Astronomy Pic Of Day

larger photo

btw, that APOD site is very interesting, it exists for so many years, and each day you see there another nice (astro)photo with some comments
check it if you haven't by now :]

WOW. Absolutely stunning photograph.

I've been checking that website for quite a while now, and I found many visual gems on it but this one is probably in the top 10.

Fantastic!

today's photo
comet McNaught down there, on southern hemisphere, it will be visible with binoculars till the end of february :]
and beautiful Milky Way




and this is Earth's rotation with sky, by Paranal Observatory, it;s a short small gif :]
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ima...al_guisard.gif

today's photo :shock:




Explanation: The explosion is over but the consequences continue. About eleven thousand years ago a star in the constellation of Vela ** could be seen to explode, creating a strange point of light briefly visible to humans living near the beginning of recorded history. The outer layers of the star crashed into the interstellar medium, driving a shock wave that is still visible today. A roughly spherical, expanding shock wave is visible in X-rays. The above image captures much of that filamentary and gigantic shock in visible light, spanning almost 100 light years and appearing twenty times the diameter of the full moon. As gas flies away from the detonated star, it decays and reacts with the interstellar medium, producing light in many different colors and energy bands. Remaining at the center of the Vela Supernova Remnant is a pulsar, a star as dense as nuclear matter that completely rotates more than ten times in a single second.

**[it's a southern constellation and that's why we here "up" don't speak so much of it, cause we cannot observe it like other northern constellations and their nebulas, stars, etc]


btw i got into astronomy 7 years ago when i, while reading a book, found that pulsar (a.k.a. neutron star) and when learned what that is, was amazed :]

larger, desktop photo

Did you know that the morning star is, in fact, the evening star? It's a fact.

morning star is Venus :]
and somewhere is called morning somewhere evening :]

Cos she is a star!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There is a star in my hat, too.

Actually, Venus was previously misidentified as the morning star and the evening star in the SAME location. Ancient astronomers didn't realize that planets moved on a different path across the sky than stars did, and so inferred that it was two separate objects.

& i like this one alot

yes of course :]

well, that;s some simulation picture, not real

emission nebula, Rosette, in Monoceros, where in the very center, you can see an open cluster of young stars (NGC2244)
it's about 3K ly from us :]

really beautiful


Rosette

and that cluster