保护地球，探索宇宙，发现文明
2020 April 30 Andromeda Island Universe Image Credit & Copyright: Yuzhe Xiao Explanation: The most distant object easily visible to the unaided eye is M31, the great Andromeda Galaxy some two and a half million light-years away. But without a telescope, even this immense spiral galaxy – spanning over 200,000 light years – appears as a faint,...
Shown in the artist’s rendering is the Mars Helicopter, a small, autonomous rotorcraft, will travel with NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover, currently scheduled to launch in July 2020, to demonstrate the viability and potential of heavier-than-air vehicles on the Red Planet. Destined to become the first aircraft to attempt powered flight on another p...
2020 April 29 The Ion Tail of New Comet SWAN Image Credit & Copyright: Gerald Rhemann Explanation: Newly discovered Comet SWAN has already developed an impressive tail. The comet came in from the outer Solar System and has just passed inside the orbit of the Earth. Officially designated C/2020 F8 (SWAN), this outgassing interplanetary iceberg will pass ...
On April 25, 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope was deployed from the cargo bay of space shuttle Discovery. Here, Hubble has one of its two solar array panels deployed while still in the grasp of Discovery’s remote manipulator system. Image Credit: NASA 1990年4月25日，哈勃太空望远镜在发现号航天飞机的货舱中展开。哈勃望远镜的两个太阳能电池板之一已经展开，同时仍在探索号的远程遥控系统控制之下。 影像来源：NASA
On April 25, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine provided President Donald Trump with an update at the White House on NASA’s response to COVID-19. Bridenstine discussed how the agency’s innovative workforce has mobilized some of its greatest minds to apply NASA research and ingenuity to fighting COVID-19. “The questions is what do you do with rocket sci...
2020 April 28 The Kepler-90 Planetary System Illustration Credit: NASA Ames, Wendy Stenzel Explanation: Do other stars have planetary systems like our own? Yes — one such system is Kepler-90. Cataloged by the Kepler satellite that operated from Earth orbit between 2009 and 2018, eight planets were discovered, giving Kepler-90 the same number of known p...
The Susquehanna River cuts through the folds of the Valley-and-Ridge province of the Appalachian Mountains in this photograph taken by the crew of the International Space Station. The Valley-and-Ridge province is a section of the larger Appalachian Mountain Belt between the Appalachian Plateau and the Blue Ridge physiographic provinces. The northeast-southwe...
2020 April 27 Fresh Tiger Stripes on Saturn’s Enceladus Image Credit: NASA, ESA, JPL, SSI, Cassini Imaging Team Explanation: How will humanity first learn of extraterrestrial life? One possibility is to find it under the icy surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. A reason to think that life may exist there are long features — dubbed tiger stri...
2020 April 26 Edwin Hubble Discovers the Universe Image Credit & Copyright: Courtesy Carnegie Institution for Science Explanation: How big is our universe? This very question, among others, was debated by two leading astronomers 100 years ago today in what has become known as astronomy’s Great Debate. Many astronomers then believed that our Milky ...
2020 April 25 Hubble’s Cosmic Reef Image Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI Explanation: These bright ridges of interstellar gas and dust are bathed in energetic starlight. With its sea of young stars, the massive star-forming region NGC 2014 has been dubbed the Cosmic Reef. Drifting just off shore, the smaller NGC 2020, is an expansive blue-hued structure erupt...