Welcome to Planet Earth

2007-03-25

Welcome to Planet Earth, the third planet from a star named the Sun. The Earth is shaped like a sphere and composed mostly of rock. Over 70 percent of the Earth's surface is water. The planet has a relatively thin atmosphere composed mostly of ...

Lisbon Moonset

2007-03-24 Miguel Claro

Brilliant Venus, a slender crescent Moon, and lights along the Ponte 25 de Abril glow against the western twilight in this lovely moonset scene from Lisbon, Portugal, recorded on March 20. In fact, such serene views were enjoyed across planet ...

Touran Sunrise

2007-03-23 Babak Tafreshi

Clouds covered the eastern horizon on Monday, when the Sun rose over the expansive Touran Wildlife Reserve in northeastern Iran. Of course, on that day the Moon rose with the Sun, creating a widely enjoyed partial solar eclipse. Along with a ...

Goa Silhouettes

2007-03-22 Joerg Schoppmeyer

On Moonday, March 19, shortly before the equinox, locations in Asia and the Arctic were favoured by the New Moon's shadow during a partial solar eclipse. Although the view from Goa, India found the eclipsed Sun near the horizon, photographer ...

Molecular Cloud Barnard 163

2007-03-21 T. Rector

It may look to some like a duck, but it lays stars instead of eggs. In the center of the above image lies Barnard 163, a nebula of molecular gas and dust so thick that visible light can't shine through it. With a wing span measured in light ...

A Blue Crescent Moon from Space

2007-03-20

What's happening to the Moon? Drifting around the Earth in 2006 July, astronauts from the International Space Station (ISS) captured a crescent Moon floating far beyond the horizon. The captured above image is interesting because part of the ...

Galaxy Group Hickson 44

2007-03-19 MASIL Imaging Team

Galaxies, like stars, frequently form groups. A group of galaxies is a system containing more than two galaxies but less than the tens or hundreds typically found in a cluster of galaxies. A most notable example is the Local Group of Galaxies, ...

A Higher Dimensional Universe?

2007-03-18 Mark Newbold

Does our universe have higher but unusual spatial dimensions? This idea has been gaining popularity to help explain why vastly separated parts of our universe appear so similar, and why the geometry of our universe does not seem to result ...

Barred Spiral Galaxy M95

2007-03-14 Jean-Charles Cuillandre

Why do some spiral galaxies have a ring around the center? First and foremost, M95 is one of the closer examples of a big and beautiful barred spiral galaxy. Visible in the above recent image from the CFHT telescope in Hawaii, USA, are ...

Attacking Mars

2007-03-13

The Spirit rover attacked Mars again in 2005 September. What might look, above, like a military attack, though, was once again just a scientific one - Spirit was instructed to closely inspect some interesting rocks near the summit of Husband ...