Struktura Richatowa Ziemi

2000-10-08

What on Earth is that? The Richat Structure in the Sahara Desert of Mauritania is easily visible from space because it is nearly 50 kilometers across. Once thought to be an impact crater, the Richat Structure's flat middle and lack of ...

Sputnik: Towarzysz podróży

2000-10-07

Sputnik means "traveling companion". Despite the innocuous sounding name, the launch of the Earth's first "artificial moon", Sputnik 1, by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957 shocked the free world, setting in motion events which resulted in the ...

X-Rays From Sirius B

2000-10-06

In visible light Sirius A (Alpha Canis Majoris) is the brightest star in the night sky, a closely watched celestial beacon throughout recorded history. Part of a binary star system only 8 light-years away, it was known in modern times to have a ...

N81: Gwiezdna kołyska w SMC

2000-10-05

This dramatic Hubble Space Telescope image captures the birth of a cluster of massive stars. The newborn stars are seen just as they emerge from their natal nebula. Only 12 light-years across, the nebula is cataloged as N81 and lies some 200,000 ...

Galaktyka Spiralna NGC 1300

2000-10-04 D. F. Malin

NGC 1300 is a large spiral galaxy that appears as a flattened figure eight. A huge bar that spans over 150,000 light-years across the galaxy center dominates its appearance. The picturesque galaxy lies about 75 million light-years distant, so ...

Saturn się obraca

2000-10-03

The dramatic rotation of the cloud-tops of Saturn every ten-hours is particularly evident from orbit around the gas giant planet. With a good enough telescope, however, such rotation is visible even from Earth, as shown by this time-lapse image ...

Pangea Ultima: Ziemia za 250 milionów...

2000-10-02 C. R. Scotese

Is this what will become of the Earth's surface? The surface of the Earth is broken up into several large plates that are slowly shifting. About 250 million years ago, the plates on which the present-day continents rest were positioned quite ...

Centrum Centaurusa A

2000-10-01

A fantastic jumble of young blue star clusters, gigantic glowing gas clouds, and imposing dark dust lanes surrounds the central region of the active galaxy Centaurus A. This mosaic of Hubble Space Telescope images taken in blue, green, and red ...

Okopy Tytanii

2000-09-30

British astronomer Sir William Herschel discovered Titania and Oberon in January of 1787. He wasn't reading Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream though, he was making the first telescopic observations of moons of the planet Uranus (a planet ...

Ogrzewanie pętli koronowych

2000-09-28

ending above the photosphere or visible surface of the Sun, the faint, tenuous solar corona can't be easily seen from Earth, but it is measured to be hundreds of times hotter than the photosphere itself. What makes the solar corona so hot? ...