Space Pics v.3

[Capt.Kangaroo]

Thanks Android Man...:)

[nada233]

Stuck in the Middle with a Black Hole
Pin It Credit: NASA/CXC/UFRGS/R. Nemmen et al.
The image shows 1 out of the 9 large galaxies included in the Chandra study, containing a supermassive black hole in its center.18

[nada233]

Orion Nebula NGC 1980

Once thought to be part of the Orion nebula, the star cluster NGC 1980 is actually a separate entity, scientists say. It appears around the brightest star seen at the bottom of this image, iota Ori. The disks around the star are the result of internal light reflection in the camera optics.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/36/NGC_1980_DSS.jpg/1024px-NGC_1980_DSS.jpg

[nada233]

25Outskirts of the Orion Nebula
Pin It Credit: Gemini Observatory/AURA
This image, obtained during the late commissioning phase of the GeMS adaptive optics system, with the Gemini South AO Imager (GSAOI) on the night of December 28, 2012, reveals exquisite details in the outskirts of the Orion Nebula. Less «

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://i.space.com/images/i/000/036/995/i02/m45-manges.jpg?1392833631

The Pleiades star cluster (M45) is a group of 800 stars formed about 100 million years ago. The cluster is located 410 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Taurus.

Credit: Chuck Manges |

[nada233]

32Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way Collision
Pin It Credit: NASA, ESA, Z. Levay and R. van der Marel (STScI), and A. Mellinger
This photo illustration depicts a view of the night sky just before the predicted merger between our Milky Way galaxy and the neighboring Andromeda galaxy. Image released May 31, 2012.

[nada233]

33Best UV View Ever of Andromeda Galaxy
Pin It Credit: NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler (GSFC) and Erin Grand (UMCP)
This mosaic of M31 merges 330 individual images taken by the Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope aboard NASA's Swift spacecraft. It is the highest-resolution image of the galaxy ever recorded in the ultraviolet. The image shows a region 200,000 light-years wide and 100,000 light-years high (100 arcminutes by 50 arcminutes).

[nada233]

56The Stars Fill the Sky
Pin It Credit: Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope/Coelum
Monday, Dec. 8, 2014: Stars form in textbook fashion inside emission nebula NGC 2174, where molecular clouds condense into star formation regions. New stars next slowly blow unused material back into the interstellar medium. After the lengthy process has almost concluded, the stars have broken out into the open.

— Tom Chao Less «

[nada233]

57Gave Me a Surprise
Pin It Credit: ESO/VVV Team/A. Guzmán
Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2014: This image shows a portion of the Milky Way that lies in the constellation of Scorpius, close to the central plane of the galaxy. A dense cloud of dust and gas associated with the molecular cloud IRAS 16562-3959 clearly appears as an orange smudge among the pool of stars at the center of the image. In the center of the cloud the bright object known as G345.4938+01.4677 shines through the veil of gas and dust. This very young star forms as the cloud collapses under gravity. The young star is very bright and heavy, and it possesses surprising properties: A large disc of gas and dust floats around the forming star while a stream of material flows from it. Theories predict that the stream and disc likely should not exist around stars like G345.4938+01.4677, as the strong radiation from massive new stars would push material away. At the bottom left of the image, the bright star HD 153220 glows. Image released Dec. 1, 2014.

— Tom Chao Less «

[Capt.Kangaroo]

Thanks nada. Great pics...:)

[nada233]

no problem glad to be part and be able to cooperate.

[Marley]

yes thanks ...................

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1412/GeminidMtBalang_wu_960.jpg

Geminid Fireball over Mount Balang

This was a sky to remember. While viewing the Geminids meteor shower a few days ago, a bright fireball was captured over Mt. Balang, China with particularly picturesque surroundings. In the foreground, a sea of light clouds slowly floated between dark mountain peaks. In the background, the constellation of Orion shone brightly, with the familiar three stars of Orion's belt visible near the image top right. Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, is visible near the image center. The bright fireball flashed for only a fraction of second on the lower right. The source of the fireball was a pebble that intersected the protective atmosphere of Earth, originally expelled by the Sun-orbiting asteroid-like object 3200 Phaethon.

Image Credit: Alvin Wu

[nada233]

80Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), the newest camera on NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, has captured a spectacular pair of galaxies engaged in a celestial dance of cat and mouse or, in this case, mouse and mouse.

Located 300 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices, the colliding galaxies have been nicknamed "The Mice" because of the long tails of stars and gas emanating from each galaxy. Otherwise known as NGC 4676, the pair will eventually merge into a single giant galaxy.

Credit:

NASA, Holland Ford (JHU), the ACS Science Team and ESA

[nada233]

81Galaxy Playing Twister
The Hubble telescope has captured an image of an unusual edge-on galaxy, revealing remarkable details of its warped dusty disk and showing how colliding galaxies spawn the formation of new generations of stars. The dust and spiral arms of normal spiral galaxies, like our own Milky Way, appear flat when viewed edge-on. This Hubble Heritage image of ESO 510-G13 shows a galaxy that, by contrast, has an unusual twisted disk structure, first seen in ground-based photographs.

Credit:

NASA/ESA and The Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA)

[nada233]

93The Hourglass Nebula
This is an image of MyCn18, a young planetary nebula located about 8,000 light-years away, taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) aboard the Hubble Space Telescope (HST).

This Hubble image reveals the true shape of MyCn18 to be an hourglass with an intricate pattern of 'etchings' in its walls. This picture has been composed from three separate images taken in the light of ionized nitrogen (represented by red), hydrogen (green), and doubly-ionized oxygen (blue).

The results are of great interest because they shed new light on the poorly understood ejection of stellar matter which accompanies the slow death of Sun-like stars. In previous ground-based images, MyCn18 appears to be a pair of large outer rings with a smaller central one, but the fine details cannot be seen.

Credit:

Raghvendra Sahai and John Trauger (JPL), the WFPC2 science team, andNASA/ESA

[Capt.Kangaroo]

Thanks nada....
Good Stuff...:)

[nada233]

My pleasure Captainkangaro,learning from the best .

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1412/ic1795_snyder_960.jpg

IC 1795: The Fishhead Nebula

To some, this nebula looks like the head of a fish. However, this colorful cosmic portrait really features glowing gas and obscuring dust clouds in IC 1795, a star forming region in the northern constellation Cassiopeia. The nebula's colors were created by adopting the Hubble false-color palette for mapping narrow emission from oxygen, hydrogen, and sulfur atoms to blue, green and red colors, and further blending the data with images of the region recorded through broadband filters. Not far on the sky from the famous Double Star Cluster in Perseus, IC 1795 is itself located next to IC 1805, the Heart Nebula, as part of a complex of star forming regions that lie at the edge of a large molecular cloud. Located just over 6,000 light-years away, the larger star forming complex sprawls along the Perseus spiral arm of our Milky Way Galaxy. At that distance, this picture would span about 70 light-years across IC 1795.

Image Credit & Copyright: Bill Snyder (Bill Snyder Photography)

[nada233]

Galactic Wheel of Life Shines in Infrared105
The ghostly structures highlighting the peculiar patterns of orbiting stars in the center of the galaxy NGC 1291 stand out vividly in this specially-processed image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. By making detailed observations of the galaxy in infrared light, astronomers can tease out the hidden details of the strange dynamics in this barred galaxy.

The galaxy is about 12 billion years old and is located 33 million light years away in the Eridanus constellation. It is known as a barred galaxy because a central bar of stars (which looks like a blue "S" in this view) dominates its center.

When galaxies are young and gas-rich, stellar bars drive gas toward the center, feeding star formation. Over time, as the star-making fuel runs out, the central regions become quiescent and star-formation activity shifts to the outskirts of a galaxy. There, spiral density waves and resonances induced by the central bar help convert gas to stars. The outer ring is one such resonance location, where gas has been trapped and ignited into a star-forming frenzy.

This image has been processed to suppress the smooth glow of starlight that fills the center of this galaxy, enhancing our view of the peculiar structure in this region. These spokes and clumps are essentially stellar traffic jams, formed by the convoluted orbits of the billions of stars bunching up as they move through the central bar. Close examination of the outer ring reveals that it is actually composed of two distinct arcs that partially blend into one another.

Infrared light at wavelengths of 3.4 and 4.5 microns are rendered in blue and green, combining into a single cyan tone showing the distribution of stars.

[nada233]

M82 Galaxy with Supernova107107107The supernova SN 2014J is seen in this image near its peak brightness in the first week of February 2014. It appears as a faint star to the lower right of the central region of its host galaxy M82.

The new supernova is of a particular kind known as a Type Ia. This type of supernova results in the complete destruction of a white dwarf star-the small, dense, aged remnant of a typical star like our Sun. Two scenarios are theorized to give rise to Type Ia supernovas: In a binary star system, a white dwarf gravitationally pulls in matter from its companion star, accruing mass until the white dwarf crosses a critical threshold and blows up. Alternatively, two white dwarfs in a binary system spiral inward toward each other and eventually explosively collide.

Studying SN 2014J will help with understanding the processes behind Type Ia detonations to further refine theoretical models.

In the image, light from Spitzer's infrared channels are colored blue at 3.6 microns and green at 4.5 microns.

[nada233]

Snapshot of a shedding star108

In this new Hubble image, the strikingly luminous star AG Carinae — otherwise known as HD 94910 — takes centre stage. Found within the constellation of Carina in the southern sky, AG Carinae lies 20 000 light-years away, nestled in the Milky Way.

AG Carinae is classified as a Luminous Blue Variable. These rare objects are massive evolved stars that will one day become Wolf-Rayet Stars — a class of stars that are tens of thousands to several million times as luminous as the Sun. They have evolved from main sequence stars that were twenty times the mass of the Sun.

Stars like AG Carinae lose their mass at a phenomenal rate. This loss of mass is due to powerful stellar winds with speeds of up to 7 million km/hour. These powerful winds are also responsible for the shroud of material visible in this image. The winds exert enormous pressure on the clouds of interstellar material expelled by the star and force them into this shape.

Despite HD 94910’s intense luminosity, it is not visible with the naked eye as much of its output is in the ultraviolet.

This image was taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), that was installed on Hubble during the Shuttle mission STS-61 and was Hubble’s workhorse for many years. It is worth noting that the bright glare at the centre of the image is not the star itself. The star is tiny at this scale and hidden within the saturated region. The white cross is also not an astronomical phenomenon but rather an effect of the telescope.

Credit:

ESA/Hubble & NASA

[nada233]

Arp 148109Arp 148 is the staggering aftermath of an encounter between two galaxies, resulting in a ring-shaped galaxy and a long-tailed companion. The collision between the two parent galaxies produced a shockwave effect that first drew matter into the centre and then caused it to propagate outwards in a ring. The elongated companion perpendicular to the ring suggests that Arp 148 is a unique snapshot of an ongoing collision. Infrared observations reveal a strong obscuration region that appears as a dark dust lane across the nucleus in optical light.

Arp 148 is nicknamed "Mayall's object" and is located in the constellation of Ursa Major, the Great Bear, approximately 500 million light-years away. This interacting pair of galaxies is included in Arp's catalogue of peculiar galaxies as number 148.

This image is part of a large collection of 59 images of merging galaxies taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and released on the occasion of its 18th anniversary on 24th April 2008.

Credit:

NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration and A. Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University), K. Noll (STScI), and J. Westphal (Caltech)

[nada233]

The proper motion path of Proxima Centauri123
This plot shows the projected motion of the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri (green line) over the next decade, as plotted from NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observations. Because of parallax caused by Earth’s motion around the Sun, the path appears scalloped. Because Proxima Centauri is the closest star to our Sun (at a distance of 4.2 light-years), its angular motion across the sky is relatively fast compared to far more distant background stars. This means that in 2014 and 2016 Proxima Centauri will pass in front of two background stars that are along its path. This affords astronomers a rare opportunity to study the warping of space by Proxima's gravity, as will be evident in the apparent displacement of the two stars in sky photographs. This effect is called gravitational lensing. The amount of warping will be used to calculate a precise mass for Proxima Centauri, and look for the gravitational footprint and any planets orbiting the star. The background image shows a wider view of the region of sky in the southern constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur) that Proxima is traversing.

Link:

NASA Press release
Credit:

NASA, ESA, K. Sahu and J. Anderson (STScI), H. Bond (STScI and Pennsylvania State University), M. Dominik (University of St. Andrews), and Digitized Sky Survey (STScI/AURA/UKSTU/AAO)

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1501/VelaSNR-3_bigCedic1024.jpg

Vela Supernova Remnant

The plane of our Milky Way Galaxy runs through this complex and beautiful skyscape. At the northwestern edge of the constellation Vela (the Sails) the telescopic frame is over 10 degrees wide, centered on the brightest glowing filaments of the Vela Supernova Remnant, an expanding debris cloud from the death explosion of a massive star. Light from the supernova explosion that created the Vela remnant reached Earth about 11,000 years ago. In addition to the shocked filaments of glowing gas, the cosmic catastrophe also left behind an incredibly dense, rotating stellar core, the Vela Pulsar. Some 800 light-years distant, the Vela remnant is likely embedded in a larger and older supernova remnant, the Gum Nebula

Image Credit & Copyright: CEDIC Team - Processing: Wolfgang Leitner

[nada233]

Hubble Image of NGC 3324142

Located in the Southern Hemisphere, NGC 3324 is at the northwest corner of the Carina Nebula (NGC 3372), home of the Keyhole Nebula and the active, outbursting star Eta Carinae. The entire Carina Nebula complex is located at a distance of roughly 7,200 light-years, and lies in the constellation Carina.

This image is a composite of data taken with two of Hubble's science instruments. Data taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) in 2006 isolated light emitted by hydrogen. More recent data, taken in 2008 with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), isolated light emitted by sulfur and oxygen gas. To create a color composite, the data from the sulfur filter are represented by red, from the oxygen filter by blue, and from the hydrogen filter by green.

Credit:

NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

[Android Man]

I love space pictures...so beautiful imo.

[nada233]

yes they are and they can make some very nice wall papers on pc as well,glad you enjoy them.

[nada233]

Dying star creates fantasy-like sculpture of gas and dust149

In this detailed view from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the so-called Cat's Eye Nebula looks like the penetrating eye of the disembodied sorcerer Sauron from the film adaptation of "Lord of the Rings."

The nebula, formally catalogued NGC 6543, is every bit as inscrutable as the J.R.R. Tolkien phantom character. Although the Cat's Eye Nebula was the first planetary nebula ever to be discovered, it is one of the most complex planetary nebulae ever seen in space. A planetary nebula forms when Sun-like stars gently eject their outer gaseous layers to form bright nebulae with amazing twisted shapes.

Credit:

ESA, NASA, HEIC and The Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA)

[12icer]

The pictures give a sense of infinite greatness, and infinite smallness. The atomic nucleus, and the star as the center of two galaxies at the ends of a spectrum. Or maybe just two ends of a larger more infinite spectrum153 Blue wormhole wonder what's on the OTHER side.

[Capt.Kangaroo]

Nice pics nada & 12icer.:)

[nada233]

Galactic Wheels within Wheels162

How many rings do you see in this striking new image of the galaxy Messier 94 (NGC 4736) as seen by the infrared eyes of NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope? While at first glance one might see a number of them, astronomers believe there is just one.

Historically, Messier 94 was considered to have two strikingly different rings: a brilliant, compact band encircling the galaxy’s core, and a faint, broad, swath of stars falling outside its main disk.

Astronomers have recently discovered that the outer ring, seen here in the deep blue glow of starlight, may actually be more of an optical illusion. Their 2009 study combined infrared Spitzer observations with ultraviolet data from NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer, and ground-based surveys in visible (Sloan Digital Sky Survey) and near infrared light (Two Micron All Sky Survey). This more complete picture of Messier 94 indicates that we are really seeing two separate spiral arms that, from our perspective, take on the appearance of a single, unbroken ring.

The bright inner ring of Messier 94 is very real, however. This area is sometimes identified as a “starburst ring” because of the frenetic pace of star formation in this confined area. Starbursts like this can often be triggered by gravitational encounters with other galaxies, but in this case may instead be caused by the galaxy’s oval shape.

Tucked in between the inner starburst ring and the outer ring-like arms we find the galaxy’s disk, striated with greenish filaments of dust. While, at first glance, these dusty arcs look like a collection of rings, they actually follow tightly wound spiral arcs.

Messier 94 is about 17 million light years away, making it a distant neighbor of our own Milky Way galaxy. It was first discovered by Charles Messier’s assistant, Pierre Méchain, in 1781 and was added to his supervisor’s famous catalog two days later.

Infrared light with wavelengths of 3.6 and 4.5 microns is shown as blue/cyan, showing primarily the glow from starlight. 8 micron light is rendered in green, and 24 micron emission is red, tracing the cooler and warmer components of dust, respectively. The observations were made in 2004, before Spitzer ran out of cryogen.

[nada233]

Taken Under the "Wing" of the Small Magellanic Cloud163

New Chandra observations have been used to make the first detection of X-ray emission from young stars with masses similar to our Sun outside our Milky Way galaxy. The Chandra observations of these low-mass stars were made of the region known as the "Wing" of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), one of the Milky Way's closest galactic neighbors. In this composite image of the Wing the Chandra data is shown in purple, optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope is shown in red, green and blue and infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope is shown in red. Astronomers call all elements heavier than hydrogen and helium - that is, with more than two protons in the atom's nucleus - "metals". The Wing is a region known to have fewer metals compared to most areas within the Milky Way. The Chandra results imply that the young, metal-poor stars in NGC 602a produce X-rays in a manner similar to stars with much higher metal content found in the Orion cluster in our galaxy.

[nada233]

196Astronomers have found cosmic clumps so dark, dense and dusty that they throw the deepest shadows ever recorded. The clumps, shown here in a zoom-in detail, were discovered within a huge cosmic cloud of gas and dust. Infrared observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope of these blackest-of-black regions in the cloud paradoxically light the way to understanding how the brightest stars form.

A new study takes advantage of the shadows cast by these dark clumps to measure the cloud's overall structure and mass. These dense, clumpy pockets of star-forming material within the cloud are so thick with dust that they scatter and block not only visible light, but almost all background infrared light as well.

The dusty cloud, the results suggest, will likely evolve into one of the most massive young clusters of stars in our galaxy. The densest clumps will blossom into the cluster's biggest, most powerful stars, called O-type stars, the formation of which has long puzzled scientists. These hulking stars have major impacts on their local stellar environments while also helping to create the heavy elements needed for life.

This image reveals the overall darkness of the cloud, calculated using Spitzer's infrared observations at a wavelength of 8 microns. Artifacts left by individual stars have been removed from the data, though several large, particularly bright areas have left white artifacts in the cloud map.

[nada233]

222This graphic shows the evolutionary sequence in the growth of massive elliptical galaxies over 13 billion years, as gleaned from space-based and ground-based telescopic observations. The growth of this class of galaxies is quickly driven by rapid star formation and mergers with other galaxies.

[nada233]

223he Ghost of Jupiter, also known as NGC 3242, is located roughly 1,400 light-years away in the constellation Hydra. Spitzer's infrared view shows off the cooler outer halo of the dying star, colored here in red. Also evident are concentric rings around the object, the result of material being periodically tossed out in the star's final death throes.

In this image, infrared light at wavelengths of 3.6 microns is rendered in blue, 4.5 microns in green, and 8.0 microns in red.

[nada233]

236237The spectacular swirling arms and central bar of the Sculptor galaxy are revealed in this new view from NASAs Spitzer Space Telescope. The main image is an infrared composite combining data from two of Spitzers detectors taken during its early cold, or cryogenic, mission.

Also known as NGC 253, the Sculptor galaxy is part of a cluster of galaxies visible to observers in the Southern hemisphere. It is known as a starburst galaxy for the extraordinarily strong star formation in its nucleus. This activity warms the surrounding dust clouds, causing the brilliant yellow-red glow in the center of this infrared image.

The image is split into two constituent parts on the right. On the top is a blue glow primarily from the light of stars as seen at the shorter wavelengths of infrared light. In this view, the disk, spiral arms and central bar are much easier to identify than in visible light because the obscuring effects of dust are minimized.

The lower right image shows the glow of dust at longer infrared wavelengths in green and red. Regions of star formation glow especially bright at the longest wavelengths (red).

While Spitzer is now operating without any onboard cryogen, it can still operate its shorter-wavelength detectors to produce images equivalent to the star map on the upper right. Spitzer continues to be a valuable tool for studying the infrared properties of galaxies near and far.

Infrared light with wavelengths of 3.6 and 4.5 microns is shown as blue/cyan. Eight-micron light is rendered in green, and 24-micron emission is red.

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1501/lovejoy_popov_960.jpg

The Complex Ion Tail of Comet Lovejoy

What causes the structure in Comet Lovejoy's tail? Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy), which is currently at naked-eye brightness and near its brightest, has been showing an exquisitely detailed ion tail. As the name implies, the ion tail is made of ionized gas -- gas energized by ultraviolet light from the Sun and pushed outward by the solar wind. The solar wind is quite structured and sculpted by the Sun's complex and ever changing magnetic field. The effect of the variable solar wind combined with different gas jets venting from the comet's nucleus accounts for the tail's complex structure. Following the wind, structure in Comet Lovejoy's tail can be seen to move outward from the Sun even alter its wavy appearance over time. The blue color of the ion tail is dominated by recombining carbon monoxide molecules, while the green color of the coma surrounding the head of the comet is created mostly by a slight amount of recombining diatomic carbon molecules. The featured three-panel mosaic image was taken nine days ago from the IRIDA Observatory in Bulgaria. Comet Lovejoy made it closest pass to the Earth two weeks ago and will be at its closest to the Sun in about ten days. After that, the comet will fade as it heads back into the outer Solar System, to return only in about 8,000 years.

Image Credit & Copyright: Velimir Popov & Emil Ivanov (IRIDA Observatory)

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1502/m104colombari_q100_watermark1024c.jpg

M104: The Sombrero Galaxy

The striking spiral galaxy M104 is famous for its nearly edge-on profile featuring a broad ring of obscuring dust lanes. Seen in silhouette against an extensive bulge of stars, the swath of cosmic dust lends a broad brimmed hat-like appearance to the galaxy suggesting the more popular moniker, The Sombrero Galaxy. Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based Subaru data have been reprocessed with amateur color image data to create this sharp view of the well-known galaxy. The processing results in a natural color appearance and preserves details often lost in overwhelming glare of M104's bright central bulge when viewed with smaller ground-based instruments. Also known as NGC 4594, the Sombrero galaxy can be seen across the spectrum and is thought to host a central supermassive black hole. About 50,000 light-years across and 28 million light-years away, M104 is one of the largest galaxies at the southern edge of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster.

Image Data: NASA, ESO , NAOJ, Giovanni Paglioli - Processing: R. Colombari

[iptv]

Simply Amazing !!!

[Capt.Kangaroo]

Simply Amazing !!!
thanks glad you like it...:)

[Capt.Kangaroo]

https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/10355384_782452135123583_8250352501948022827_n.jpg ?oh=f3c1dcb2d8c000e7748f8cdeb670500c&oe=555937F9&__gda__=1431820691_7067814b859654a08908880e0854962 5

Carina Nebula Dust Pillar

This cosmic pillar of gas and dust is nearly two light-years wide. The structure lies within one of our galaxy's largest star forming regions, the Carina Nebula, shining in southern skies at a distance of about 7,500 light-years. The pillar's convoluted outlines are shaped by the winds and radiation of Carina's young, hot, massive stars. But the interior of the cosmic pillar itself is home to stars in the process of formation. In fact, a penetrating infrared view shows the pillar is dominated by two, narrow, energetic jets blasting outward from a still hidden infant star. The above featured visible light image was made in 2009 using the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1502/superfilament_hardy_960.jpg

An Extremely Long Filament on the Sun

Yesterday, the Sun exhibited one of the longest filaments ever recorded. It may still be there today. Visible as the dark streak just below the center in the featured image, the enormous filament extended across the face of the Sun a distance even longer than the Sun's radius -- over 700,000 kilometers. A filament is actually hot gas held aloft by the Sun's magnetic field, so that viewed from the side it would appear as a raised prominence. The featured image shows the filament in light emitted by hydrogen and therefore highlights the Sun's chromosphere. Sun-following telescopes including NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) are tracking this unusual feature, with SDO yesterday recording a spiraling magnetic field engulfing it. Since filaments typically last only from hours to days, parts of this one may collapse or erupt at any time, either returning hot plasma back to the Sun or expelling it into the Solar System.

Image Credit & Copyright: Oliver Hardy

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://www.popsci.com/sites/popsci.com/files/styles/medium_1x_/public/images/2015/02/potw1506a.jpg?itok=nxMpaSnl


Smile for the Hubble

This smiley face was captured by Hubble. The two bright eyes are galaxies, and the smile is caused by a phenomenon called strong gravitational lensing. Essentially, the gravitational pull of some galaxy clusters is so strong that it warps spacetime around them. As light from even more distant stars and galaxies travels through this warped spacetime, it gets distorted, showing up to us as arcs and circles. When we see circles, like the outline of the smiley face above, that circle is called an Einstein ring.

NASA

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1502/AntennaePellicciaOlsen_mark1024.jpg

Exploring the Antennae

Some 60 million light-years away in the southerly constellation Corvus, two large galaxies are colliding. The stars in the two galaxies, cataloged as NGC 4038 and NGC 4039, very rarely collide in the course of the ponderous cataclysm, lasting hundreds of millions of years. But their large clouds of molecular gas and dust often do, triggering furious episodes of star formation near the center of the cosmic wreckage. Spanning about 500 thousand light-years, this stunning composited view also reveals new star clusters and matter flung far from the scene of the accident by gravitational tidal forces. The remarkable collaborative image is a mosaic constructed using data from small and large ground-based telescopes to bring out large-scale and faint tidal streams, composited with the bright cores imaged in extreme detail by the Hubble Space Telescope. Of course, the suggestive visual appearance of the extended arcing structures gives the galaxy pair its popular name - The Antennae.

Image Data: Subaru, NAOJ, NASA/ESA/Hubble, R.W. Olsen - Processing: Federico Pelliccia and Rolf Wahl Olsen

[nada233]

Hubble image of NGC 7714301NGC 7714 is a spiral galaxy 100 million light-years from Earth — a relatively close neighbour in cosmic terms.

The galaxy has witnessed some violent and dramatic events in its recent past. Tell-tale signs of this brutality can be seen in NGC 7714's strangely shaped arms, and in the smoky golden haze that stretches out from the galactic centre — caused by an ongoing merger with its smaller galactic companion NGC 7715, which is out of the frame of this image.

Credit:

ESA, NASA

Acknowledgement: A. Gal-Yam (Weizmann Institute of Science)

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1502/darkriver_jennings_960.jpg

The Dark River to Antares

Connecting the Pipe Nebula to the colorful region near bright star Antares is a dark cloud dubbed the Dark River, flowing from the picture's left edge. Murky looking, the Dark River's appearance is caused by dust obscuring background starlight, although the dark nebula contains mostly hydrogen and molecular gas. Surrounded by dust, Antares, a red supergiant star, creates an unusual bright yellowish reflection nebula. Above it, bright blue double star Rho Ophiuchi is embedded in one of the more typical bluish reflection nebulae, while red emission nebulae are also scattered around the region. Globular star cluster M4 is just seen above and right of Antares, though it lies far behind the colorful clouds, at a distance of some 7,000 light-years. The Dark River itself is about 500 light years away. The colorful skyscape is a mosaic of telescopic images spanning nearly 10 degrees (20 Full Moons) across the sky in the constellation of the Scorpion (Scorpius).

Credit & Copyright: Jason Jennings

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1502/ngc2244_rottal_1080.jpg

The Rosette Nebula in Hydrogen and Oxygen

The Rosette Nebula is not the only cosmic cloud of gas and dust to evoke the imagery of flowers -- but it is the most famous. At the edge of a large molecular cloud in Monoceros, some 5,000 light years away, the petals of this rose are actually a stellar nursery whose lovely, symmetric shape is sculpted by the winds and radiation from its central cluster of hot young stars. The stars in the energetic cluster, cataloged as NGC 2244, are only a few million years old, while the central cavity in the Rosette Nebula, cataloged as NGC 2237, is about 50 light-years in diameter. The nebula can be seen firsthand with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros).

Image Credit & Copyright: Arno Rottal (Far-Light-Photography)

[Kimbo]

Awesome Pictures, makes our planet seem so small!!!

[Marley]

we are a dot on some planets so i would say yes we are small

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1503/MartianDustDevil_mro_960.jpg



A Dust Devil on Mars

It was late in the northern martian spring when the HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spied this local denizen. Tracking across the flat, dust-covered Amazonis Planitia in 2012, the core of this whirling dust devil is about 140 meters in diameter. Lofting dust into the thin martian atmosphere, its plume reaches about 20 kilometers above the surface. Common to this region of Mars, dust devils occur as the surface is heated by the Sun, generating warm, rising air currents that begin to rotate. Tangential wind speeds of up to 110 kilometers per hour are reported for dust devils in other HiRISE images.

Image Credit: HiRISE, MRO, LPL (U. Arizona), NASA

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1503/IC5067_vanvleet_960.jpg

Pillars and Jets in the Pelican Nebula

What dark structures arise from the Pelican Nebula? Visible as a bird-shaped nebula toward the constellation of a bird (Cygnus, the Swan), the Pelican Nebula is a place dotted with newly formed stars but fouled with dark dust. These smoke-sized dust grains formed in the cool atmospheres of young stars and were dispersed by stellar winds and explosions. Impressive Herbig-Haro jets are seen emitted by a star on the right that is helping to destroy the light year-long dust pillar that contains it. The featured image was scientifically-colored to emphasize light emitted by small amounts of ionized nitrogen, oxygen, and sulfur in the nebula made predominantly of hydrogen and helium. The Pelican Nebula (IC 5067 and IC 5070) is about 2,000 light-years away and can be found with a small telescope to the northeast of the bright star Deneb.

Image Credit & Copyright: Larry Van Vleet (LVVASTRO)

[K00lKatT]

WOW!!...good one, Capn K..

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1503/cg04-1_1024.jpg

Cometary Globule CG4

The faint and somehow menacing cometary globule CG4 reaches through the center of this deep southern skyscape. About 1,300 light-years from Earth toward the constellation Puppis, its head is about 1.5 light-years in diameter and its tail about 8 light-years long. That's far larger than the Solar System's comets that it seems to resemble. In fact, the dusty cloud contains enough material to form several Sun-like stars and likely has ongoing star formation within. How its distinctive form came about is still debated, but its long tail trails away from the Vela Supernova remnant near the center of the Gum Nebula, while its head could represent the rupture of an originally more spherical cloud. Still, the edge-on spiral galaxy also near picture center is not actually being threatened by CG4. The galaxy lies in the distant background more than 100 million light-years away.

Image Credit & Copyright: CEDIC Team - Processing: Christoph Kaltseis

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1503/NGC602Web_goldman950.jpg

NGC 602 in the Flying Lizard Nebula

Explanation: Near the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy some 200 thousand light-years distant, lies 5 million year young star cluster NGC 602. Surrounded by natal gas and dust, NGC 602 is just below center in this telescopic field of view with the angular size of the Full Moon on the sky. The cluster itself is about 200 light-years in diameter. Glowing interior ridges and swept back shapes strongly suggest that energetic radiation and shock waves from NGC 602's massive young stars have eroded the dusty material and triggered a progression of star formation moving away from the cluster's center. Of course, the more extended wings of emission in the region suggest a popular name for the complex cosmic environment, The Flying Lizard Nebula.


Image Credit & Copyright: Don Goldman

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1503/mwcenter_spitzer_960.jpg

Stars at the Galactic Center

Explanation: The center of our Milky Way Galaxy is hidden from the prying eyes of optical telescopes by clouds of obscuring dust and gas. But in this stunning vista, the Spitzer Space Telescope's infrared cameras, penetrate much of the dust revealing the stars of the crowded galactic center region. A mosaic of many smaller snapshots, the detailed, false-color image shows older, cool stars in bluish hues. Reddish glowing dust clouds are associated with young, hot stars in stellar nurseries. The very center of the Milky Way was only recently found capable of forming newborn stars. The galactic center lies some 26,000 light-years away, toward the constellation Sagittarius. At that distance, this picture spans about 900 light-years.



Image Credit: Susan Stolovy (SSC/Caltech) et al., JPL-Caltech, NASA

[Capt.Kangaroo]

https://scontent-atl.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/11037704_606585879442584_213465067079473601_n.jpg? oh=6387014a263b216d38422324fb650c3a&oe=55892B44

Aurora over Icelandic Glacier


Several key conditions came together to create this award-winning shot. These included a dark night, few clouds, an epic auroral display, and a body of water that was both calm enough and unfrozen enough to show reflected stars. The featured skyscape of activity and serenity appeared over Iceland's Vatnajökull Glacier a year ago January, with the Jökulsárlón Iceberg Lagoon captured in the foreground. Aurora filled skies continue to be common near Earth's poles as our Sun, near Solar Maximum, continues to expel energetic clouds of plasma into the Solar System.

Image Credit & Copyright: James Boardman Woodend (Images Inspired by Nature)

[Marley]

think i got to get off my butt was waiting for copy and paste nice pic

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1503/FuegoVolcano_Rizzo_960.jpg

Volcano of Fire Erupts Under the Stars

First, there was an unusual smell. Then there was a loud bang. But what appeared to the eye was the most amazing of all. While waiting near midnight to see a possible eruption of Volcán de Fuego (Volcano of Fire) in Guatemala last month, a ready camera captured this extraordinary image. Lava is seen running down the side of the volcano, while ash rises up, and glowing magma bubbles explode out of the caldera. Lights near the town of Escuintla can be seen in the background, one of several nearby towns that have witnessed several spectacular eruptions previously. High above, seemingly tranquil by comparison, are familiar stars from the night sky. Although the Volcán de Fuego usually undergoes low-level activity, when the next spectacular eruption will occur is unknown.

Image Credit & Copyright: Diego Rizzo

[Kimbo]

Missing picture :(

[Marley]

think that unusual smell got to him

[K00lKatT]

Is Uncle C eating pickled eggs again??..OMG

[Capt.Kangaroo]

Hope its viewable now.:)

[K00lKatT]

got it, Capn K, good one, too, thks

[Kimbo]

Very nice pic!!

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1503/CygnusWallWalker600.jpg

Along the Cygnus Wall

The W-shaped ridge of emission featured in this vivid skyscape is known as the Cygnus Wall. Part of a larger emission nebula with a distinctive outline popularly called The North America Nebula, the cosmic ridge spans about 20 light-years. Constructed using narrowband data to highlight the telltale reddish glow from ionized hydrogen atoms recombining with electrons, the two frame mosaic image follows an ionization front with fine details of dark, dusty forms in silhouette. Sculpted by energetic radiation from the region's young, hot, massive stars, the dark shapes inhabiting the view are clouds of cool gas and dust with stars likely forming within. The North America Nebula itself, NGC 7000, is about 1,500 light-years away.

Image Credit & Copyright: Jimmy Walker

[sicario64]

Capt. what about posting pictures of what have been found on the moon. Like from the Chinese Moon Mission.

[Capt.Kangaroo]

Capt. what about posting pictures of what have been found on the moon. Like from the Chinese Moon Mission.

I may check into it. I usually post pics that are sent to my inbox from various sources.

[Capt.Kangaroo]

Here ya go sicario64...:)

http://i0.wp.com/www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/132968229_221n.jpg?resize=580%2C516

Photo taken on Dec. 14, 2013 shows a picture of the moon surface taken by the on-board camera of lunar probe Chang’e-3 on the screen of the Beijing Aerospace Control Center in Beijing. This marks the first time that China has sent a spacecraft to soft land on the surface of an extraterrestrial body.


Credit: Xinhua/CCTV

[nada233]

keep them coming captain.

[iptv]

I was hopeful the chinese would have caught one picture on the moon with Art bell wrestling with an Alien but oh well someday we will see compelling and clear picture of one of the millions of other life forms not from this earth.

[Capt.Kangaroo]

I was hopeful the chinese would have caught one picture on the moon with Art bell wrestling with an Alien but oh well someday we will see compelling and clear picture of one of the millions of other life forms not from this earth.

You'd probably have to raid Art's personal stash to see those pics. lol

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1503/BigDipperEnhanced_carpentier_annotated_598.jpg

The Big Dipper Enhanced

Do you see it? This common question frequently precedes the rediscovery of one of the most commonly recognized configurations of stars on the northern sky: the Big Dipper. This grouping of stars is one of the few things that has likely been seen, and will be seen, by every human generation. In this featured image, however, the stars of the Big Dipper have been digitally enhanced -- they do not really appear this much brighter than nearby stars. The image was taken earlier this month from France. The Big Dipper is not by itself a constellation. Although part of the constellation of the Great Bear (Ursa Major), the Big Dipper is an asterism that has been known by different names to different societies. Five of the Big Dipper stars are actually near each other in space and were likely formed at nearly the same time. Relative stellar motions will cause the Big Dipper to slowly change its apparent configuration over the next 100,000 years.

Image Credit & Copyright: VegaStar Carpentier

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1503/expedition42descent.jpg

Return at Sunrise

Thursday, shortly after local sunrise over central Asia, this Soyuz spacecraft floated over a sea of golden clouds during its descent by parachute through planet Earth's dense atmosphere. On board were Expedition 42 commander Barry Wilmore of NASA and Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos). Touch down was at approximately 10:07 p.m. EDT (8:07 a.m. March 12, Kazakh time) southeast of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan. The three were returning from low Earth orbit, after almost six months on the International Space Station as members of the Expedition 41 and Expedition 42 crews.


NASA, Bill Ingalls

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1503/EarthShineStack1024.jpg

Sunshine, Earthshine

Today's date marks an Equinox and a New Moon. Remarkably, while the exact timing of both geocentric events occur within a span of only 13 hours, the moon also reaches its new phase only 14 hours after perigee, the closest point in its orbit. That makes the Equinox New Moon the largest New Moon of 2015, though hard to see since that lunar phase presents the Moon's dark, night side to planet Earth. Still, in this well composed image of a young lunar phase from late January you can glimpse both night and day on the lunar surface, the night side faintly illuminated by Earthshine next to the day side's brightly sunlit crescent. But some will see today's Equinox New Moon in silhouette! The Equinox Solar Eclipse will be total across stretches of the Arctic Ocean, visible in partial phases from Europe, northern Africa and western Asia.

Image Credit: Dylan O'Donnell

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1503/DoubleEclipse_Legault_1024.jpg

A Double Eclipse of the Sun

Can the Sun be eclipsed twice at the same time? Last Friday was noteworthy because part of the Earth was treated to a rare total eclipse of the Sun. But also on Friday, from a part of the Earth that only saw part of the Sun eclipsed, a second object appeared simultaneously in front of the Sun: the Earth-orbiting International Space Station. Although space station eclipses are very quick -- in this case only 0.6 seconds, they are not so rare. Capturing this composite image took a lot of planning and a little luck, as the photographer had to dodge a series of third objects that kept, annoyingly, also lining up in front of the Sun: clouds. The above superposed time-lapse sequence was taken from Fregenal de la Sierra in southern Spain. The dark disk of the Moon dominates the lower right, while the Sun's textured surface shows several filaments and, over an edge, a prominence.

Image Credit & Copyright: Thierry Legault

[K00lKatT]

awesome pic, very cool:cool:

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1503/NovaSag2015_talwar_960.jpg

Naked Eye Nova Sagittarii 2015 No. 2

It quickly went from obscurity to one of the brighter stars in Sagittarius -- but it's fading. Named Nova Sagittarii 2015 No. 2, the stellar explosion is the brightest nova visible from Earth in over a year. The featured image was captured four days ago from Ranikhet in the Indian Himalayas. Several stars in western Sagittarius make an asterism known as the Teapot, and the nova, indicated by the arrow, now appears like a new emblem on the side of the pot. As of last night, Nova Sag has faded from brighter than visual magnitude 5 to the edge of unaided visibility. Even so, the nova should still be easily findable with binoculars in dark skies before sunrise over the next week.

Image Credit & Copyright: Ajay Talwar (The World at Night)

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1503/NGC2403-HaLRGBMP1024.jpg

NGC 2403 in Camelopardalis

Magnificent island universe NGC 2403 stands within the boundaries of the long-necked constellation Camelopardalis. Some 10 million light-years distant and about 50,000 light-years across, the spiral galaxy also seems to have more than its fair share of giant star forming HII regions, marked by the telltale reddish glow of atomic hydrogen gas. The giant HII regions are energized by clusters of hot, massive stars that explode as bright supernovae at the end of their short and furious lives. A member of the M81 group of galaxies, NGC 2403 closely resembles another galaxy with an abundance of star forming regions that lies within our own local galaxy group, M33 the Triangulum Galaxy. Spiky in appearance, bright stars in this colorful galaxy portrait of NGC 2403 lie in the foreground, within our own Milky Way.

Image Credit & Copyright: Martin Pugh

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1503/TSE2015Bailysbeads_WangLetian1024c.jpg

Diamond Rings and Baily's Beads


Near the March 20 equinox the cold clear sky over Longyearbyen, Norway, planet Earth held an engaging sight, a total eclipse of the Sun. The New Moon's silhouette at stages just before and after the three minute long total phase seems to sprout glistening diamonds and bright beads in this time lapse composite of the geocentric celestial event. The last and first glimpses of the solar disk with the lunar limb surrounded by the glow of the Sun's inner corona give the impression of a diamond ring in the sky. At the boundaries of totality, sunlight streaming through valleys in the irregular terrain along the Moon's edge, produces an effect known as Baily's Beads, named after English astronomer Francis Baily who championed an explanation for the phenomenon in 1836. This sharp composition also shows off the array of pinkish solar prominences lofted above the edge of the eclipsed Sun.

Image Credit & Copyright: Wang, Letian

[nada233]

that is a nice picture of the eclipse thank you captain.

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1503/marsshadow_opportunity_960.jpg

Shadow of a Martian Robot

Explanation: What if you saw your shadow on Mars and it wasn't human? Then you might be the Opportunity rover currently exploring Mars. Opportunity has been exploring the red planet since early 2004, finding evidence of ancient water, and sending breathtaking images across the inner Solar System. Pictured above in 2004, Opportunity looks opposite the Sun into Endurance Crater and sees its own shadow. Two wheels are visible on the lower left and right, while the floor and walls of the unusual crater are visible in the background. Opportunity is continuing on its long trek exploring unusual terrain in Meridiani Planum which continues to yield clues to the ancient history of Mars, our Solar System, and even humanity.

Image Credit: Mars Exploration Rover Mission, JPL, NASA

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1504/VirgoCentral_Subaru_960.jpg

In the Heart of the Virgo Cluster

The Virgo Cluster of Galaxies is the closest cluster of galaxies to our Milky Way Galaxy. The Virgo Cluster is so close that it spans more than 5 degrees on the sky - about 10 times the angle made by a full Moon. With its heart lying about 70 million light years distant, the Virgo Cluster is the nearest cluster of galaxies, contains over 2,000 galaxies, and has a noticeable gravitational pull on the galaxies of the Local Group of Galaxies surrounding our Milky Way Galaxy. The cluster contains not only galaxies filled with stars but also gas so hot it glows in X-rays. Motions of galaxies in and around clusters indicate that they contain more dark matter than any visible matter we can see. Pictured above, the heart of the Virgo Cluster includes bright Messier galaxies such as Markarian's Eyes on the upper left, M86 just to the upper right of center, M84 on the far right, as well as spiral galaxy NGC 4388 at the bottom right.

Image Credit: NASA/ESA/ESO/NAOJ/G. Paglioli; Copyright: R. Colombari/G. Paglioli

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1504/TLE2015_1024x821olsen.jpg

Full Moon in Earth's Shadow


Last week the Full Moon was completely immersed in Earth's dark umbral shadow, just briefly though. The total phase of the April 4, 2015 lunar eclipse lasted less than 5 minutes, the shortest total lunar eclipse of the century. In fact, sliding just within the Earth's umbral shadow's northern edge, the lunar north stayed relatively bright, while a beautiful range of blue and red hues emerged across the rest of the Moon's Earth-facing hemisphere. The reddened light within the shadow that reaches the lunar surface is filtered through the lower atmosphere. Seen from a lunar perspective it comes from all the sunsets and sunrises around the edges of the silhouetted Earth. Close to the shadow's edge, the bluer light is still filtered through Earth's atmosphere, but originates as rays of sunlight pass through layers high in the upper stratosphere. That light is colored by ozone that absorbs red light and transmits bluer hues. In this sharp telescopic view of totality from Auckland, New Zealand, planet Earth, the Moon's north pole has been rotated to the top of the frame.

Image Credit & Copyright: Rolf Olsen

[K00lKatT]

that's a winner!!....great pic, thks Capn K..

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1205/snowtrees_bonfadini_960.jpg

Sentinels of the Arctic

Who guards the north? Judging from the above photograph, possibly giant trees covered in snow and ice. The featured picture was taken a few winters ago in Finnish Lapland where weather can include sub-freezing temperatures and driving snow. Surreal landscapes sometimes result, where common trees become cloaked in white and so appear, to some, as watchful aliens. Far in the distance, behind this uncommon Earthly vista, is a more common sight -- a Belt of Venus that divided a darkened from sunlit sky as the Sun rose behind the photographer. Of course, in the spring, the trees thaw and Lapland looks much different.

Image Credit & Copyright: Niccolò Bonfadini

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1504/VolcanoWay_montufar_960.jpg

Milky Way over Erupting Volcano


The view was worth the trip. Battling high winds, cold temperatures, and low oxygen, the trek to near the top of the volcano Santa Maria in Guatemala -- while carrying sensitive camera equipment -- was lonely and difficult. Once set up, though, the camera captured this breathtaking vista during the early morning hours of February 28. Visible on the ground are six volcanoes of the Central America Volcanic Arc, including Fuego, the Volcano of Fire, which is seen erupting in the distance. Visible in the sky, in separate exposures taken a few minutes later, are many stars much further in the distance, as well as the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy situated horizontally overhead.

Image Credit & Copyright: Sergio Montúfar

[nada233]

that is a beutiful picture there captain ,this is what lots of writers of poems refers to that you can almost reach the stars with your hand,and I did live that sensation when in the south part of chile.

[Capt.Kangaroo]

that is a beutiful picture there captain ,this is what lots of writers of poems refers to that you can almost reach the stars with your hand,and I did live that sensation when in the south part of chile.

thanks nada. I bet the skies are beautiful down there...:)

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1504/MysticMountain_HubbleForteza_960.jpg

Mystic Mountain Dust Pillars

It's stars versus dust in the Carina Nebula and the stars are winning. More precisely, the energetic light and winds from massive newly formed stars are evaporating and dispersing the dusty stellar nurseries in which they formed. Located in the Carina Nebula and known informally as Mystic Mountain, these pillar's appearance is dominated by the dark dust even though it is composed mostly of clear hydrogen gas. Dust pillars such as these are actually much thinner than air and only appear as mountains due to relatively small amounts of opaque interstellar dust. About 7,500 light-years distant, the featured image was taken with the Hubble Space Telescope, digitally reprocessed by an industrious amateur, and highlights an interior region of Carina which spans about three light years. Within a few million years, the stars will likely win out completely and the entire dust mountain will be destroyed.

Image Credit: Hubble Legacy Archive, NASA, ESA; Processing & Copyright: David Forteza

[K00lKatT]

great pic!!!...very nice, thks Capn K

[Kimbo]

A couple of these pic will end up being my computer wallpaper ;)

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1504/rNGC-4725-HaL(AOX)RGBpugh1024.jpg

One-Armed Spiral Galaxy NGC 4725

Explanation: While most spiral galaxies, including our own Milky Way, have two or more spiral arms, NGC 4725 has only one. In this sharp color composite image, the solo spira mirabilis seems to wind from a prominent ring of bluish, newborn star clusters and red tinted star forming regions. The odd galaxy also sports obscuring dust lanes a yellowish central bar structure composed of an older population of stars. NGC 4725 is over 100 thousand light-years across and lies 41 million light-years away in the well-groomed constellation Coma Berenices. Computer simulations of the formation of single spiral arms suggest that they can be either leading or trailing arms with respect to a galaxy's overall rotation. Also included in the frame, sporting a noticably more traditional spiral galaxy look, is a more distant background galaxy.

Image Credit & Copyright: Martin Pugh

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/673xvariable_height/public/thumbnails/image/m15-061b.jpg?itok=lwjRqQgh

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is turning 25 this year. The observatory has transformed our understanding of our solar system and beyond, and helped us find our place among the stars.

Image Credit: NASA

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1504/Ring0644_hubble_960.jpg

Ring Galaxy AM 0644-741 from Hubble


How could a galaxy become shaped like a ring? The rim of the blue galaxy pictured on the right is an immense ring-like structure 150,000 light years in diameter composed of newly formed, extremely bright, massive stars. That galaxy, AM 0644-741, is known as a ring galaxy and was caused by an immense galaxy collision. When galaxies collide, they pass through each other -- their individual stars rarely come into contact. The ring-like shape is the result of the gravitational disruption caused by an entire small intruder galaxy passing through a large one. When this happens, interstellar gas and dust become condensed, causing a wave of star formation to move out from the impact point like a ripple across the surface of a pond. The intruder galaxy is just outside of the frame taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. This featured image was taken to commemorate the anniversary of Hubble's launch in 1990. Ring galaxy AM 0644-741 lies about 300 million light years away.

Image Credit: Hubble Heritage Team (AURA / STScI), J. Higdon (Cornell) ESA, NASA

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://static1.squarespace.com/static/53cf56b1e4b0be33a439738b/t/5534427de4b0cb1542ad5c89/1429488316148/?format=1000w

A Chandra X-ray Observatory image of NGC 6388, an ancient cluster of stars at the edge of the Milky Way, in a region where researchers believe a planet was shredded.

[Credit: NASA]

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1504/barnard344_vanderHoeven_960.jpg

Colorful Star Clouds in Cygnus


Explanation: Stars can form in colorful surroundings. Featured here is a star forming region rich in glowing gas and dark dust toward the constellation of the Swan (Cygnus), near the bright star Sadr. This region, which spans about 50 light years, is part of the Gamma Cygni nebula which lies about 1,800 light years distant. Toward the right of the image is Barnard 344, a dark and twisted dust cloud rich in cool molecular gas. A dramatic wall of dust and red-glowing hydrogen gas forms a line down the picture center. While the glowing red gas is indicative of small emission nebulas, the blue tinted areas are reflection nebulas -- starlight reflecting from usually dark dust grains. The Gamma Cygni nebula will likely not last the next billion years, as most of the bright young stars will explode, most of the dust will be destroyed, and most of the gas will drift away.


Image Credit & Copyright: André van der Hoeven

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1504/Messier46DenisPRIOU1024.jpg

M46 Plus Two


Explanation: Galactic or open star clusters are young. These swarms of stars are born together near the plane of the Milky Way, but their numbers steadily dwindle as cluster members are ejected by galactic tides and gravitational interactions. In fact, this bright open cluster, known as M46, is around 300 million years young. It still contains a few hundred stars within a span of 30 light-years or so. Located about 5,000 light-years away toward the constellation Puppis, M46 also seems to contain contradictions to its youthful status. In this pretty starscape, the colorful, circular patch above and right of the center of M46 is the planetary nebula NGC 2438. Fainter still, a second planetary nebula, PK231+4.1, is identified by the box at the right and enlarged in the inset. Planetary nebulae are a brief, final phase in the life of a sun-like star a billion years old or more, whose central reservoir of hydrogen fuel has been exhausted. NGC 2438 is estimated to be only 3,000 light-years distant, though, and moves at a different speed than M46 cluster members. Along with its fainter cohort, planetary nebula NGC 2438 is likely only by chance appearing near our line-of-sight to the young stars of M46.

Image Credit & Copyright: Denis Priou

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1504/IMG_2999korosecMilkyMet.jpg

Meteor in the Milky Way


Explanation: Earth's April showers include the Lyrid Meteor Shower, observed for more than 2,000 years when the planet makes its annual passage through the dust stream of long-period Comet Thatcher. A grain of that comet's dust, moving 48 kilometers per second at an altitude of 100 kilometers or so, is swept up in this night sky view from the early hours of April 21. Flashing toward the southeastern horizon, the meteor's brilliant streak crosses the central region of the rising Milky Way. Its trail points back toward the shower's radiant in the constellation Lyra, high in the northern springtime sky and off the top of the frame. The yellowish hue of giant star Antares shines to the right of the Milky Way's bulge. Higher still is bright planet Saturn, near the right edge. Seen from Istra, Croatia, the Lyrid meteor's greenish glow reflects in the waters of the Adriatic Sea.


Image Credit & Copyright: Marko Korosec

[nada233]

wow,what a beautiful picture,with all the contrast of different colors what a beauty.

[K00lKatT]

I agree, that's a keeper...

[Marley]

http://www.msn.com/en-us/video/wonder/hubble-space-telescopes-most-iconic-photos/vi-AAbxk3d
Hubble Space Telescope's Most Iconic Photos

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1504/westerlund2_hst1024.jpg

Cluster and Starforming Region Westerlund 2

Located 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Carina, the young cluster and starforming region Westerlund 2 fills this cosmic scene. Captured with Hubble's cameras in near-infrared and visible light, the stunning image is a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope on April 24, 1990. The cluster's dense concentration of luminous, massive stars is about 10 light-years across. Strong winds and radiation from those massive young stars have sculpted and shaped the region's gas and dust, into starforming pillars that point back to the central cluster. Red dots surrounding the bright stars are the cluster's faint newborn stars, still within their natal gas and dust cocoons. But brighter blue stars scattered around are likely not in the Westerlund 2 cluster and instead lie in the foreground of the Hubble anniversary field of view.

Image Credit & Copyright: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team
(STScI / AURA), A. Nota (ESA/STScI), and the Westerlund 2 Science Team

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1504/ant_hubble_1072.jpg

Planetary Nebula Mz3: The Ant Nebula

Why isn't this ant a big sphere? Planetary nebula Mz3 is being cast off by a star similar to our Sun that is, surely, round. Why then would the gas that is streaming away create an ant-shaped nebula that is distinctly not round? Clues might include the high 1000-kilometer per second speed of the expelled gas, the light-year long length of the structure, and the magnetism of the star visible above at the nebula's center. One possible answer is that Mz3 is hiding a second, dimmer star that orbits close in to the bright star. A competing hypothesis holds that the central star's own spin and magnetic field are channeling the gas. Since the central star appears to be so similar to our own Sun, astronomers hope that increased understanding of the history of this giant space ant can provide useful insight into the likely future of our own Sun and Earth.

Image Credit: R. Sahai (JPL) et al., Hubble Heritage Team, ESA, NASA

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1504/ngc2841_hstColombari_1080.jpg

Massive Nearby Spiral Galaxy NGC 2841


Explanation: It is one of the more massive galaxies known. A mere 46 million light-years distant, spiral galaxy NGC 2841 can be found in the northern constellation of Ursa Major. This sharp view of the gorgeous island universe shows off a striking yellow nucleus and galactic disk. Dust lanes, small, pink star-forming regions, and young blue star clusters are embedded in the patchy, tightly wound spiral arms. In contrast, many other spirals exhibit grand, sweeping arms with large star-forming regions. NGC 2841 has a diameter of over 150,000 light-years, even larger than our own Milky Way and captured by this composite image merging exposures from the orbiting 2.4-meter Hubble Space Telescope and the ground-based 8.2-meter Subaru Telescope. X-ray images suggest that resulting winds and stellar explosions create plumes of hot gas extending into a halo around NGC 2841.


Image Credit: Hubble, Subaru; Composition & Copyright: Roberto Colombari

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1504/67Pcrescent_RosettaConzo_1080.jpg

Comet Churyumov Gerasimenko in Crescent

Explanation: What's happening to Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko? As the 3-km wide comet moves closer to the Sun, heat causes the nucleus to expel gas and dust. The Rosetta spacecraft arrived at the comet's craggily double nucleus last July and now is co-orbiting the Sun with the giant dark iceberg. Recent analysis of data beamed back to Earth from the robotic Rosetta spacecraft has shown that water being expelled by 67P has a significant difference with water on Earth, indicating that Earth's water could not have originated from ancient collisions with comets like 67P. Additionally, neither Rosetta nor its Philae lander detected a magnetic field around the comet nucleus, indicating that magnetism might have been unimportant in the evolution of the early Solar System. Comet 67P, shown in a crescent phase in false color, should increase its evaporation rate as it nears its closest approach to the Sun in 2015 August, when it reaches a Sun distance just a bit further out than the Earth.

Image Credit: ESA, Rosetta, NAVCAM; processing by Giuseppe Conzo

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1504/GS_20150427_Sun_1024.jpg

Across the Sun

Explanation: A long solar filament stretches across the relatively calm surface of the Sun in this telescopic snap shot from April 27. The negative or inverted narrowband image was made in the light of ionized hydrogen atoms. Seen at the upper left, the magnificent curtain of magnetized plasma towers above surface and actually reaches beyond the Sun's edge. How long is the solar filament? About as long as the distance from Earth to Moon, illustrated by the scale insert at the left. Tracking toward the right across the solar disk a day later the long filament erupted, lifting away from the Sun's surface. Monitored by Sun staring satellites, a coronal mass ejection was also blasted from the site but is expected to swing wide of our fair planet.


Image Credit & Copyright: Göran Strand

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1505/MercuryGravity_MESSENGER_960.jpg

Gravitational Anomalies of Mercury


What's that under the surface of Mercury? The robotic MESSENGER spacecraft that had been orbiting planet Mercury for the past four years had been transmitting its data back to Earth with radio waves of very precise energy. The planet's gravity, however, slightly changed this energy when measured on Earth, which enabled the reconstruction of a gravity map of unprecedented precision. Here gravitational anomalies are shown in false-color, superposed on an image of the planet's cratered surface. Red hues indicate areas of slightly higher gravity, which in turn indicates areas that must have unusually dense matter under the surface. The central area is Caloris Basin, a huge impact feature measuring about 1,500 kilometers across. Last week, after completing its mission and running low on fuel, MESSENGER was purposely crashed onto Mercury's surface.

Image Credit: NASA, GSFC's SVS, JHU's APL, Carnegie Inst. Washington

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1505/LeoTriplet_PhDurville1024.jpg

Trio Leo

Explanation: This popular group is famous as the Leo Triplet - a gathering of three magnificent galaxies in one field of view. Crowd pleasers when imaged with even modest telescopes, they can be introduced individually as NGC 3628 (left), M66 (bottom right), and M65 (top). All three are large spiral galaxies but they tend to look dissimilar because their galactic disks are tilted at different angles to our line of sight. NGC 3628 is seen edge-on, with obscuring dust lanes cutting across the plane of the galaxy, while the disks of M66 and M65 are both inclined enough to show off their spiral structure. Gravitational interactions between galaxies in the group have also left telltale signs, including the warped and inflated disk of NGC 3628 and the drawn out spiral arms of M66. This gorgeous view of the region spans about one degree (two full moons) on the sky. The field covers over 500 thousand light-years at the trio's estimated distance of 30 million light-years.


Image Credit & Copyright: Philippe Durville

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1505/Horsehead_Colombari_960.jpg

The Magnificent Horsehead Nebula

Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud by chance has assumed this recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is some 1,500 light-years distant, embedded in the vast Orion cloud complex. About five light-years "tall", the dark cloud is cataloged as Barnard 33 and is visible only because its obscuring dust is silhouetted against the glowing red emission nebula IC 434. Stars are forming within the dark cloud. Contrasting blue reflection nebula NGC 2023, surrounding a hot, young star, is at the lower left. The gorgeous featured image combines both narrowband and broadband images.

Image Credit & Copyright: Data: Giuseppe Carmine Iaffaldano; Processing: Roberto Colombari

[crazed 9.6]

The Magnificent Horsehead Nebula


someone named a nebula after Keslowsky ? !??

[Capt.Kangaroo]

someone named a nebula after Keslowsky ? !??

Ha...Indeed....:D

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1505/Jup2015_03_10rgb09Peach.jpg

Jupiter, Ganymede, Great Red Spot

In this sharp snapshot, the Solar System's largest moon Ganymede poses next to Jupiter, the largest planet. Captured on March 10 with a small telescope from our fair planet Earth, the scene also includes Jupiter's Great Red Spot, the Solar System's largest storm. In fact, Ganymede is about 5,260 kilometers in diameter. That beats out all three of its other fellow Galilean satellites, along with Saturn's Moon Titan at 5,150 kilometers and Earth's own Moon at 3,480 kilometers. Though its been shrinking lately, the Great Red Spot's diameter is still around 16,500 kilometers. Jupiter, the Solar System's ruling gas giant, is about 143,000 kilometers in diameter at its equator. That's nearly 10 percent the diameter of the Sun.

Image Credit & Copyright: Damian Peach/SEN

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1505/ngc2440center_hubble_960.jpg

NGC 2440: Pearl of a New White Dwarf

Like a pearl, a white dwarf star shines best after being freed from its shell. In this analogy, however, the Sun would be a mollusk and its discarded hull would shine prettiest of all! In the above shell of gas and dust, the planetary nebula designated NGC 2440, contains one of the hottest white dwarf stars known. The glowing stellar pearl can be seen as the bright dot near the image center. The portion of NGC 2440 shown spans about one light year. The center of our Sun will eventually become a white dwarf, but not for another five billion years. The above false color image was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995. NGC 2440 lies about 4,000 light years distant toward the southern constellation Puppis.

Image Credit: H. Bond (STScI), R. Ciardullo (PSU), WFPC2, HST, NASA; Processing: Forrest Hamilton

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1505/LakeMyvatn_Brady_1080.jpg

Auroras and Star Trails over Iceland

It was one of the quietest nights of aurora in weeks. Even so, in northern- Iceland during last November, faint auroras lit up the sky every clear night. The featured 360-degree panorama is the digital fusion of four wide-angle cameras each simultaneously taking 101 shots over 42 minutes. In the foreground is serene Lake Myvatn dotted with picturesque rock formations left over from ancient lava flows. Low green auroras sweep across the sky above showing impressive complexity near the horizon. Stars far in the distance appear to show unusual trails -- as the Earth turned -- because early exposures were artificially faded.

Image Credit & Copyright: Vincent Brady

[K00lKatT]

stunning pic, absolutely gorgeous, thks Capn K..

[Capt.Kangaroo]

stunning pic, absolutely gorgeous, thks Capn K..

I thought so too.
Thanks bro...:)

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1505/47tuc_hubble_960.jpg

Globular Star Cluster 47 Tuc

Globular star cluster 47 Tucanae is a jewel box of the southern sky. Also known as NGC 104, it roams the halo of our Milky Way Galaxy along with over 150 other globular star clusters. The second brightest globular cluster (after Omega Centauri) as seen from planet Earth, 47 Tuc lies about 17,000 light-years away and can be spotted naked-eye near the Small Magellanic Cloud in the constellation of the Toucan. The dense cluster is made up of hundreds of thousands of stars in a volume only about 120 light-years across. Recent observations have shown that 47 Tuc's white dwarf stars are in the process of being gravitationally expelled to the outer parts of the cluster due to their relatively low mass. Other colorful low mass stars including yellowish red giant stars are easy to pick out on the outskirts of the cluster in this recently released sharp telescopic portrait by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team (STScI / AURA) Acknowledgment: J. Mack (STScI) and G. Piotto (U. Padova)

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1505/NGC7822gonzalez1024c.jpg

NGC 7822 in Cepheus

Hot, young stars and cosmic pillars of gas and dust seem to crowd into NGC 7822. At the edge of a giant molecular cloud toward the northern constellation Cepheus, the glowing star forming region lies about 3,000 light-years away. Within the nebula, bright edges and dark shapes are highlighted in this colorful skyscape. The image includes data from narrowband filters, mapping emission from atomic oxygen, hydrogen, and sulfur into blue, green, and red hues. The atomic emission is powered by energetic radiation from the hot stars, whose powerful winds and radiation also sculpt and erode the denser pillar shapes. Stars could still be forming inside the pillars by gravitational collapse, but as the pillars are eroded away, any forming stars will ultimately be cutoff from their reservoir of star stuff. This field spans around 40 light-years at the estimated distance of NGC 7822.

Image Credit & Copyright: César Blanco González

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1505/shuttleplume_sts134_960.jpg

Space Shuttle Rising

What's that rising from the clouds? The space shuttle. Sometimes, if you looked out the window of an airplane at just the right place and time, you could have seen something very unusual -- a space shuttle launching to orbit. Images of the rising shuttle and its plume became widely circulated over the web shortly after Endeavour's final launch in 2011 May. The above image was taken from a shuttle training aircraft by NASA and is not copyrighted. Taken well above the clouds, the image can be matched with similar images of the same shuttle plume taken below the clouds. Hot glowing gasses expelled by the engines are visible near the rising shuttle, as well as a long smoke plume. A shadow of the plume appears on the cloud deck, indicating the direction of the Sun. The US Space Shuttle program concluded in 2011, and Endeavour can now be visited at the California Science Center.

Image Credit: NASA

[nada233]

wow very nice picture .

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1505/NGC-4945-LRGB-v09-Final-03_kehusmaa1024c.jpg

Nearby Spiral Galaxy NGC 4945

Large spiral galaxy NGC 4945 is seen edge-on near the center of this cosmic galaxy portrait. In fact, NGC 4945 is almost the size of our own Milky Way Galaxy. Its own dusty disk, young blue star clusters, and pink star forming regions standout in the sharp, colorful telescopic image. About 13 million light-years distant toward the expansive southern constellation Centaurus, NGC 4945 is only about six times farther away than Andromeda, the nearest large spiral galaxy to the Milky Way. Though the galaxy's central region is largely hidden from view for optical telescopes, X-ray and infrared observations indicate significant high energy emission and star formation in the core of NGC 4945. Its obscured but active nucleus qualifies the gorgeous island universe as a Seyfert galaxy and home to a central supermassive black hole.


Image Credit & Copyright: Petri Kehusmaa, Harlingten Atacama Observatory

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1506/PolarisLovejoy_RBA_1024_Annotated.jpg

Polaris and Comet Lovejoy

One of these two bright sky objects is moving. On the right is the famous star Polaris. Although only the 45th brightest star in the sky, Polaris is famous for appearing stationary. Once you find it, it will always appear in the same direction -- all night and all day -- for the rest of your life. This is because the northern spin pole of the Earth -- called the North Celestial Pole -- points near Polaris. On the left, about ten million times closer, is Comet Lovejoy, which noticeably changes its sky position by the hour. The featured image was taken last week. Officially designated C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy), this disintegrating snowball is on a visit from the outer Solar System and will only appear near the North Star for a few more weeks. That should be long enough, however, for northerners with binoculars or a small telescope to see the greenish coma of this fleeting newcomer, perhaps with the help of a good star map.

Image Credit & Copyright: Rogelio Bernal Andreo

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1506/ngc2419Franke.jpg

NGC 2419 - Intergalactic Wanderer


Three objects stand out in this thoughtful telescopic image, a view toward the mostly stealthy constellation Lynx. The two brightest (the spiky ones) are nearby stars. The third is the remote globular star cluster NGC 2419, at distance of nearly 300,000 light-years. NGC 2419 is sometimes called "the Intergalactic Wanderer", an appropriate title considering that the distance to the Milky Way's satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, is only about 160,000 light-years. Roughly similar to other large globular star clusters like Omega Centauri, NGC 2419 is itself intrinsically bright, but appears faint because it is so far away. NGC 2419 may really have an extragalactic origin as, for example, the remains of a small galaxy captured and disrupted by the Milky Way. But its extreme distance makes it difficult to study and compare its properties with other globular clusters that roam the halo of our Milky Way galaxy.

Image Credit & Copyright: Bob Franke

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1506/m45_lorenzi_960.jpg

M45: The Pleiades Star Cluster


Have you ever seen the Pleiades star cluster? Even if you have, you probably have never seen it as dusty as this. Perhaps the most famous star cluster on the sky, the bright stars of the Pleiades can be seen without binoculars from even the depths of a light-polluted city. With a long exposure from a dark location, though, the dust cloud surrounding the Pleiades star cluster becomes very evident. The featured exposure took over 12 hours and covers a sky area several times the size of the full moon. Also known as the Seven Sisters and M45, the Pleiades lies about 400 light years away toward the constellation of the Bull (Taurus). A common legend with a modern twist is that one of the brighter stars faded since the cluster was named, leaving only six stars visible to the unaided eye. The actual number of Pleiades stars visible, however, may be more or less than seven, depending on the darkness of the surrounding sky and the clarity of the observer's eyesight.

Image Credit & Copyright: Marco Lorenzi (Glittering Lights

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1506/m5hst950.jpg
[/B[B]Hubble's Messier 5
]


"Beautiful Nebula discovered between the Balance [Libra] & the Serpent [Serpens] ..." begins the description of the 5th entry in 18th century astronomer Charles Messier's famous catalog of nebulae and star clusters. Though it appeared to Messier to be fuzzy and round and without stars, Messier 5 (M5) is now known to be a globular star cluster, 100,000 stars or more, bound by gravity and packed into a region around 165 light-years in diameter. It lies some 25,000 light-years away. Roaming the halo of our galaxy, globular star clusters are ancient members of the Milky Way. M5 is one of the oldest globulars, its stars estimated to be nearly 13 billion years old. The beautiful star cluster is a popular target for Earthbound telescopes. Of course, deployed in low Earth orbit on April 25, 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has also captured its own stunning close-up view that spans about 20 light-years near the central region of M5. Even close to its dense core at the left, the cluster's aging red and blue giant stars and rejuvenated blue stragglers stand out in yellow and blue hues in the sharp color image.

Image Credit: HST, ESA, NASA

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1506/sh308_simon_960.jpg

Sharpless 308: Star Bubble

Blown by fast winds from a hot, massive star, this cosmic bubble is huge. Cataloged as Sharpless 2-308 it lies some 5,200 light-years away toward the constellation of the Big Dog (Canis Major) and covers slightly more of the sky than a Full Moon. That corresponds to a diameter of 60 light-years at its estimated distance. The massive star that created the bubble, a Wolf-Rayet star, is the bright one near the center of the nebula. Wolf-Rayet stars have over 20 times the mass of the Sun and are thought to be in a brief, pre-supernova phase of massive star evolution. Fast winds from this Wolf-Rayet star create the bubble-shaped nebula as they sweep up slower moving material from an earlier phase of evolution. The windblown nebula has an age of about 70,000 years. Relatively faint emission captured in the expansive image is dominated by the glow of ionized oxygen atoms mapped to a blue hue.

Image Credit & Copyright: Kfir Simon

[K00lKatT]

awesome pic, Capn K, thks...

[Capt.Kangaroo]

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Colorful Clouds Near Rho Ophiuchi

Why is the sky near Antares and Rho Ophiuchi so colorful? The colors result from a mixture of objects and processes. Fine dust illuminated from the front by starlight produces blue reflection nebulae. Gaseous clouds whose atoms are excited by ultraviolet starlight produce reddish emission nebulae. Backlit dust clouds block starlight and so appear dark. Antares, a red supergiant and one of the brighter stars in the night sky, lights up the yellow-red clouds on the lower center of the featured image. Rho Ophiuchi lies at the center of the blue nebula on the left. The distant globular cluster M4 is visible to the upper right of center. These star clouds are even more colorful than humans can see, emitting light across the electromagnetic spectrum.

Image Credit & Copyright: Markus Noller (Deep-Sky-Images)

[K00lKatT]

Great pic, Capn K....

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1506/ZetaOph_spitzer_960.jpg

Zeta Oph: Runaway Star

Like a ship plowing through cosmic seas, runaway star Zeta Ophiuchi produces the arcing interstellar bow wave or bow shock seen in this stunning infrared portrait. In the false-color view, bluish Zeta Oph, a star about 20 times more massive than the Sun, lies near the center of the frame, moving toward the left at 24 kilometers per second. Its strong stellar wind precedes it, compressing and heating the dusty interstellar material and shaping the curved shock front. Around it are clouds of relatively undisturbed material. What set this star in motion? Zeta Oph was likely once a member of a binary star system, its companion star was more massive and hence shorter lived. When the companion exploded as a supernova catastrophically losing mass, Zeta Oph was flung out of the system. About 460 light-years away, Zeta Oph is 65,000 times more luminous than the Sun and would be one of the brighter stars in the sky if it weren't surrounded by obscuring dust. The image spans about 1.5 degrees or 12 light-years at the estimated distance of Zeta Ophiuchi.

Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, Spitzer Space Telescope

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1507/m43_mmirsBeletskyChilingarian.jpg

Messier 43

Often imaged but rarely mentioned, Messier 43 is a large star forming region in its own right. It's just part of the star forming complex of gas and dust that includes the larger, more famous neighboring Messier 42, the Great Orion Nebula. In fact, the Great Orion Nebula itself lies off the lower edge of this scene. The close-up of Messier 43 was made while testing the capabilities of a near-infrared instrument with one of the twin 6.5 meter Magellan telescopes at Las Campanas Observatory in the Chilean Andes. The composite image shifts the otherwise invisible infrared wavelengths to blue, green, and red colors. Peering into caverns of interstellar dust hidden from visible light, the near-infrared view can also be used to study cool, brown dwarf stars in the complex region. Along with its celebrity neighbor, Messier 43 lies about 1,500 light-years away, at the edge of Orion's giant molecular cloud. At that distance, this field of view spans about 5 light-years.

Image Credit & Copyright: Yuri Beletsky (Carnegie Las Campanas Obs.), Igor Chilingarian (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA)

[K00lKatT]

another winner, Capn K....thanks

[Marley]

wish i could be there ..................

[Marley]

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/spectacular-photos-from-space/ss-AA8lMqC#image=1

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/full_width_feature/public/thumbnails/image/nh-color-pluto-charon.jpg?itok=bNMhEgWg

A portrait from the final approach. Pluto and Charon display striking color and brightness contrast in this composite image from July 11, showing high-resolution black-and-white LORRI images colorized with Ralph data collected from the last rotation of Pluto. Color data being returned by the spacecraft now will update these images, bringing color contrast into sharper focus.

Nasa

[CableCost$]

For roughly 50-60 years kids were taught in school that Pluto was a "planet". I was taught that! Then we find out that it isn't a planet at all. Then we find out that we don't even know much about it, even after 70+ years.

Now we organize a mission 10 years ago, using new technology to get a near glimpse of Pluto in order to get a better understanding. But keep in mind, the technoliogy thrown into "New Horizon" was already ATLEAST 10 years old!!! To put that into better prospective. How much better are cell phones now compared to 2005? Particular the picture quality. How much better would the picture quality be now. Now think if we could have used the technology that we have NOW, & implemented that into recent tech. How much better would those pictures have been? Could we have got closer? Could we have gone further past Pluto & possibly start to really understand "outside" planets?

Its nuts when you really think about it! They found out so much more using technology that is over a decade old.....whats it going to be like next?

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1507/PIA19709charon.jpg

Charon

Icy world Charon is 1,200 kilometers across. That makes Pluto's largest moon only about 1/10th the size of planet Earth but a whopping 1/2 the diameter of Pluto itself. Charon is seen in unprecedented detail in this image from New Horizons. The image was captured late July 13 during the spacecraft's flight through the Plutonian system from a range of less than 500,000 kilometers. For reference, the distance separating Earth and Moon is less than 400,000 kilometers. Charonian terrain, described as surprising, youthful, and varied, includes a 1,000 kilometer swath of cliffs and troughs stretching below center, a 7 to 9 kilometer deep canyon cutting the curve of the upper right edge, and an enigmatic dark north polar region unofficially dubbed Mordor.

Image Credit: NASA, Johns Hopkins Univ./APL, Southwest Research Inst.

[Marley]

hey its dot in sky

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://i.space.com/images/i/000/048/945/original/earth-from-space-dscovr.jpg?1437407337

Gorgeous NASA Photo Captures Earth from 1 Million Miles Away

The DSCOVR satellite took this photo on July 6, 2015. It’s the first image of Earth’s entire sunlit side ever taken by DSCOVR, which launched in February 2015 and is a joint project involving NASA, NOAA and the U.S. Air Force.

Credit: NASA

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1507/AndromedaGalex_900.jpg

Ultraviolet Rings of M31

A mere 2.5 million light-years away the Andromeda Galaxy, also known as M31, really is just next door as large galaxies go. So close and spanning some 260,000 light-years, it took 11 different image fields from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) satellite's telescope to produce this gorgeous portrait of the spiral galaxy in ultraviolet light. While its spiral arms stand out in visible light images of Andromeda, the arms look more like rings in the GALEX ultraviolet view, a view dominated by the energetic light from hot, young, massive stars. As sites of intense star formation, the rings have been interpreted as evidence Andromeda collided with its smaller neighboring elliptical galaxy M32 more than 200 million years ago. The large Andromeda galaxy and our own Milky Way are the most massive members of the local galaxy group.

Image Credit: GALEX, JPL-Caltech, NASA

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1507/trifid_spitzerR1024.jpg

Infrared Trifid

The Trifid Nebula, also known as Messier 20, is easy to find with a small telescope, a well known stop in the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. But where visible light pictures show the nebula divided into three parts by dark, obscuring dust lanes, this penetrating infrared image reveals filaments of glowing dust clouds and newborn stars. The spectacular false-color view is courtesy of the Spitzer Space Telescope. Astronomers have used the Spitzer infrared image data to count newborn and embryonic stars which otherwise can lie hidden in the natal dust and gas clouds of this intriguing stellar nursery. As seen here, the Trifid is about 30 light-years across and lies only 5,500 light-years away.

Image Credit: J. Rho (SSC/Caltech), JPL-Caltech, NASA

[K00lKatT]

wow, that one's a winner, Capn K...

[nada233]

as always awesome pictures captain,keep them coming.

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1507/sombrero_hubble_1080.jpg

The Sombrero Galaxy from Hubble


Why does the Sombrero Galaxy look like a hat? Reasons include the Sombrero's unusually large and extended central bulge of stars, and dark prominent dust lanes that appear in a disk that we see nearly edge-on. Billions of old stars cause the diffuse glow of the extended central bulge. Close inspection of the bulge in the above photograph shows many points of light that are actually globular clusters. M104's spectacular dust rings harbor many younger and brighter stars, and show intricate details astronomers don't yet fully understand. The very center of the Sombrero glows across the electromagnetic spectrum, and is thought to house a large black hole. Fifty million-year-old light from the Sombrero Galaxy can be seen with a small telescope towards the constellation of Virgo.


Image Credit: Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI /NASA)

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1508/moonshorty_apollo17_1080.jpg

Apollo 17 at Shorty Crater

On the Moon, it is easy to remember where you parked. In December of 1972, Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent about 75 hours on the Moon in the Taurus-Littrow valley, while colleague Ronald Evans orbited overhead. This sharp image was taken by Cernan as he and Schmitt roamed the valley floor. The image shows Schmitt on the left with the lunar rover at the edge of Shorty Crater, near the spot where geologist Schmitt discovered orange lunar soil. The Apollo 17 crew returned with 110 kilograms of rock and soil samples, more than was returned from any of the other lunar landing sites. Now forty three years later, Cernan and Schmitt are still the last to walk on the Moon.

Image Credit: Apollo 17 Crew, NASA

[K00lKatT]

that one is a piece of history, for sure...

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1508/VirgoCluster_RBA_1080_labeled.jpg

Virgo Cluster Galaxies

Well over a thousand galaxies are known members of the Virgo Cluster, the closest large cluster of galaxies to our own local group. In fact, the galaxy cluster is difficult to appreciate all at once because it covers such a large area on the sky. This careful wide-field mosaic of telescopic images clearly records the central region of the Virgo Cluster through faint foreground dust clouds lingering above the plane of our own Milky Way galaxy. The cluster's dominant giant elliptical galaxy M87, is just below and to the left of the frame center. To the right of M87 is a string of galaxies known as Markarian's Chain. A closer examination of the image will reveal many Virgo cluster member galaxies as small fuzzy patches. Sliding your cursor over the image will label the larger galaxies using NGC catalog designations. Galaxies are also shown with Messier catalog numbers, including M84, M86, and prominent colorful spirals M88, M90, and M91. On average, Virgo Cluster galaxies are measured to be about 48 million light-years away. The Virgo Cluster distance has been used to give an important determination of the Hubble Constant and the scale of the Universe.

Image Credit & Copyright: Rogelio Bernal Andreo

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1508/hcg87_gmoss_960.jpg

HCG 87: A Small Group of Galaxies

Sometimes galaxies form groups. For example, our own Milky Way Galaxy is part of the Local Group of Galaxies. Small, compact groups, like Hickson Compact Group 87 (HCG 87) shown above, are interesting partly because they slowly self-destruct. Indeed, the galaxies of HCG 87 are gravitationally stretching each other during their 100-million year orbits around a common center. The pulling creates colliding gas that causes bright bursts of star formation and feeds matter into their active galaxy centers. HCG 87 is composed of a large edge-on spiral galaxy visible near the image center, an elliptical galaxy visible to its right, and a spiral galaxy visible near the top. The small spiral near the center might be far in the distance. Several stars from our Galaxy are also visible in the foreground. Studying groups like HCG 87 allows insight into how all galaxies form and evolve.

Image Credit: GMOS-S Commissioning Team, Gemini Observatory

[K00lKatT]

Wow!!!...for some reason this pic really grabs me, stunning....thks Capn

[Capt.Kangaroo]

Wow!!!...for some reason this pic really grabs me, stunning....thks Capn

Glad you like it.
Thanks KK...:)

[nada233]

yeah is almost like we are so close to it .I agree there Koolkatt.

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1508/MeteorBoom_vanderHoeven_750.gif

Milky Way and Exploding Meteor

Tonight the Perseid Meteor Shower reaches its maximum. Grains of icy rock will streak across the sky as they evaporate during entry into Earth's atmosphere. These grains were shed from Comet Swift-Tuttle. The Perseids result from the annual crossing of the Earth through Comet Swift-Tuttle's orbit, and are typically the most active meteor shower of the year. Although it is hard to predict the level of activity in any meteor shower, in a clear dark sky an observer might see a meteor a minute. This year's Perseids occur just before a new Moon and so the relatively dark sky should make even faint meteors visible. Meteor showers in general are best be seen from a relaxing position, away from lights. Featured here is a meteor caught exploding two weeks ago above Austria next to the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy.


Image Credit & Copyright: André van der Hoeven

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1508/crab_hubble_960.jpg

M1: The Crab Nebula from Hubble

This is the mess that is left when a star explodes. The Crab Nebula, the result of a supernova seen in mysterious filaments. The filaments are not only tremendously complex, but appear to have less mass than expelled in the original supernova and a higher speed than expected from a free explosion. The featured image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, is presented in three colors chosen for scientific interest. The Crab Nebula spans about 10 light-years. In the nebula's very center lies a pulsar: a neutron star as massive as the Sun but with only the size of a small town. The Crab Pulsar rotates about 30 times each second.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Hester, A. Loll (ASU)

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1508/CygnusCrescent_Swift_960.jpg

Central Cygnus Skyscape

In cosmic brush strokes of glowing hydrogen gas, this beautiful skyscape unfolds across the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy and the center of the northern constellation Cygnus the Swan. The featured image spans about six degrees. Bright supergiant star Gamma Cygni (Sadr) to the upper left of the image center lies in the foreground of the complex gas and dust clouds and crowded star fields. Left of Gamma Cygni, shaped like two luminous wings divided by a long dark dust lane is IC 1318, whose popular name is understandably the Butterfly Nebula. The more compact, bright nebula at the lower right is NGC 6888, the Crescent Nebula. Some distance estimates for Gamma Cygni place it at around 750 light-years while estimates for IC 1318 and NGC 6888 range from 2,000 to 5,000 light-years.

Image Credit & Copyright: Paul C. Swift

[Kimbo]

I would not mind spending a vacation there!!

[Capt.Kangaroo]

I would not mind spending a vacation there!!

You and me both brother.:)

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1508/M27_project_diBiase1024c.jpg

M27: Not a Comet

While hunting for comets in the skies above 18th century France, astronomer Charles Messier diligently kept a list of the things he encountered that were definitely not comets. This is number 27 on his now famous not-a-comet list. In fact, 21st century astronomers would identify it as a planetary nebula, but it's not a planet either, even though it may appear round and planet-like in a small telescope. Messier 27 (M27) is an excellent example of a gaseous emission nebula created as a sun-like star runs out of nuclear fuel in its core. The nebula forms as the star's outer layers are expelled into space, with a visible glow generated by atoms excited by the dying star's intense but invisible ultraviolet light. Known by the popular name of the Dumbbell Nebula, the beautifully symmetric interstellar gas cloud is over 2.5 light-years across and about 1,200 light-years away in the constellation Vulpecula. This impressive color composite highlights details within the well-studied central region and fainter, seldom imaged features in the nebula's outer halo. It incorporates broad and narrowband images recorded using filters sensitive to emission from sulfur, hydrogen and oxygen atoms.

Image Credit & Copyright: Francesco di Biase

[K00lKatT]

awesome!!!....nice pic Capn K

[nada233]

yes ,is a really nice picture.

[Capt.Kangaroo]

thanks guys...:o

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1508/cl0024images_hst_960.jpg

Giant Cluster Bends, Breaks Images

What are those strange blue objects? Many of the brightest blue images are of a single, unusual, beaded, blue, ring-like galaxy which just happens to line-up behind a giant cluster of galaxies. Cluster galaxies here typically appear yellow and -- together with the cluster's dark matter -- act as a gravitational lens. A gravitational lens can create several images of background galaxies, analogous to the many points of light one would see while looking through a wine glass at a distant street light. The distinctive shape of this background galaxy -- which is probably just forming -- has allowed astronomers to deduce that it has separate images at 4, 10, 11, and 12 o'clock, from the center of the cluster. A blue smudge near the cluster center is likely another image of the same background galaxy. In all, a recent analysis postulated that at least 33 images of 11 separate background galaxies are discernable. This spectacular photo of galaxy cluster CL0024+1654 from the Hubble Space Telescope was taken in November 2004.


Image Credit: NASA, ESA, H. Lee & H. Ford (Johns Hopkins U.)

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://i.space.com/images/i/000/031/973/original/red-sprites-2-columnar.jpg?1377102163

Column-shaped red sprites in a photo snapped Aug. 12, 2013 above Red Willow County, Neb.

Credit: Jason Ahrns

[K00lKatT]

is that from the Perseids??

[Capt.Kangaroo]

is that from the Perseids??

No, it actually occurs high above lightning and thunderstorms. They only last for less than a second. Google "Sprites". They're pretty awesome and strange phenomena.
Heres a link with video:
http://www.space.com/22457-red-sprites-lightning-photos.html?cmpid=514630_20150822_51041476&adbid=10153016438131466&adbpl=fb&adbpr=17610706465

another good link

http://www.livescience.com/39045-red-sprites-lightning-photo-gallery.html

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1508/Dione02_Cassini_960.jpg

Dione, Rings, Shadows, Saturn

Explanation: What's happening in this strange juxtaposition of moon and planet? First and foremost, Saturn's moon Dione was captured here in a dramatic panorama by the robotic Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting the giant planet. The bright and cratered moon itself spans about 1100-km, with the large multi-ringed crater Evander visible on the lower right. Since the rings of Saturn are seen here nearly edge-on, they are directly visible only as a thin horizontal line that passes behind Dione. Arcing across the bottom of the image, however, are shadows of Saturn's rings, showing some of the rich texture that could not be seen directly. In the background, few cloud features are visible on Saturn. The featured image was taken during the last planned flyby of Dione by Cassini, as the spacecraft is scheduled to dive into Saturn's atmosphere during 2017.


Image Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1508/LagoonTrifid_vdBerge_1080.jpg

A Sagittarius Triplet

These three bright nebulae are often featured in telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius and the crowded starfields of the central Milky Way. In fact, 18th century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged two of them; M8, the large nebula left of center, and colorful M20 on the right. The third, NGC 6559, is above M8, separated from the larger nebula by a dark dust lane. All three are stellar nurseries about five thousand light-years or so distant. The expansive M8, over a hundred light-years across, is also known as the Lagoon Nebula. M20's popular moniker is the Trifid. Glowing hydrogen gas creates the dominant red color of the emission nebulae, with contrasting blue hues, most striking in the Trifid, due to dust reflected starlight. The colorful skyscape recorded with telescope and digital camera also includes one of Messier's open star clusters, M21, just above the Trifid.

Image Credit & Copyright: Christian vd Berge (DSLR Astrophotograhy)

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1508/lmc_fairbairn1024x0_q100_watermark.jpg

The Large Cloud of Magellan

The 16th century Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan and his crew had plenty of time to study the southern sky during the first circumnavigation of planet Earth. As a result, two fuzzy cloud-like objects easily visible to southern hemisphere skygazers are known as the Clouds of Magellan, now understood to be satellite galaxies of our much larger, spiral Milky Way galaxy. About 160,000 light-years distant in the constellation Dorado, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is seen here in a remarkably deep, colorful, image. Spanning about 15,000 light-years or so, it is the most massive of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies and is the home of the closest supernova in modern times, SN 1987A. The prominent patch below center is 30 Doradus, also known as the magnificent Tarantula Nebula, is a giant star-forming region about 1,000 light-years across.

Image Credit & Copyright: Carlos Fairbairn

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1508/IC2177-60mHa__45m-RGBwillasch.jpg

The Seagull Nebula

A broad expanse of glowing gas and dust presents a bird-like visage to astronomers from planet Earth, suggesting its popular moniker - The Seagull Nebula. This portrait of the cosmic bird covers a 1.6 degree wide swath across the plane of the Milky Way, near the direction of Sirius, alpha star of the constellation Canis Major. Of course, the region includes objects with other catalog designations: notably NGC 2327, a compact, dusty emission region with an embedded massive star that forms the bird's head (aka the Parrot Nebula, above center). Dominated by the reddish glow of atomic hydrogen, the complex of gas and dust clouds with bright young stars spans over 100 light-years at an estimated 3,800 light-year distance.

Image Credit & Copyright: Dieter Willasch (Astro-Cabinet)

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1508/m31_gendler_960.jpg

M31: The Andromeda Galaxy

What is the nearest major galaxy to our own Milky Way Galaxy? Andromeda. In fact, our Galaxy is thought to look much like Andromeda. Together these two galaxies dominate the Local Group of galaxies. The diffuse light from Andromeda is caused by the hundreds of billions of stars that compose it. The several distinct stars that surround Andromeda's image are actually stars in our Galaxy that are well in front of the background object. Andromeda is frequently referred to as M31 since it is the 31st object on Messier's list of diffuse sky objects. M31 is so distant it takes about two million years for light to reach us from there. Although visible without aid, the above image of M31 is a digital mosaic of 20 frames taken with a small telescope. Much about M31 remains unknown, including exactly how long it will before it collides with our home galaxy.

Image Credit & Copyright: Robert Gendler

[K00lKatT]

I've seen this through a telescope, we were out in the country and I believe this guy built this telescope himself from a kit. Think it was a 3 or 4 inch reflector, I remember the images were pretty awesome..

[Capt.Kangaroo]

I've seen this through a telescope, we were out in the country and I believe this guy built this telescope himself from a kit. Think it was a 3 or 4 inch reflector, I remember the images were pretty awesome..

Yeah its a beauty in a scope. Can see it with the naked eye too. Looks like a fuzzy smudge. lol
Made some great astrophotos with my 8 inch scope too.

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1508/PlutoEnhanced_NewHorizons_960.jpg

Pluto in Enhanced Color

Pluto is more colorful than we can see. Color data and images of our Solar System's most famous dwarf planet, taken by the robotic New Horizons spacecraft during its flyby in July, have been digitally combined to give an enhanced view of this ancient world sporting an unexpectedly young surface. The featured enhanced color image is not only esthetically pretty but scientifically useful, making surface regions of differing chemical composition visually distinct. For example, the light-colored heart-shaped Tombaugh Regio on the lower right is clearly shown here to be divisible into two regions that are geologically different, with the leftmost lobe Sputnik Planum also appearing unusually smooth. New Horizons now continues on beyond Pluto, will continue to beam back more images and data, and will soon be directed to change course so that it can fly past asteroid 2014 MU69 in 2019 January.

Image Credit: NASA, Johns Hopkins Univ./APL, Southwest Research Inst.

[K00lKatT]

Wow!!..that one's a winner..nice

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://thumbs.mic.com/OTQwY2NjMTFhNyMvX0ZyUjVBUGNWb0R4dGlLNDNQOF9kTVIzaH hZPS8weDA6MTEwNXg1MjgvOTAweDQzMC9maWx0ZXJzOnF1YWxp dHkoNzApL2h0dHA6Ly9zMy5hbWF6b25hd3MuY29tL3BvbGljeW 1pYy1pbWFnZXMvbGo1M3Jpd21iMGszaHJwaHZhcjhjenN6OHp4 bDVid2xzeHR1c2F4bmU4ZTFrZmlxbzlzdDJoeW5kdHM0ZXRobS 5qcGc=.jpg

Stunning NASA Image of Three Pacific Hurricanes Is First in Recorded History

NASA captured not one, but three massive hurricanes twirling around the Pacific Ocean on the same day, the first time such a phenomenon has ever been documented, the National Hurricane Center reports. The stunning image, taken by NASA's Terra satellite, shows the three hurricanes (and one very small Hawaiian Islands chain) spread out across the vast Pacific Ocean.

At this rate, the space agency is going to need a much wider camera lens.

NASA snapped the photo on Saturday, according to the space agency. In the left of the image is Hurricane Kilo, which was the last of the three storms to reach major hurricane status on Saturday, the Weather Channel reports.

At the center is Hurricane Ignacio, which appeared close to Hawaii but won't hit the islands directly, federal weather experts said. Hurricane Jimena, the most powerful of the three hurricanes with winds topping 145 mph, appears in the right of the frame.

mic

[psycon]

^- reminds me of the movie "the day after tomorrow"..

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1508/PuppisAWebGoldman1024.jpg

Puppis A Supernova Remnant

Driven by the explosion of a massive star, supernova remnant Puppis A is blasting into the surrounding interstellar medium about 7,000 light-years away. At that distance, this colorful telescopic field based on broadband and narrowband optical image data is about 60 light-years across. As the supernova remnant expands into its clumpy, non-uniform surroundings, shocked filaments of oxygen atoms glow in green-blue hues. Hydrogen and nitrogen are in red. Light from the initial supernova itself, triggered by the collapse of the massive star's core, would have reached Earth about 3,700 years ago. The Puppis A remnant is actually seen through outlying emission from the closer but more ancient Vela supernova remnant, near the crowded plane of our Milky Way galaxy. Still glowing across the electromagnetic spectrum Puppis A remains one of the brightest sources in the X-ray sky.

Image Credit & Copyright: Don Goldman

[nada233]

now that is a very weird and intriguing picture,love it what an amazing effect.

[Capt.Kangaroo]

now that is a very weird and intriguing picture,love it what an amazing effect.

Yes,I like it...:) Strange indeed

[Farmer1]

Awesome pics simply amazing

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1509/Arp159_LRGB_Leshin1024.jpg

Arp 159 and NGC 4725

Pointy stars and peculiar galaxies span this cosmic snapshot, a telescopic view toward the well-groomed constellation Coma Berenices. Bright enough to show off diffraction spikes, the stars are in the foreground of the scene, well within our own Milky Way. But the two prominent galaxies lie far beyond our own, some 41 million light-years distant. Also known as NGC 4747, the smaller distorted galaxy at left is the 159th entry in the Arp Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, with extensive tidal tails indicative of strong gravitational interactions in its past. At about a 100,000 light-years across, its likely companion on the right is the much larger NGC 4725. At first glance NGC 4725 appears to be a normal spiral galaxy, its central region dominated by the yellowish light of cool, older stars giving way to younger hot blue star clusters along dusty spiral outskirts. Still, NGC 4725 does look a little odd with only one main spiral arm.

Image Credit & Copyright: Stephen Leshin

[K00lKatT]

another winner!!

[nada233]

yep they all make nice wall paper on pc.

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1509/airglow_lco_beletsky.jpg

Milky Way with Airglow Australis

After sunset on September 1, an exceptionally intense, reddish airglow flooded this Chilean winter night skyscape. Above a sea of clouds and flanking the celestial Milky Way, the airglow seems to ripple and flow across the northern horizon in atmospheric waves. Originating at an altitude similar to aurorae, the luminous airglow is instead due to chemiluminescence, the production of light through chemical excitation. Commonly captured with a greenish tinge by sensitive digital cameras, this reddish airglow emission is from OH molecules and oxygen atoms at extremely low densities and has often been present in southern hemisphere nights during the last few years. On this night it was visible to the eye, but seen without color. Antares and the central Milky Way lie near the top, with bright star Arcturus at left. Straddling the Milky Way close to the horizon are Vega, Deneb, and Altair, known in northern nights as the stars of the Summer Triangle.


Image Credit & Copyright: Yuri Beletsky (Carnegie Las Campanas Observatory)

[Farmer1]

Hard to believe the beauty that is unseen by many

[nada233]

thank you Captain this picture brought a lot of memory of when I was young in the south part of chile,grew up watching things like this ,thank you .

[Kimbo]

Thanks Captain!!!

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1509/launchMUOS4_deep.jpg

Atlas V Rising

Early morning risers along Florida's Space Coast, planet Earth, were treated to a launch spectacle on September 2nd. Before dawn an Atlas V rocket rose into still dark skies carrying a US Navy communications satellite from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station into Earth orbit. This minutes long exposure follows the rocket's arc climbing eastward over the Atlantic. As the rocket rises above Earth's shadow, its fiery trail becomes an eerie, noctilucent exhaust plume glinting in sunlight. Of course, the short, bright startrail just above the cloud bank is Venus rising, now appearing in planet Earth's skies as the brilliant morning star.


Image Credit & Copyright: Mike Deep

[nada233]

what a picture my lord what a beauty .

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1509/Earthrise_Apollo8_960.jpg

Earthrise


What's that rising over the edge of the Moon? Earth. About 47 years ago, in December of 1968, the Apollo 8 crew flew from the Earth to the Moon and back again. Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders were launched atop a Saturn V rocket on December 21, circled the Moon ten times in their command module, and returned to Earth on December 27. The Apollo 8 mission's impressive list of firsts includes: the first humans to journey to the Earth's Moon, the first to fly using the Saturn V rocket, and the first to photograph the Earth from deep space. As the Apollo 8 command module rounded the farside of the Moon, the crew could look toward the lunar horizon and see the Earth appear to rise, due to their spacecraft's orbital motion. Their famous picture of a distant blue Earth above the Moon's limb was a marvelous gift to the world.

Image Credit: Apollo 8, NASA

[Farmer1]

awesome had to clean my screen so i could admire the beauty

[nada233]

very outstanding picture for sure,who will ever think that man one day was going to be there,I remember going to south part of Chile and tell the farmers that and they will tell us that we where diabolic, and crazy.

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1509/shark_toet_1980.jpg

The Shark Nebula

There is no sea on Earth large enough to contain the Shark nebula. This predator apparition poses us no danger, though, as it is composed only of interstellar gas and dust. Dark dust like that featured here is somewhat like cigarette smoke and created in the cool atmospheres of giant stars. After being expelled with gas and gravitationally recondensing, massive stars may carve intricate structures into their birth cloud using their high energy light and fast stellar winds as sculpting tools. The heat they generate evaporates the murky molecular cloud as well as causing ambient hydrogen gas to disperse and glow red. During disintegration, we humans can enjoy imagining these great clouds as common icons, like we do for water clouds on Earth. Including smaller dust nebulae such as Lynds Dark Nebula 1235 and Van den Bergh 149 & 150, the Shark nebula spans about 15 light years and lies about 650 light years away toward the constellation of the King of Aethiopia (Cepheus).

Image Credit & Copyright: Maurice Toet

[Farmer1]

this is a pic taken by a local lady north of our town last night


994

[nada233]

wow ,those are nice picture of the northern light .

[Capt.Kangaroo]

Nice, thanks Farmer...:)

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1509/ngc1316_peach_960.jpg

NGC 1316: After Galaxies Collide

Astronomers turn detectives when trying to figure out the cause of startling sights like NGC 1316. Their investigation indicates that NGC 1316 is an enormous elliptical galaxy that started, about 100 million years ago, to devour a smaller spiral galaxy neighbor, NGC 1317, just above it. Supporting evidence includes the dark dust lanes characteristic of a spiral galaxy, and faint swirls and shells of stars and gas visible in this wide and deep image. One thing that remains unexplained is the unusually small globular star clusters, seen as faint dots on the image. Most elliptical galaxies have more and brighter globular clusters than NGC 1316. Yet the observed globulars are too old to have been created by the recent spiral collision. One hypothesis is that these globulars survive from an even earlier galaxy that was subsumed into NGC 1316. Another surprising attribute of NGC 1316, also known as Fornax A, is its giant lobes of gas that glow brightly in radio waves.

Image Credit & Copyright: Damian Peach/SEN

[nada233]

1002
She's a Sunflower, She's My One Flower
Pin It Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2015: Messier 63 galaxy lies about 27 million light-years from Earth in the small, northern constellation of Canes Venatici (the Hunting Dogs). The galaxy belongs to the M51 Group, in which Messier 51 shines brightest of the galaxies in that group. The spiral arms of the Messier 63 resemble a sunflower, giving rise to the nickname "Sunflower Galaxy." Pierre Mechain discovered it in 1779, and the galaxy made it into Messier’s catalogue as the 63rd object. Image released Sept. 7, 2015.

— Tom Chao

[Capt.Kangaroo]

This is one of my favorites..:)

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1509/Dark_Doodad_LRGB_lorenzi1024.jpg

NGC 4372 and the Dark Doodad


The delightful Dark Doodad Nebula drifts through southern skies, a tantalizing target for binoculars in the constellation Musca, The Fly. The dusty cosmic cloud is seen against rich starfields just south of the prominent Coalsack Nebula and the Southern Cross. Stretching for about 3 degrees across this scene the Dark Doodad is punctuated at its southern tip (lower left) by globular star cluster NGC 4372. Of course NGC 4372 roams the halo of our Milky Way Galaxy, a background object some 20,000 light-years away and only by chance along our line-of-sight to the Dark Doodad. The Dark Doodad's well defined silhouette belongs to the Musca molecular cloud, but its better known alliterative moniker was first coined by astro-imager and writer Dennis di Cicco in 1986 while observing Comet Halley from the Australian outback. The Dark Doodad is around 700 light-years distant and over 30 light-years long.

Image Credit & Copyright: Marco Lorenzi

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1509/transits_luethen.jpg

ISS Double Transit

Not once, but twice the International Space Station transits the Sun on consecutive orbits of planet Earth in this video frame composite. The scene was captured on August 22 from a single well-chosen location in Schmalenbeck, Germany where the ISS created intersecting shadow paths only around 7 kilometers wide. Crossing the solar disk in a second or less, the transits themselves were separated in time by about 90 minutes, corresponding to the space station's orbital period. while the large, flare-producing sunspot group below center, AR 2043, remained a comfortable 150 million kilometers away, the distance between camera and orbiting station was 656 kilometers for its first (upper) transit and 915 kilometers for the second more central transit. In remarkably sharp silhouette, the ISS is noticeably larger in angular size during the closer, first pass. Of course, tomorrow the Moon will transit the Sun. But even at well-chosen locations, its dark, central shadow just misses the Earth's surface creating a partial solar eclipse.

Image Credit & Copyright: Hartwig Luethen

[K00lKatT]

Very Cool!!...kinda looks like a cosmic baseball!!

[Capt.Kangaroo]

Very Cool!!...kinda looks like a cosmic baseball!!

It does...:)

[nada233]

1006[/ATTACH[ATTACH=CONFIG]1006
Barnard 92 consists of interstellar gas in a dense cloud which blocks the background light, as it floats in front of an extended hydrogen emission nebula. Dust intermixed with the gas absorbs and scatters starlight through a reflection effect, revealing the three-dimensional structures of the cloud. Image released July 2015.

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1509/PickeringsTriangleDet5_metsavainio1024.jpg

Pickering's Triangle in the Veil

Chaotic in appearance, these filaments of shocked, glowing gas break across planet Earth's sky toward the constellation of Cygnus, as part of the Veil Nebula. The Veil Nebula itself is a large supernova remnant, an expanding cloud born of the death explosion of a massive star. Light from the original supernova explosion likely reached Earth over 5,000 years ago. Blasted out in the cataclysmic event, the interstellar shock waves plow through space sweeping up and exciting interstellar material. The glowing filaments are really more like long ripples in a sheet seen almost edge on, remarkably well separated into the glow of ionized hydrogen and sulfur atoms shown in red and green, and oxygen in blue hues. Also known as the Cygnus Loop, the Veil Nebula now spans nearly 3 degrees or about 6 times the diameter of the full Moon. While that translates to over 70 light-years at its estimated distance of 1,500 light-years, this field of view spans less than one third that distance. Identified as Pickering's Triangle for a director of Harvard College Observatory and cataloged as NGC 6979, the complex of filaments might be more appropriately known as Williamina Fleming's Triangular Wisp.

Image Credit & Copyright: J-P Metsävainio (Astro Anarchy)

[Kimbo]

Beautiful, have you read about the two massive black holes that are going to collide causing that specific galaxy to be destroyed? Would love to see that!!!

[Capt.Kangaroo]

Beautiful, have you read about the two massive black holes that are going to collide causing that specific galaxy to be destroyed? Would love to see that!!!

I did. Would be awesome from afar of course. lol

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/22/science/space/more-evidence-for-coming-black-hole-collision.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1509/solarsaurus_friedman1024.jpg

A Prominence on the Sun

This eerie landscape of incandescent plasma suspended in looping and twisted magnetic fields stretched toward the Sun's eastern horizon on September 16. Captured through a backyard telescope and narrowband filter in light from ionized hydrogen, the scene reveals a gigantic prominence lofted above the solar limb. Some 600,000 kilometers across, the magnetized plasma wall would dwarf worlds of the Solar System. Ruling gas giant Jupiter can only boast a diameter of 143,000 kilometers or so, while planet Earth's diameter is less than 13,000 kilometers. Known as a hedgerow prominence for its appearance, the enormous structure is far from stable though, and such large solar prominences often erupt.

Image Credit & Copyright: Alan Friedman (Averted Imagination)

[K00lKatT]

awesome...sun pic...

[Kimbo]

Wow...really really nice!!

[Farmer1]

Looks sweet

[big dady]

Very nice pic

[nada233]

great picture as always captain.

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1509/M96_Hubble_960.jpg

Spiral Galaxy M96 from Hubble

Dust lanes seem to swirl around the core of Messier 96 in this colorful, detailed portrait of the center of a beautiful island universe. Of course M96 is a spiral galaxy, and counting the faint arms extending beyond the brighter central region, it spans 100 thousand light-years or so, making it about the size of our own Milky Way. M96, also known as NGC 3368, is known to be about 35 million light-years distant and a dominant member of the Leo I galaxy group. The featured image was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The reason for M96's asymmetry is unclear -- it could have arisen from gravitational interactions with other Leo I group galaxies, but the lack of an intra-group diffuse glow seems to indicate few recent interactions. Galaxies far in the background can be found by examining the edges of the picture.

Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA and the LEGUS Team; Acknowledgement: R. Gendler

[Capt.Kangaroo]

https://scontent-ord1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/12003239_728362507267971_717060437513478777_n.jpg? oh=f201053d2c7b6c8fce09b136c37e39ed&oe=56619D4F

The Tadpoles of Emission Nebula IC 410

Copyright: Manuel Fernández

[K00lKatT]

another winner!!..Capn K

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1509/LDN988andCompany_morales1024.jpg

LDN 988 and Friends

Stars are forming in dark, dusty molecular cloud LDN 988. Seen near picture center some 2,000 light-years distant, LDN 988 and other nearby dark nebulae were cataloged by Beverly T. Lynds in 1962 using Palomar Observatory Sky Survey plates. Narrowband and near-infrared explorations of the dark nebula reveal energetic shocks and outflows light-years across associated with dozens of newborn stars. But in this sharp optical telescopic view, the irregular outlines of LDN 988 and friends look like dancing stick figures eclipsing the rich starfields of the constellation Cygnus. From dark sites the region can be identified by eye alone. It's part of the Great Rift of dark clouds along the plane of the Milky Way galaxy known as the Northern Coalsack.

Image Credit & Copyright: Rafael RodrÃ*guez Morales

[nada233]

nice picture ,this is the first one that gives me an eerie feeling,might be the black around coming forward like trying to get me lol.

[K00lKatT]

just because you're paranoid, Nada; doesn't mean they're not all out to get you!!!...LOL

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1509/M31M33MirachMalcolm1024.jpg

M31 versus M33

Separated by about 14 degrees (28 Full Moons) in planet Earth's sky, spiral galaxies M31 at left, and M33 are both large members of the Local Group, along with our own Milky Way galaxy. This narrow- and wide-angle, multi-camera composite finds details of spiral structure in both, while the massive neighboring galaxies seem to be balanced in starry fields either side of bright Mirach, beta star in the constellation Andromeda. Mirach is just 200 light-years from the Sun. But M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, is really 2.5 million light-years distant and M33, the Triangulum Galaxy, is also about 3 million light years away. Although they look far apart, M31 and M33 are engaged in a gravitational struggle. In fact, radio astronomers have found indications of a bridge of neutral hydrogen gas that could connect the two, evidence of a closer encounter in the past. Based on measurements, gravitational simulations currently predict that the Milky Way, M31, and M33 will all undergo mutual close encounters and potentially mergers, billions of years in the future.


Image Credit & Copyright: Malcolm Park (North York Astronomical Association)

[nada233]

this picture is amazing ,reminds me of Walt Disney .Or in the youngest day great grand parent will tell us about the lucero.

[Capt.Kangaroo]

Nice blood moon pic from last night...

https://scontent-ord1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtf1/v/t1.0-9/12019826_10208050577532428_7752788159443285669_n.j pg?oh=aa0b6d166ea506ffdd746f52f372cc63&oe=56A9277B

Last nights blood moon taken from Brooklyn, NY
Credit:Erol Douglas‎

[Farmer1]

awesome pic never looked that nice here but was sweet to watch

[big dady]

I should have watch it on line cause it look a lot better very nice pic

[Capt.Kangaroo]

I should have watch it on line cause it look a lot better very nice pic

I had to. too cloudy here.:(

[big dady]

Trust me it looks better then what i saw outside

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1509/LightningEclipse_Hervas_960.jpg

Supermoon Total Lunar Eclipse and Lightning Storm

What's more rare than a supermoon total lunar eclipse? How about a supermoon total lunar eclipse over a lightning storm. Such an electrifying sequence was captured yesterday from Ibiza, an island in southeastern Spain. After planning the location for beauty, and the timing to capture the entire eclipse sequence, the only thing that had to cooperate for this astrophotographer to capture a memorable eclipse sequence was the weather. What looked to be a bother on the horizon, though, turned out to be a blessing. The composite picture features over 200 digitally combined images from the same location over the course of a night. The full moon is seen setting as it faded to red in Earth's shadow and then returned to normal. The fortuitous lightning is seen reflected in the Mediterranean to the right of the 400-meter tall rocky island of Es Vedra. Although the next total eclipse of a large and bright supermoon will occur in 2033, the next total eclipse of any full moon will occur in January 2018 and be best visible from eastern Asia and Australia.


Image Credit & Copyright: Jose Antonio Hervás

[K00lKatT]

another winner, Capn...thks..

[Farmer1]

Very cool captain

[nada233]

that is one of the best pictures I seen ,this photo sure will win a contest ,by far is a pc wall paper.

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1510/lunareclipse_27Sep_beletskycrop3.jpg

Eclipsed in Southern Skies

This stunning panorama in southern skies was recorded on the colorful night of September 27/28 from Carngegie Las Campanas Observatory. A diffuse glow and dark rifts of the central Milky Way hang over domes of the twin 6.5 meter Magellan telescopes. But most eye-catching is the deep red glow of the Moon. Immersed in Earth's shadow during the much anticipated perigee-total-lunar eclipse, the Moon's surface reflects the light of sunsets and sunrises scattered and refracted into the planet's cone-shaped umbra. Along with the dramatic hue of the eclipsed Moon, other colors of that night captured by the sensitive digital camera include the red and green shades of atmospheric airglow. Viewers can also spot the Andromeda Galaxy below the Moon, seen as a tiny smudge through the reddish airglow and lights along the horizon. The Magellanic Clouds, satellite galaxies of the Milky Way, join in at the far left of the full panorama frame.

Image Credit & Copyright: Yuri Beletsky (Carnegie Las Campanas Observatory)

[K00lKatT]

beautiful pic, has a surreal quality, thks..

[Marley]

yea looks like when i go to to mountains

[nada233]

nice colors and effects milky way looks awesome .

[Farmer1]

another awesome pic

[big dady]

You find the best of the best thanks

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1510/tle_dierickD8D_1002ozoneC1024.jpg

A Blue Blood Moon

This sharp telescopic snapshot caught late September's Harvest Moon completely immersed in Earth's dark umbral shadow, at the beginning of a total lunar eclipse. It was the final eclipse in a tetrad, a string of four consecutive total lunar eclipses. A dark apparition of the Full Moon near perigee, this total eclipse's color was a deep blood red, the lunar surface reflecting light within Earth's shadow filtered through the lower atmosphere. Seen from a lunar perspective, the reddened light comes from all the sunsets and sunrises around the edges of a silhouetted Earth. But close to the shadow's edge, the limb of the eclipsed Moon shows a distinct blue hue. The blue eclipsed moonlight is still filtered through Earth's atmosphere though, originating as rays of sunlight pass through layers high in the upper stratosphere, colored by ozone that scatters red light and transmits blue.

Image Credit & Copyright: Dominique Dierick

[big dady]

Keep them coming

[nada233]

nice blood moon,another one for the pc wallpaper.

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1510/sombrero_spitzer_1080.jpg

The Sombrero Galaxy in Infrared

This floating ring is the size of a galaxy. In fact, it is a galaxy -- or at least part of one: the photogenic Sombrero Galaxy, one of the largest galaxies in the nearby Virgo Cluster of Galaxies. The dark band of dust that obscures the mid-section of the Sombrero Galaxy in optical light actually glows brightly in infrared light. The above image, digitally sharpened, shows the infrared glow, recently recorded by the orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope, superposed in false-color on an existing image taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in optical light. The Sombrero Galaxy, also known as M104, spans about 50,000 light years across and lies 28 million light years away. M104 can be seen with a small telescope in the direction of the constellation Virgo.

Image Credit: R. Kennicutt (Steward Obs.) et al., SSC, JPL, Caltech, NASA

[Farmer1]

that looks sweet

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1509/MarsStreaks_HiRise_1080.jpg

Seasonal Streaks Point to Recent Flowing Water on Mars

What creates these changing streaks on Mars? Called Recurring Slope Linea (RSL), these dark features start on the slopes of hills and craters but don't usually extend to the bottom. What's even more unusual is that these streaks appear to change with the season, appearing fresh and growing during warm weather and disappearing during the winter. After much study, including a recent chemical analyses, a leading hypothesis has emerged that these streaks are likely created by new occurrences of liquid salty water that evaporates as it flows. The source for the briny water is still unclear, with two possibilities being condensation from the Martian atmosphere and underground reservoirs. An exciting inference is that if these briny flows are not too salty, they may be able to support microbial life on Mars even today. The featured image of a hill inside Horowitz Crater was investigated by instruments aboard the robotic Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that has been returning data from Mars since 2006.

Image Credit: NASA, JPL, U. Arizona

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1510/gendlerM83-New-HST-ESO-S1024.jpg

M83: The Thousand-Ruby Galaxy

Big, bright, and beautiful, spiral galaxy M83 lies a mere twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long constellation Hydra. Prominent spiral arms traced by dark dust lanes and blue star clusters lend this galaxy its popular name, The Southern Pinwheel. But reddish star forming regions that dot the sweeping arms highlighted in this sparkling color composite also suggest another nickname, The Thousand-Ruby Galaxy. About 40,000 light-years across, M83 is a member of a group of galaxies that includes active galaxy Centaurus A. In fact, the core of M83 itself is bright at x-ray energies, showing a high concentration of neutron stars and black holes left from an intense burst of star formation. This sharp composite color image also features spiky foreground Milky Way stars and distant background galaxies. The image data was taken from the Subaru Telescope, the European Southern Observatory's Wide Field Imager camera, and the Hubble Legacy Archive.

Image Credit: Subaru Telescope (NAOJ), Hubble Space Telescope,
European Southern Observatory - Processing & Copyright: Robert Gendler

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://i.space.com/images/i/000/037/612/original/astronaut-earth-moonset.jpg?1394644940

Moon Drifts Out Of View

Earth's moon sets above the atmosphere of our planet. Picture taken by Koichi Wakata, from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://i.space.com/images/i/000/042/924/original/iris-nebula-chft-oct-2014.jpg?1413575521

Iris, the Stars Are Bright

The Iris Nebula, NGC 7023, lies 1,300 light-years away in the constellation Cepheus.

Credit: Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope/Coelum

[Capt.Kangaroo]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1510/PerseusCloud_hilborn1024.jpg

Stardust in Perseus

This cosmic expanse of dust, gas, and stars covers some 6 degrees on the sky in the heroic constellation Perseus. At upper left in the gorgeous skyscape is the intriguing young star cluster IC 348 and neighboring Flying Ghost Nebula. At right, another active star forming region NGC 1333 is connected by dark and dusty tendrils on the outskirts of the giant Perseus Molecular Cloud, about 850 light-years away. Other dusty nebulae are scattered around the field of view, along with the faint reddish glow of hydrogen gas. In fact, the cosmic dust tends to hide the newly formed stars and young stellar objects or protostars from prying optical telescopes. Collapsing due to self-gravity, the protostars form from the dense cores embedded in the dusty molecular cloud. At the molecular cloud's estimated distance, this field of view would span almost 90 light-years.

Image Credit & Copyright: Lynn Hilborn

[Farmer1]

everyone of those pics are awesome

[Capt.Kangaroo]

everyone of those pics are awesome

Thanks farmer, glad you enjoy them...:)

[catz]

I never get tired of the pictures and reading about them. Never ever stop please.

[K00lKatT]

I agree, Rocky, I really enjoy them myself, thks & big thanks to Capn K who takes the time for us...

[Capt.Kangaroo]

I never get tired of the pictures and reading about them. Never ever stop please.

I agree, Rocky, I really enjoy them myself, thks & big thanks to Capn K who takes the time for us...

Thanks guys, glad people are diggin' them...:)