保护地球，探索宇宙，发现文明
2022年4月12日 N11: Star Clouds of the LMC Image Credit: NASA, ESA; Processing: Josh Lake Explanation: Massive stars, abrasive winds, mountains of dust, and energetic light sculpt one of the largest and most picturesque regions of star formation in the Local Group of Galaxies. Known as N11, the region is visible on the upper right of many images of its home gala...
2022年4月11日 A Space Station Crosses a Busy Sun Image Credit & Copyright: Wang Letian (Eyes at Night) Explanation: Typically, the International Space Station is visible only at night. Slowly drifting across the night sky as it orbits the Earth, the International Space Station (ISS) can be seen as a bright spot several times a year from many locations. The...
2022年4月10日 Shadows at the Moon’s South Pole Image Credit: NASA, Arizona State U., Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Explanation: Was this image of the Moon’s surface taken with a microscope? No — it’s a multi-temporal illumination map made with a wide-angle camera. To create it, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft collected 1,700 i...
2022年4月9日 Mars-Saturn Conjunction Image Credit & Copyright: Damian Peach Explanation: Fainter stars in the zodiacal constellation Capricornus are scattered near the plane of the ecliptic in this field of view. The two brightest ones at center aren’t stars at all though, but the planets Mars and Saturn. Taken on the morning of April 4, the telescop...
2022年4月8日 Hale-Bopp: The Great Comet of 1997 Image Credit & Copyright: Stefan Seip (TWAN) Explanation: Only twenty-five years ago, Comet Hale-Bopp rounded the Sun and offered a dazzling spectacle in planet Earth’s night skies. Digitized from the original astrophoto on 35mm color slide film, this classic image of the Great Comet of 1997 was recorde...
2022年4月7日 Messier 24: Sagittarius Star Cloud Image Credit & Copyright: Gabriel Rodrigues Santos Explanation: Unlike most entries in Charles Messier’s famous catalog of deep sky objects, M24 is not a bright galaxy, star cluster, or nebula. It’s a gap in nearby, obscuring interstellar dust clouds that allows a view of the distant stars in the ...
2022年4月6日 Earendel: A Star in the Early Universe Image Credit: NASA, ESA, B. Welch (JHU), D. Coe (STScI); Processing: A. Pagan (STScI) Explanation: Is Earendel the farthest star yet discovered? This scientific possibility started when the Hubble Space Telescope observed a huge cluster of galaxies. The gravitational lens effect of this cluster was seen to mag...
2022年4月5日 Seven Sisters versus California Image Credit & Copyright: Neven Krcmarek Explanation: On the upper right, dressed in blue, is the Pleiades. Also known as the Seven Sisters and M45, the Pleiades is one of the brightest and most easily visible open clusters on the sky. The Pleiades contains over 3,000 stars, is about 400 light years away, and on...
2022年4月4日 A Vortex Aurora over Iceland Image Credit & Copyright: Christophe Suarez Explanation: No, the car was not in danger of being vacuumed into space by the big sky vortex. For one reason, the vortex was really an aurora, and since auroras are created by particles striking the Earth from space, they do not create a vacuum. This rapidly developing a...
2022年4月3日 CMB Dipole: Speeding Through the Universe Image Credit: DMR, COBE, NASA, Four-Year Sky Map Explanation: Our Earth is not at rest. The Earth moves around the Sun. The Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. The Milky Way Galaxy orbits in the Local Group of Galaxies. The Local Group falls toward the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies. But these speeds ...