #SpaceTech
**Astronomy Picture of the Day**
30 April 2025
**A Happy Sky over Bufa Hill in Mexico**
Image Credit & Copyright:
Daniel Korona
Sometimes, the sky itself seems to smile. A few days ago, visible over much of the world, an unusual superposition of our Moon with the planets Venus and Saturn created just such an iconic facial expression. Specifically, a crescent Moon appeared to make a happy face on the night sky when paired with seemingly nearby planets. Pictured is the scene as it appeared over Zacatecas, México, with distinctive Bufa Hill in the foreground. On the far right and farthest in the distance is the planet Saturn. Significantly closer and visible to Saturn's upper left is Venus, the brightest planet on the sky. Just above the central horizon is Earth's Moon in a waning crescent phase. To create this gigantic icon, the crescent moon phase must be smiling in the correct direction. Dial-A-Moon: Find the Moon phase on your birthday this year
#APOD #AstronomyLovers #Astroengineering #Astrochemistry #SpaceTech
**Astronomy Picture of the Day**
29 April 2025
**Saturn's Rings Appear to Disappear**
Image Credit & Copyright:
Natan Fontes
Where are Saturn's ears? Galileo is credited, in 1610, as the first person to see Saturn's rings. Testing out Lipperhey's recently co-invented telescope, Galileo did not know what they were and so called them "ears". The mystery deepened in 1612, when Saturn's ears mysteriously disappeared. Today we know exactly what happened: from the perspective of the Earth, Saturn's rings had become too thin to see. The same drama plays out every 15 years because Saturn, like Earth, undergoes tilt-driven seasons. This means that as Saturn goes around the Sun, its equator and rings can tilt noticeably toward the Sun and inner Solar System, making them easily visible, but from other orbital locations will appear almost not at all. The featured picture from Brasilia, Brazil shows a modern version of this sequence: the top ring-dominated image was taken in 2020, while the bottom ring-obscure image taken earlier in 2025. Make Saturn's Rings Musical: Play them like a harp!
#APOD #Cosmological #MeteorShowers #SpaceAdventures #SpaceObservatory
**Astronomy Picture of the Day**
28 April 2025
**Gum 37 and the Southern Tadpoles**
Image Credit & Copyright:
Francis Bozon & Cecil Navick
(AstroA. R. O.)
This cosmic skyscape features glowing gas and dark dust clouds alongside the young stars of NGC 3572. A beautiful emission nebula and star cluster, it sails far southern skies within the nautical constellation Carina. Stars from NGC 3572 are toward top center in the telescopic frame that would measure about 100 light-years across at the cluster's estimated distance of 9,000 light-years. The visible interstellar gas and dust, shown in colors of the Hubble palette, is part of the star cluster's natal molecular cloud, itself cataloged as Gum 37. Dense streamers of material within the nebula, eroded by stellar winds and radiation, clearly trail away from the energetic young stars. They are likely sites of ongoing star formation with shapes reminiscent of the Tadpoles of IC 410 -- better known to northern skygazers. In the coming tens to hundreds of millions of years, gas and stars in the cluster will be dispersed though, by gravitational tides and by violent supernova explosions that end the short lives of the massive cluster stars.
#APOD #Astrobiology #CosmicWonders #SpaceMissions #Astrophysics
**Astronomy Picture of the Day**
27 April 2025
**IC 418: The Spirograph Nebula**
*Image creditor details unavailable via API. Visit linked page below for full info.*
What is creating the strange texture of IC 418? Dubbed the Spirograph Nebula for its resemblance to drawings from a cyclical drawing tool, planetary nebula IC 418 shows patterns that are not well understood. Perhaps they are related to chaotic winds from the variable central star, which changes brightness unpredictably in just a few hours. By contrast, evidence indicates that only a few million years ago, IC 418 was probably a well-understood star similar to our Sun. Only a few thousand years ago, IC 418 was probably a common red giant star. Since running out of nuclear fuel, though, the outer envelope has begun expanding outward leaving a hot remnant core destined to become a white-dwarf star, visible in the image center. The light from the central core excites surrounding atoms in the nebula causing them to glow. IC 418 lies about 2000 light-years away and spans 0.3 light-years across. This false-color image taken from the Hubble Space Telescope reveals the unusual details.
#APOD #SpaceDiscovery #AstronomyLovers #Astroknowledge #Cosmos
**Astronomy Picture of the Day**
26 April 2025
**Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 5335**
*Image creditor details unavailable via API. Visit linked page below for full info.*
This stunning portrait of NGC 5335 was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. Some 170,000 light-years across and over 200 million light-years away toward the constellation Virgo, the magnificent spiral galaxy is seen face-on in Hubble's view. Within the galactic disk, loose streamers of star forming regions lie along the galaxy's flocculent spiral arms. But the most striking feature of NGC 5335 is its prominent central bar. Seen in about 30 percent of galaxies, including our Milky Way, bar structures are understood to channel material inward toward the galactic center, fueling star formation. Of course, distant background galaxies are easy to spot, scattered around the sharp Hubble image. Launched in 1990, Hubble is now celebrating its 35th year exploring the cosmos from orbit around planet Earth.
#APOD #BlackHoles #Astrotheory #Astroinformatics #Astrophoto
**Astronomy Picture of the Day**
25 April 2025
**Asteroid Donaldjohanson**
*Image creditor details unavailable via API. Visit linked page below for full info.*
Main belt asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson is about 8 kilometers long and 3.5 kilometers across. On April 20, this sharp close-up of the asteroid was captured at a distance of about 1100 kilometers by the Lucy spacecraft's long range camera during its second asteroid encounter. Named after American paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson, discoverer of the Lucy hominid fossil, the elongated asteroid was likely formed about 150 million years ago from a gentle collision of two smaller bodies creating its characteristic contact binary shape. Launched in October of 2021, the Lucy spacecraft will continue its travels through the main asteroid belt in 2025, but is on its way to explore Jupiter's swarm of Trojan asteroids. Lucy is expected to encounter its first Trojan asteroid target, 3548 Eurybates, in August 2027.
#APOD #Astrophysics #Astrogeology #SpaceResearch #SpaceInnovation
**Astronomy Picture of the Day**
24 April 2025
**NGC 6164: A Dragon's Egg**
Image Credit & Copyright: Daniel Stern
Beautiful emission nebula NGC 6164 was created by a rare, hot, luminous O-type star, some 40 times as massive as the Sun. Seen at the center of the cosmic cloud, the star is a mere 3 to 4 million years old. In another three to four million years the massive star will end its life in a supernova explosion. Spanning around 4 light-years, the nebula itself has a bipolar symmetry. That makes it similar in appearance to more common and familiar planetary nebulae - the gaseous shrouds surrounding dying sun-like stars. Also like many planetary nebulae, NGC 6164 has been found to have an extensive, faint halo, revealed in this deep image of the region. Expanding into the surrounding interstellar medium, the material in the halo is likely from an earlier active phase of the O star. This gorgeous telescopic view is a composite of extensive narrow-band image data, highlighting glowing atomic hydrogen gas in red and oxygen in greenish hues, with broad-band data for the surrounding starfield. Also known as the Dragon's Egg nebula, NGC 6164 is 4,200 light-years away in the right-angled southern constellation of Norma.
#APOD #SpaceStation #Astrozone #SpaceDiscovery #Galactic
**Astronomy Picture of the Day**
23 April 2025
**An Almost Everything Sky**
Image Credit & Copyright:
Koen van Barneveld
This surprising sky has almost everything. First, slanting down from the upper left and far in the distance is the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy. More modestly, slanting down from the upper right and high in Earth's atmosphere is a bright meteor. The dim band of light across the central diagonal is zodiacal light: sunlight reflected from dust in the inner Solar System. The green glow on the far right is aurora high in Earth's atmosphere. The bright zigzagging bright line near the bottom is just a light that was held by the scene-planning astrophotographer. This "almost everything" sky was captured over rocks on Castle Hill, New Zealand late last month. The featured finished frame is a combination of 10 exposures all taken with the same camera and from the same location. But what about the astrophotographer himself? He's pictured too -- can you find him? Jigsaw Fun: Astronomy Puzzle of the Day
#APOD #LunarExploration #Science #Astroinformatics #MeteorShowers
**Astronomy Picture of the Day**
22 April 2025
**Terminator Moon: A Moonscape of Shadows**
Image Credit & Copyright:
Rich Addis
What's different about this Moon? It's the terminators. In the featured image, you can't directly see any terminator -- the line that divides the light of day from the dark of night. That's because the featured image is a digital composite of many near-terminator lunar strips over a full Moon. Terminator regions show the longest and most prominent shadows -- shadows which, by their contrast and length, allow a flat photograph to appear three-dimensional. The overlay images were taken over two weeks in early April. Many of the Moon's craters stand out because of the shadows they all cast to the right. The image shows in graphic detail that the darker regions known as maria are not just darker than the rest of the Moon -- they are also flatter. Dial-A-Moon: Find the Moon phase on your birthday this year
#APOD #Science #SpaceResearch #Astrophoto #SpaceTravel
**Astronomy Picture of the Day**
21 April 2025
**Galaxy Lenses Galaxy from Webb**
*Image creditor details unavailable via API. Visit linked page below for full info.*
Is this one galaxy or two? Although it looks like one, the answer is two. One path to this happening is when a small galaxy collides with a larger galaxy and ends up in the center. But in the featured image, something more rare is going on. Here, the central light-colored elliptical galaxy is much closer than the blue and red-colored spiral galaxy that surrounds it. This can happen when near and far galaxies are exactly aligned, causing the gravity of the near galaxy to pull the light from the far galaxy around it in an effect called gravitational lensing. The featured galaxy double was taken by the Webb Space Telescope and shows a complete Einstein ring, with great detail visible for both galaxies. Galaxy lenses like this can reveal new information about the mass distribution of the foreground lens and the light distribution of the background source.
#APOD #Astrotheory #AstronomyLovers #Astroknowledge #RocketScience
**Astronomy Picture of the Day**
20 April 2025
**The Orion Nebula in Visible and Infrared**
Image Credit & Copyright:
Infrared: NASA,
Spitzer Space Telescope;
Visible:
Oliver Czernetz,
Siding Spring Obs.
The Great Nebula in Orion is a colorful place. Visible to the unaided eye, it appears as a small fuzzy patch in the constellation of Orion. Long exposure, multi-wavelength images like this, however, show the Orion Nebula to be a busy neighborhood of young stars, hot gas, and dark dust. This digital composite features not only three colors of visible light but four colors of infrared light taken by NASA's orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope as well. The power behind much of the Orion Nebula (M42) is the Trapezium - four of the brightest stars in the nebula. Many of the filamentary structures visible are actually shock waves - fronts where fast moving material encounters slow moving gas. The Orion Nebula spans about 40 light years and is located about 1500 light years away in the same spiral arm of our Galaxy as the Sun.
#APOD #Astroengineer #SpaceStation #OuterSpace #Meteorology
**Astronomy Picture of the Day**
19 April 2025
**Painting with Jupiter**
*Image creditor details unavailable via API. Visit linked page below for full info.*
In digital brush strokes, Jupiter's signature atmospheric bands and vortices were used to form this interplanetary post-impressionist work of art. The creative image from citizen scientist Rick Lundh uses data from the Juno spacecraft's JunoCam. To paint on the digital canvas, a JunoCam image with contrasting light and dark tones was chosen for processing and an oil-painting software filter applied. The image data was captured during perijove 10. That was Juno's December 16, 2017 close encounter with the solar system's ruling gas giant. At the time the spacecraft was cruising about 13,000 kilometers above northern Jovian cloud tops. Now in an extended mission, Juno has explored Jupiter and its moons since entering orbit around Jupiter in July of 2016.
#APOD #SpaceMission #SpaceTechnology #Astroinformatics #Astrodata
**Astronomy Picture of the Day**
18 April 2025
**Comet C/2025 F2 SWAN**
Image Credit & Copyright: Dan Bartlett
In late March, the comet now designated C/2025 F2 SWAN was found independently by citizen scientists Vladimir Bezugly, Michael Mattiazzo, and Rob Matson while examining publicly available image data from the Solar Wind ANisotropies (SWAN) camera on the sun-staring SOHO spacecraft. Comet SWAN's coma, its greenish color a signature of diatomic carbon molecules fluorescing in sunlight, is at lower left in this telescopic image. SWAN's faint ion tail extends nearly two degrees toward the upper right across the field of view. The interplanetary scene was captured in clear but moonlit skies from June Lake, California on April 14. Seen against background of stars toward the constellation Andromeda, the comet was then some 10 light-minutes from our fair planet. Now a target for binoculars and small telescopes in northern hemisphere morning skies this comet SWAN is headed for a perihelion, its closest approach to the Sun, on May 1. That will bring this visitor from the distant Oort cloud almost as close to the Sun as the orbit of inner planet Mercury.
#APOD #RocketScience #SpaceTechnology #SpaceObservatory #AstronomyClub
**Astronomy Picture of the Day**
17 April 2025
**Virgo Cluster Galaxies**
Image Credit & Copyright: Daniel Adibi
Galaxies of the Virgo Cluster are scattered across this nearly 4 degree wide telescopic field of view. About 50 million light-years distant, the Virgo Cluster is the closest large galaxy cluster to our own local galaxy group. Prominent here are Virgo's bright elliptical galaxies from the Messier catalog, M87 at bottom left, and M86 and M84 near center right. M86 and M84 are recognized as part of Markarian's Chain, the visually striking line-up of galaxies on the that runs through the upper portion of this frame. Near the middle of the chain lies an intriguing interacting pair of galaxies, NGC 4438 and NGC 4435, known to some as Markarian's Eyes. Still, giant elliptical galaxy M87 dominates the Virgo cluster. It's the home of a super massive black hole, the first black hole ever imaged by planet Earth's Event Horizon Telescope.
#APOD #Astrophysics #Astrogeology #Astrobiology #Research