The X-Ray Sky from eROSITA

2020-06-23 TeamMPEIKI

What if you could see X-rays? The night sky would seem a strange and unfamiliar place. X-rays are about 1,000 times more energetic than visible light photons and are produced by violent explosions and high temperature astronomical environments. ...

Moon Mountains Magnified during Ring...

2020-06-22 Wang LetianEyes at Night

What are those dark streaks in this composite image of yesterday's solar eclipse? They are reversed shadows of mountains at the edge of the Moon. The center image, captured from Xiamen, China, has the Moon's center directly in front of the Sun's ...

Moon Occults Venus

2020-06-21 Dzmitry Kananovich

It may look like Earthrise, but it's actually Venus-set. Just after sunrise two days ago, both the Moon and Venus also rose. But then the Moon overtook Venus. In the featured image sequence centered on the Moon, Venus is shown increasingly ...

Northern Summer on Titan

2020-06-20

Today's solstice brings summer to planet Earth's northern hemisphere. But the northern summer solstice arrived for ringed planet Saturn over three years ago on May 24, 2017. Orbiting the gas giant, Saturn's moon Titan experiences the Saturnian ...

The Veins of Heaven

2020-06-19 Ruslan Merzlyakov

Transfusing sunlight through a darkened sky, this beautiful display of noctilucent clouds was captured earlier this week, reflected in calm waters from Nykobing Mors, Denmark. From the edge of space, about 80 kilometers above Earth's surface, the ...

The Tadpoles of IC 410

2020-06-18 Trevor Jones

This telescopic close-up shows off the central regions of otherwise faint emission nebula IC 410, captured under backyard suburban skies with narrowband filters. It also features two remarkable inhabitants of the cosmic pond of gas and dust. ...

Magnetic Streamlines of the Milky Way

2020-06-17

What role do magnetic fields play in interstellar physics? Analyses of observations by ESA's Planck satellite of emission by small magnetically-aligned dust grains reveal previously unknown magnetic field structures in our Milky Way Galaxy -- as ...

APOD is 25 Years Old Today

2020-06-16

Welcome to the quadranscentennial year of the Astronomy Picture of the Day. Perhaps a source of consistency for some, APOD is still here. To help celebrate APOD's Silver Anniversary, some of APOD's TVAoTaSMD have recorded a birthday greeting and ...

A Ring of Fire Sunrise Solar Eclipse

2020-06-15

What's rising above the horizon behind those clouds? It's the Sun. Most sunrises don't look like this, though, because most sunrises don't include the Moon. In the early morning of 2013 May 10, however, from Western Australia, the Moon was ...

Happy People Dancing on Planet Earth

2020-06-14

What are these humans doing? Dancing. Many humans on Earth exhibit periods of happiness, and one method of displaying happiness is dancing. Happiness and dancing transcend national boundaries and occur in practically every human society. Above, ...