Io Volcano Culann Patera

2002-12-18

What causes the unusual colors surrounding Io's volcanoes? Io, the innermost large moon of Jupiter, is known to be the most tumultuous body in the Solar System. Approximately the size of Earth's Moon, Io undergoes nearly continuous volcanic ...

Wzmocnienie Międzynarodowej Stacji...

2002-12-17

The International Space Station (ISS) will be the largest human-made object ever to orbit the Earth. The station is so large that it could not be launched all at once -- it is being built piecemeal with large sections added continually by ...

Noc i dzień w Melas Chasma na Marsie

2002-12-16

What types of terrain are found on Mars? Part of the answer comes from thermal imaging by the robot spacecraft 2001 Mars Odyssey currently orbiting Mars. The above picture is a superposition of two infrared images, a black and white image taken ...

Sieć kaustyk mikrosoczewkowania

2002-12-15 Joachim Wambsganss

A virtual sky map like this would be of interest to astronomers studying gravitational microlensing. In microlensing, the gravity of stars near the line of sight can act to magnify the light of background objects such as distant stars, or ...

IC 418: Mgławica Spirograf

2002-12-14

What is creating the strange texture of IC 418? Dubbed the Spirograph Nebula for its resemblance to drawings from a cyclical drawing tool, planetary nebula IC 418 shows patterns that are not well understood. Perhaps they are related to chaotic ...

Korona Słońca

2002-12-13 Wendy Carlos

During a total solar eclipse, the Sun's extensive outer atmosphere or corona is an awesome and inspirational sight. Yet the subtle shades and shimmering features of the corona that engage the eye span a brightness range of over 10,000 to 1, ...

Apollo 17: Ostatni na Księżycu

2002-12-12

In December of 1972, Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent about 75 hours on the Moon, in the Taurus-Littrow valley, while colleague Ronald Evans orbited overhead. Near the beginning of their third and final excursion ...

Meteory między gwiazdami i chmurami

2002-12-11 OAOG

Streaking high above diffuse clouds -- but well in front of distant stars -- are sand-sized bits of an ancient comet: meteors. These bits flaked off Comet Tempel-Tuttle during its pass through the inner Solar System about 150 years ago. Far in ...

M17: Mgławica Omega Fabryka gwiazd

2002-12-10 Jean-Charles Cuillandre

In the depths of the dark clouds of dust and molecular gas known as M17, stars continue to form. The similarity to the Greek letter capital Omega gives the molecular cloud its popular name, but the nebula is also known as the Swan Nebula, the ...

Cień księżyca przesuwa się nad Afryką

2002-12-09 EUMETSAT

When the Moon's shadow reached out and touched the Earth last week, the result was a solar eclipse. Such an eclipse is total only for observers located along a narrow path corresponding to the ground track of the shadow's dark central portion or ...