APOD: 1996-05-15
This beautiful image of the sky near the bright star Deneb (just above center) reveals the stars, nebulae, and dark clouds along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy as seen from the northern hemisphere (near Columbia Missouri, USA). Just below ...
APOD: 1996-05-14
In this century, the discovery that the Universe is expanding has produced a revolution in human thought about the Cosmos. American astronomer Edwin Hubble played a major role in this profound discovery, coining the "Hubble constant". This single ...
APOD: 1996-05-13
Our Universe is expanding. Distant galaxies appear to recede from us at ever-increasing speeds. What is the rate of expansion? How long has it been expanding? What will be its ultimate fate? Two groups of astronomers are searching vigorously for ...
APOD: 1996-05-12
These five pairs of Hubble Space Telescope images track some of Saturn's moons as they orbit the ringed planet. A pair of images was taken every 97 minutes on November 21, 1995 with the Wide Field Planetary Camera-2, the normally bright ring ...
APOD: 1996-05-11
Normally, Earth based astronomers view Saturn's spectacular ring system fully illuminated by reflected sunlight. However, this November 1995 Hubble Space Telescope composite image was made to take advantage of an unusual perspective, with the Sun ...
APOD: 1996-05-10
Massive stars (tens of times the mass of the Sun) profoundly affect their galactic environment. Churning and mixing the clouds of gas and dust between the stars, they leave their mark in the compositions and locations of future generations of ...
APOD: 1996-05-09
Massive stars cook elements in their cores through nuclear fusion. Starting with the light elements of hydrogen and helium, their central temperatures and pressures produce progressively heavier elements, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, etc. up through ...
APOD: 1996-05-08
When NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft flew by distant Neptune in August of 1989, astronomers were shocked. Since Neptune receives only 3 percent the sunlight Jupiter does, they expected to find a dormant, dark, frigid planet. Instead, the Voyager ...
APOD: 1996-05-07
These Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images reveal glimpses of the dynamic atmosphere of Neptune, the Solar System's most distant gas giant planet. The first close-up of Neptune's clouds was provided by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft during its August ...
APOD: 1996-05-06
A background of distant stars, sinuous and spiky bands of Southern Lights (Aurora Australis), and the faint glow of charged plasma (ionized atomic gas) surrounding the Space Shuttle Discovery's engines give this photo from the STS-39 mission an ...
