#APOD

[spacewonder19]

Saturn at Night ©

[silvereyedowl]

[source]

Asperatus Clouds Over New Zealand

Credits: Witta Priester

[thefirststarr]

What's that black spot on Jupiter? No one is really sure. During a pass of NASA's Juno over Jupiter, the robotic spacecraft imaged a usually dark cloud feature, nicknamed the Abyss. Surrounding cloud patterns show the Abyss to be at the center of a vortex. Since dark features on Jupiter's atmosphere tend to run deeper than lighter features, the Abyss may really be the deep hole that it appears -- but without more evidence that remains unclear. The Abyss is surrounded by a complex of clouds and other swirling storm systems, some of which are topped by light colored, high-altitude clouds. The featured image was captured in 2019 while Juno passed only about 15,000 kilometers above Jupiter's cloud tops. The next close pass of Juno near Jupiter will be in about three weeks.

Image Credit & Copyright: NASA, Juno, SwRI, MSSS; Processing & License: Gerald Eichstädt & Sean Doran

[without-ado]

Storm cloud over Texas l Laura Rowe NASA APOD

[lisamarieblair]

The Seagull Nebula

[silvereyedowl]

[source]

2024 March 27

A picture filled with fuzzy yellow spots is presented. All of the yellow spots are galaxies, and most of the galaxies are members of the Coma Cluster of Galaxies. The two bright blue dots are foreground stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy.

The Coma Cluster of Galaxies

Image Credit & Copyright: Joe Hua

Explanation: Almost every object in the featured photograph is a galaxy. The Coma Cluster of Galaxies pictured here is one of the densest clusters known - it contains thousands of galaxies. Each of these galaxies houses billions of stars - just as our own Milky Way Galaxy does. Although nearby when compared to most other clusters, light from the Coma Cluster still takes hundreds of millions of years to reach us. In fact, the Coma Cluster is so big it takes light millions of years just to go from one side to the other. Most galaxies in Coma and other clusters are ellipticals, while most galaxies outside of clusters are spirals. The nature of Coma's X-ray emission is still being investigated.

[aeontriad]

The Dark Tower in Scorpius

[vibrantestvixen]

From NASA (Astronomy Picture of the Day - March 11, 2024)

What glows in the night? This night featured a combination of usual and unusual glows. Perhaps the most usual glow was from the Moon, a potentially familiar object. The full Moon's nearly vertical descent results from the observer being near Earth's equator. As the Moon sets, air and aerosols in Earth's atmosphere preferentially scatter out blue light, making the Sun-reflecting satellite appear reddish when near the horizon. Perhaps the most unusual glow was from the bioluminescent plankton, likely less familiar objects. These microscopic creatures glow blue, it is thought, primarily to surprise and deter predators. In this case, the glow was caused primarily by plankton-containing waves crashing onto the beach. The image was taken on Soneva Fushi Island, Maldives just over one year ago. Photographer credit: Petr Horalek

[sayxit]

Hula Hoop

[silvereyedowl]

[source]

Uranus's Moon Oberon: Impact World - March 8th, 1996.

"Oberon is the most distant and second largest moon of Uranus. Discovered by William Herschel in 1787, the properties of the world remained relatively unknown until the robot spacecraft Voyager 2 passed it during its flyby of Uranus in January of 1986. Compared to Uranus' moons Ariel, Titania, and Miranda, Oberon is heavily cratered, and in this way resembles Umbriel. Like all of Uranus' large moons, Oberon is composed of roughly half ice and half rock. Note that Oberon has at least one large mountain, visible on the limb at the lower left, that rises 6 km off the surface."

[mizelaneus]

[spacewonder19]

Spiral Galaxy NGC 6744 ©

[thefirststarr]

Why are these clouds multi-coloured? A relatively rare phenomenon in clouds known as iridescence can bring up unusual colours, or even a whole spectrum of colours simultaneously. These polar stratospheric clouds also, known as mother-of-pearl clouds, are formed of small water droplets of nearly uniform size. When the Sun is in the right position and, typically, hidden from direct view, these thin clouds can be seen significantly diffracting sunlight in a nearly coherent manner, with different colours being deflected by different amounts. Therefore, different colours will come to the observer from slightly different directions. Many clouds start with uniform regions that could show iridescence but quickly become too thick, too mixed, or too far from the Sun to exhibit striking colours. The featured image and an accompanying video were taken late in 2019 over Ostersund, Sweden.

Image Copyright: Image Credit: Goran Strand

[silvereyedowl]

[source]

A Beautiful Trifid

Credits: Adam Block, NOAO, AURA, NSF

[coopergriggs]

[roversrovers]

Fresh Tiger Stripes on Saturn's Enceladus Image Credit: NASA, ESA, JPL, SSI, Cassini Imaging Team Explanation: Do underground oceans vent through canyons on Saturn's moon Enceladus? Long features dubbed tiger stripes are known to be spewing ice from the moon's icy interior into space, creating a cloud of fine ice particles over the moon's South Pole and creating Saturn's mysterious E-ring. Evidence for this has come from the robot Cassini spacecraft that orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017. Pictured here, a high resolution image of Enceladus is shown from a close flyby. The unusual surface features dubbed tiger stripes are visible in false-color blue. Why Enceladus is active remains a mystery, as the neighboring moon Mimas, approximately the same size, appears quite dead. An analysis of ejected ice grains has yielded evidence that complex organic molecules exist inside Enceladus. These large carbon-rich molecules bolster -- but do not prove -- that oceans under Enceladus' surface could contain life.

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is my favorite celestial object, the reason I got into space and science at all! As a child the idea that the subsurface oceans of Enceladus could potentially host alien life spurred my imagination and desire to learn all about it.