Astronomy Picture of the Day

2006-03-01 Clifford Pickover

Do nearly exact copies of you exist in other universes? If one or more of the multiverse hypotheses is correct, then quite possibly they do. In the above computer-enhanced illustration, independent universes are shown as independent circles or ...

2006-02-28 Jean-Charles Cuillandre

Rippling dust and gas lanes give the Flaming Star Nebula its name. The red and purple colors of the nebula are present in different regions and are created by different processes. The bright star AE Aurigae, visible toward the image left, is so ...

2006-02-27

What is it? Something is happening in a small portion of the sky toward the constellation of Aries. Telescopes around the globe are tracking an unusual transient there as it changes day by day. No one is sure what it will do next. The entire ...

2006-02-26 T. A. Rector

From afar, the whole thing looks like an Eagle. A closer look at the Eagle Nebula, however, shows the bright region is actually a window into the center of a larger dark shell of dust. Through this window, a brightly-lit workshop appears where ...

2006-02-25

rlier this month, a 2.5-meter diameter infrared telescope was permanently assigned a window seat, looking through this opening in the fuselage of a historic Boeing 747 aircraft. The telescope mirror, about the size of the Hubble Space Telescope ...

2006-02-24 John Chumack

This pretty star field in the constellation Ophiucus is centered on a star not often seen - RS Ophiuci. In fact, early last week RS Oph suddenly became visible to the naked eye for the first time since 1985. A type of cataclysmic variable star ...

2006-02-23

Imaged on the night side of Saturn by the Cassini spacecraft, these swirling storm clouds are illuminated by ringshine - sunlight reflected from the gas giant's magnificent ring system. The storm (top) was actually spotted last month by amateur ...

2006-02-22

Why is Saturn's small moon Telesto so smooth? Possibly Telesto is covered with a type of granular icy material similar to that suspected of covering Pandora, another of Saturn's small moons. If so, Telesto might be more like a pile of rubble ...

2006-02-21 Star Shadows Remote Observatory

The famous Horsehead Nebula in Orion is not alone. A deep exposure shows that the dark familiar shaped indentation, visible just below center, is part of a vast complex of absorbing dust and glowing gas. To bring out details of the Horsehead's ...

2006-02-19

The Whirlpool Galaxy is a classic spiral galaxy. At only 30 million light years distant and fully 60 thousand light years across, M51, also known as NGC 5194, is one of the brightest and most picturesque galaxies on the sky. The above image is ...