保护地球，探索宇宙，发现文明
2020年12月02日 Eye of Moon Image Credit & Copyright: Zachery Cooley Explanation: Who’s watching who? The featured image of the Moon through a gap in a wall of rock may appear like a giant eye looking back at you. Although, in late October, it took only a single exposure to capture this visual double, it also took a lot of planning. The photographic g...
2020年11月14日 Venus, Mercury, and the Waning Moon Image Credit & Copyright: Kevin Sargozza Explanation: Yesterday, early morning risers around planet Earth were treated to a waning Moon low in the east as the sky grew bright before dawn. From the Island of Ortigia, Syracuse, Sicily, Italy this simple snapshot found the slender sunlit crescent just before ...
2020年10月8日 Mare Frigoris Image Credit & Copyright: Matt Smith Explanation: Lighter than typically dark, smooth, mare the Mare Frigoris lies in the far lunar north. Also known as the Sea of Cold, it stretches across the familiar lunar nearside in this close up of the waxing gibbous Moon’s north polar region. Dark-floored, 95 kilometer wide crater P...
2020年9月26日 Moon Pairs and the Synodic Month Image Credit & Copyright: Marcella Giulia Pace Explanation: Observe the Moon each night and its visible sunlit portion will gradually change. In phases progressing from New Moon to Full Moon to New Moon again, a lunar cycle or synodic month is completed in about 29.5 days. They look full, but top left to botto...
2020年9月25日 Moon over Andromeda Composite Image Credit & Copyright: Adam Block and Tim Puckett Explanation: The Great Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda (also known as M31), a mere 2.5 million light-years distant, is the closest large spiral to our own Milky Way. Andromeda is visible to the unaided eye as a small, faint, fuzzy patch, but because its surface brig...
2020年9月14日 Corn Moon Rising Image Credit & Copyright: Zarcos Palma Explanation: A rising moon can be a dramatic sight. A rising Full Corn Moon was captured early this month in time-lapse with a telephoto lens from nearly 30 kilometers away — making Earth’s ascending half-degree companion appear unusually impressive. The image was captured fr...
2020年8月15日 Mars at the Moon’s Edge Image Credit & Copyright: Sergio Scauso Explanation: Does the Moon ever block out Mars? Yes, the Moon occasionally moves in front of all of the Solar System’s planets. Just this past Sunday, as visible from some locations in South America, a waning gibbous Moon eclipsed Mars. The featured image from Córdoba...
2020 June 21 Moon Occults Venus Image Credit & Copyright: Dzmitry Kananovich Explanation: It may look like Earthrise, but it’s actually Venus-set. Just after sunrise two days ago, both the Moon and Venus also rose. But then the Moon overtook Venus. In the featured image sequence centered on the Moon, Venus is shown increasingly angularly close to t...
2020 May 30 Green Flashes: Sun, Moon, Venus, Mercury Image Credit & Copyright: Marcella Giulia Pace Explanation: Follow a sunset on a clear day against a distant horizon and you might glimpse green just as the Sun disappears from view. The green flash is caused by refraction of light rays traveling to the eye over a long path through the atmosphere. Sho...
2020 May 20 Moon, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, Milk Way Image Credit & Copyright: Mihail Minkov Explanation: It is not a coincidence that planets line up. That’s because all of the planets orbit the Sun in (nearly) a single sheet called the plane of the ecliptic. When viewed from inside that plane — as Earth dwellers are likely to do — the pl...