Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD)

[Plenum]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html

this is a pretty amazing website, with archives going all the way back to 1995!

the wonders of the cosmos truly!

[ocean50]

That website is cool! I love the moon green flash. I've seen a lot of sun green flashes, but never a moon.

[Parsons]

WOW! great find! I always try to google finding cool (real only, no CGI crap or image editing) looking potential background for my laptop!

They are always hard to find because some stupid wallpaper website gets ahold of it and advertising their website by plastering over the image in 1 corner with the link.

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Closeup (deep field) recent image of the Pleiades in spirit of the upcoming eclipse:

[Shemaya]

That is really beautiful Duncan, thank you for posting it

Venus and Pleiades

[Plenum]

The Pillars of Eagle Castle

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130714.html

[Spaced]

ahhh, feels like home

[Melissa]

Eye candy galore..

[Parsons]

{Click to Enlarge}

{Click to Enlarge}

{Click to Enlarge}

[Jade]

What a delightful thread bump! Thank you!

[Crysis]

More images at NASA:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassin...30722.html

[Jeremy]

It'd be even more beautiful if that's what it really looked like but sadly those are all false color images

[indiGo33]

Helix Nebula, aka 'Eye of God'

[Lycen]

Oh how wonderful, just yesterday I watched intently the same picture you posted indiGo! Did not know what I was watching but all the same I did so, I am happy to know at least some name of this .)

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Saturn's Hexagon and Rings

Why would clouds form a hexagon on Saturn? Nobody is sure. Originally discovered during the Voyager flybys of Saturn in the 1980s, nobody has ever seen anything like it anywhere else in the Solar System. If Saturn's South Pole wasn't strange enough with its rotating vortex, Saturn's North Pole might be considered even stranger. The bizarre cloud pattern is shown above in great detail by a recent image taken by the Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft. This and similar images show the stability of the hexagon even 20+ years after Voyager. Movies of Saturn's North Pole show the cloud structure maintaining its hexagonal structure while rotating. Unlike individual clouds appearing like a hexagon on Earth, the Saturn cloud pattern appears to have six well defined sides of nearly equal length. Four Earths could fit inside the hexagon. Imaged from the side, the dark shadow of the Jovian planet is seen eclipsing part of its grand system of rings, partly visible on the upper right.

[Plenum]

some nice choices there Parsons. Esp the last one.

I like

(y)

[Unbound]

Man, all those stars and galaxies, billions upon billions, infinity makes my head spin.

[Lycen]

It'd be even more beautiful if that's what it really looked like but sadly those are all false color images

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Yes a common saying, but so true. Could what one thinks they see make it any less beautiful? I would say yes it could, but would one want that? Food for thought .)

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Horsehead Nebula (click on pic to enlarge)

The Horsehead Nebula is part of a much larger complex in the constellation Orion. Known collectively as the Orion Molecular Cloud, it also houses other famous objects such as the Great Orion Nebula (M42), the Flame Nebula, and Barnard's Loop. At about 1,500 light-years away, this complex is one of the nearest and most easily photographed regions in which massive stars are being formed.

Hubble's pairing of infrared sensitivity and unparalleled resolution offers a tantalizing hint of what the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, set for launch in 2018, will be able to do.

[Plenum]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130727.html

Atacama's Cloudy Night

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

Explanation: Storm clouds do sometimes come to Chile's Atacama desert, known as the driest place on Earth. These washed through the night sky just last month during the winter season, captured in this panoramic view. Drifting between are cosmic clouds more welcome by the region's astronomical residents though, including dark dust clouds in silhouette against the crowded starfields and nebulae of the central Milky Way. Below and right of center lies the Large Magellanic Cloud, appropriately named for its appearance in starry southern skies. City lights about 200 kilometers distant still glow along the horizon at the right, while bright star Canopus shines above them in the cloudy sky.

hi-res here: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1307/mwc...letsky.jpg

[isis]

FINALLY THE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN IS OVER!!! GIVE US BACK OUR APOD ALREADY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Plenum]

FINALLY THE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN IS OVER!!! GIVE US BACK OUR APOD ALREADY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

lol.

to that I add:



a somewhat enhanced image of Saturn from Cassini. Looks surreal

[Plenum]

Io in True Color

Explanation: The strangest moon in the Solar System is bright yellow. This picture, an attempt to show how Io would appear in the "true colors" perceptible to the average human eye, was taken in 1999 July by the Galileo spacecraft that orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003. Io's colors derive from sulfur and molten silicate rock. The unusual surface of Io is kept very young by its system of active volcanoes. The intense tidal gravity of Jupiter stretches Io and damps wobbles caused by Jupiter's other Galilean moons. The resulting friction greatly heats Io's interior, causing molten rock to explode through the surface. Io's volcanoes are so active that they are effectively turning the whole moon inside out. Some of Io's volcanic lava is so hot it glows in the dark.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140330.html

[Plenum]

Persistent Saturnian Auroras

[Parsons]

[isis]

[Ashim]

[Nuria Luz]

Beautiful photos!! thank you everyone!!

[native]

There's also Botany Photo of the Day

[indiGo33]

Not an actual image, but this is what a black hole could look like according to Theoretical Physicist
Kip Thorne (screenshot from movie interstellar)

[Alexis]

How to identify that light in the sky
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140609.html

Lol

[Plenum]

How to identify that light in the sky
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140609.html

lol Ma*at

[native]

Today's APOD is a video dubbed Wanderers. It's pretty cool.