THE ECLIPSE OF VENUS Image Credit: NASA/SDO & the AIA, EVE, and HMI teams Digital Composition by: PETER L. DOVE Selected as NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day on August 20, 2013, is this fascinating digital composition by Peter L. Dove. APOD explains: Usually it is the Earth’s Moon that eclipses the…
A ROSE MADE OF GALAXIES Photograph by NASA/ESA/STScI/AURA In celebration of the 21st anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope’s deployment into space, astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., pointed Hubble’s eye to an especially photogenic group of interacting galaxies called Arp 273. The larger of the spiral galaxies,…
EARTH FROM THE DARK SIDE OF SATURN Photograph by NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute In this rare image taken on July 19, 2013, the wide-angle camera on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has captured Saturn’s rings and our planet Earth and its moon in the same frame. The dark side of Saturn, its bright limb, the…
A volcano is an opening, or rupture, in a planet’s surface or crust, which allows hot magma, volcanic ash and gases to escape from the magma chamber below the surface. They are generally found where tectonic plates are diverging or converging. A mid-oceanic ridge, for example the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, has examples of volcanoes caused…
Flooding in Thailand – Before & After Photograph by NASA Earth Observatory In this true-colour satellite image, we see flooding in Ayutthaya and Pathum Thani Provinces in Central Thailand (right), compared to before the flooding (left). The Chao Phraya River forms at the confluence of smaller rivers in central Thailand, and flows…
PLANET MERCURY Photograph by NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington This colorful view of Mercury was produced by using images from the color base map imaging campaign during MESSENGER’s primary mission. These colors are not what Mercury would look like to the human eye, but rather the colors enhance…
On June 23, 2013 at 11:32 UTC the full moon was not only the closest and largest full moon of the year, it will also be the moon’s closest encounter with Earth for all of 2013. It will not be this close again until August 10, 2014. Astronomers call this sort of close full…
AUSTRALIAN SUNSET FROM SPACE Photograph by NASA The sun is about to set in this scene showing parts of southwestern Australia, which was photographed by one of the Expedition 35 crew members aboard the International Space Station on April 1, 2013. Several of the orbital outpost’s solar array panels are seen in…
The Cupola is an ESA-built observatory module of the International Space Station (ISS). Its seven windows are used to conduct experiments, dockings and observations of Earth. It was launched aboard Space Shuttle mission STS-130 on 8 February 2010 and attached to the Tranquility (Node 3) module. The Cupola’s 80 cm (31 in) window is…
CAT’S EYE NEBULA Photograph by ESA, NASA, HEIC and The Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA) From spacetelescope.org: In this detailed view from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the so-called Cat’s Eye Nebula looks like the penetrating eye of the disembodied sorcerer Sauron from the film adaptation of “Lord of the Rings.” The…