#apod

[spacewonder19]

Cygnus Shell Supernova Remnant W63 ©

[silvereyedowl]

[source]

The North America Nebula in Infrared

Credits: NASA, JPL-Caltech, L. Rebull, SSC, Caltech, DSS

[without-ado]

Storm cloud over Texas l Laura Rowe NASA APOD

[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

[lisamarieblair]

The Seagull Nebula

[silvereyedowl]

[source]

Moon Eclipses Saturn, 2024-08-27

What if Saturn disappeared? Sometimes, it does. It doesn’t really go away, though, it just disappears from view when our Moon moves in front. Such a Saturnian eclipse, more formally called an occultation, was visible along a long swath of Earth – from Peru, across the Atlantic Ocean, to Italy – only a few days ago. The featured color image is a digital fusion of the clearest images captured during the event and rebalanced for color and relative brightness between the relatively dim Saturn and the comparatively bright Moon. Saturn and the comparative bright Moon. The exposures were all taken from Breda, Catalonia, Spain, just before occultation. Eclipses of Saturn by our Moon will occur each month for the rest of this year. Each time, though, the fleeting event will be visible only to those with clear skies – and the right location on Earth.

Credits: NASA’s ‘Astronomy Picture Of The Day.’

[aeontriad]

The Dark Tower in Scorpius

[nightskystories]

Dancing in the moonlight

[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

[silvereyedowl]

[source]

Bright Stars, Dim Galaxy - October 14th, 1996.

"These two clusters of bright, newly formed stars surrounded by a glowing nebula lie 10 million light years away in the dim, irregular galaxy cataloged as NGC 2366. The Hubble Space Telescope image shows that the youngest cluster, the bottom one at about 2 million years old, is still surrounded by the gas and dust cloud it condensed from, while powerful stellar winds from the stars in the older cluster at the top (4-5 million years old), have begun to clear away its central areas, giving the entire nebula an apparent hook shape. Compared to the Sun, the stars in these clusters are massive and short lived. The brightest one, near the tip of the hook, is a rare luminous blue variable with 30 to 60 times the mass of the Sun - similar to the erruptive Eta Carina variable in our own Milky Way. Stars this massive are extremely variable. A comparison with ground-based images indicates that in three years this star's brightness increased by about 40 times, making it the brightest star in this dim galaxy. Studies of such distant and diverse galaxies yield clues to the relationships of star formation and galactic evolution."

[sayxit]

Hula Hoop

[spacewonder19]

Night Side of Pluto (1/2)

[without-ado]

Full Plankton Moon over Maldives l Petr Horálek via NASA APOD

[silvereyedowl]

[source]

Comet and Orion

Credits: CARA Project, CAST

[thefirststarr]

Sometimes, massive stars can blow bubbles. This image shows perhaps the most famous star-bubbles of all, NGC 7635, also known simply as The Bubble Nebula. Although it looks delicate, the 7-light-year diameter bubble offers evidence of violent processes at work. To the top left of the Bubble's center is a hot, O-type star, several hundred thousand times more luminous and 45-times more massive than the Sun. A fierce stellar wind and intense radiation from that star has blasted out the structure of glowing gas in a surrounding molecular cloud. The intriguing Bubble Nebula and associated cloud complex lie 7,100 light-years away toward the boastful constellation Cassiopeia. This sharp, tantalizing view of the cosmic bubble is a reprocessed composite of previously acquired Hubble Space Telescope image data.

Image Credit & Copyright: NASA/ESA/HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE

[mizelaneus]