APOD

[missionman]

I would add my 2 cents but, WOW......

 

All I can say is......

 

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Prince Sphinc-Tor]

QUOTE (RushRevisited @ Jan 21 2009, 09:41 AM)

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0901/lenticular_picking.jpg Explanation: What's happening above those mountains? Several clouds are stacked up into one striking lenticular cloud. Normally, air moves much more horizontally than it does vertically. Sometimes, however, such as when wind comes off of a mountain or a hill, relatively strong vertical oscillations take place as the air stabilizes. The dry air at the top of an oscillation may be quite stratified in moisture content, and hence forms clouds at each layer where the air saturates with moisture. The result can be a lenticular cloud with a strongly layered appearance. The above picture was taken in 2002 looking southwest over the Tarurua Range mountains from North Island, New Zealand.

Amazing!!!!

 

I love to watch the skies...at night and in the daytime...lenticular clouds are totally cool!!!

 

But that's not astronomy...that's meteorology!!

[RushRevisited]

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0902/carina_eso.jpg

 

Explanation: A jewel of the southern sky, the Great Carina Nebula, aka NGC 3372, spans over 300 light-years, one of our Galaxy's largest star forming regions. Like the smaller, more northerly Great Orion Nebula, the Carina Nebula is easily visible to the unaided eye, though at a distance of 7,500 light-years it is some 5 times farther away. This stunning telescopic view from the 2.2-meter ESO/MPG telescope La Silla Observatory in Chile reveals remarkable details of the region's glowing filaments of interstellar gas and dark cosmic dust clouds. The Carina Nebula is home to young, extremely massive stars, including the still enigmatic variable Eta Carinae, a star with well over 100 times the mass of the Sun. Eta Carinae is the bright star left of the central dark notch in this field and near the dusty Keyhole Nebula (NGC 3324).

[Inthend]

Spectacular as always RR.

Btw, I've had the lenticular clouds as my screensaver since u posted it.

[RushRevisited]

QUOTE (Inthend @ Feb 17 2009, 10:43 PM)

Spectacular as always RR. Btw, I've had the lenticular clouds as my screensaver since u posted it.

Me too!!!

[RushRevisited]

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0902/m42_hst.jpg

 

Explanation: Few cosmic vistas excite the imagination like the Orion Nebula. Also known as M42, the nebula's glowing gas surrounds hot young stars at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud only 1,500 light-years away. The Orion Nebula offers one of the best opportunities to study how stars are born partly because it is the nearest large star-forming region, but also because the nebula's energetic stars have blown away obscuring gas and dust clouds that would otherwise block our view - providing an intimate look at a range of ongoing stages of starbirth and evolution. This detailed image of the Orion Nebula is the sharpest ever, constructed using data from the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys and the European Southern Observatory's La Silla 2.2 meter telescope. The mosaic contains a billion pixels at full resolution and reveals about 3,000 stars.

[RushRevisited]

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0902/Lulin2_richins.jpg

 

Explanation: Go outside tonight and see Comet Lulin. From a dark location, you should need only a good star map and admirable perseverance -- although wide-field binoculars might help. Yesterday, Comet Lulin passed its closest to Earth, so that the comet will remain near its brightest over the next few days. The comet is currently almost 180 degrees around from the Sun and so visible nearly all night long, but will appear to move on the sky about 10 full moons a night. Pictured above, Comet Lulin was captured in spectacular form two nights ago from New Mexico, USA. The central coma of the comet is appearing quite green, a color likely indicating glowing cyanogen and molecular carbon gasses. Bright stars and a distant spiral galaxy are clearly visible in the image background. The yellow dust tail, reflecting sunlight, is visible sprawling to the coma's left trailing behind the comet, while the textured bluish-glowing ion tail is visible to the coma's right, pointing away from the Sun. Over the past few weeks, from the current vantage point of Earth, these two tails appeared to point in opposite directions. Comet Lulin is expected to slowly fade over the next few weeks.

[Lerxster]

QUOTE (Prince Sphinc-Tor @ Jan 24 2009, 08:20 AM)

QUOTE (RushRevisited @ Jan 21 2009, 09:41 AM) http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0901/lenticular_picking.jpg Explanation: What's happening above those mountains? Several clouds are stacked up into one striking lenticular cloud. Normally, air moves much more horizontally than it does vertically. Sometimes, however, such as when wind comes off of a mountain or a hill, relatively strong vertical oscillations take place as the air stabilizes. The dry air at the top of an oscillation may be quite stratified in moisture content, and hence forms clouds at each layer where the air saturates with moisture. The result can be a lenticular cloud with a strongly layered appearance. The above picture was taken in 2002 looking southwest over the Tarurua Range mountains from North Island, New Zealand. Amazing!!!!   I love to watch the skies...at night and in the daytime...lenticular clouds are totally cool!!!   But that's not astronomy...that's meteorology!! It looks like evil is stirring in Mordor. Cool as hell photo.

[RushRevisited]

For you-know-who:

 

 

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0903/ngc2074a_hst.jpg

 

Explanation: It may look like a grazing seahorse, but the dark object toward the image right is actually a pillar of smoky dust about 20 light years long. The curiously-shaped dust structure occurs in our neighboring Large Magellanic Cloud, in a star forming region very near the expansive Tarantula Nebula. The energetic nebula is creating a star cluster, NGC 2074, whose center is visible just off the top of the image in the direction of the neck of the seahorse. The representative color image was taken last year by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 in honor of Hubble's 100,000th trip around the Earth. As young stars in the cluster form, their light and winds will slowly erode the dust pillars away over the next million years.

[Gompers]

QUOTE (Lerxster @ Feb 25 2009, 09:40 PM)

QUOTE (Prince Sphinc-Tor @ Jan 24 2009, 08:20 AM) QUOTE (RushRevisited @ Jan 21 2009, 09:41 AM) http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0901/lenticular_picking.jpg Explanation: What's happening above those mountains? Several clouds are stacked up into one striking lenticular cloud. Normally, air moves much more horizontally than it does vertically. Sometimes, however, such as when wind comes off of a mountain or a hill, relatively strong vertical oscillations take place as the air stabilizes. The dry air at the top of an oscillation may be quite stratified in moisture content, and hence forms clouds at each layer where the air saturates with moisture. The result can be a lenticular cloud with a strongly layered appearance. The above picture was taken in 2002 looking southwest over the Tarurua Range mountains from North Island, New Zealand. Amazing!!!!   I love to watch the skies...at night and in the daytime...lenticular clouds are totally cool!!!   But that's not astronomy...that's meteorology!! It looks like evil is stirring in Mordor. Cool as hell photo. I need to find this image larger for a new desktop image.

[RushRevisited]

QUOTE (Gompers @ Mar 26 2009, 03:38 PM)

QUOTE (Lerxster @ Feb 25 2009, 09:40 PM) QUOTE (Prince Sphinc-Tor @ Jan 24 2009, 08:20 AM) QUOTE (RushRevisited @ Jan 21 2009, 09:41 AM) http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0901/lenticular_picking.jpg Explanation: What's happening above those mountains? Several clouds are stacked up into one striking lenticular cloud. Normally, air moves much more horizontally than it does vertically. Sometimes, however, such as when wind comes off of a mountain or a hill, relatively strong vertical oscillations take place as the air stabilizes. The dry air at the top of an oscillation may be quite stratified in moisture content, and hence forms clouds at each layer where the air saturates with moisture. The result can be a lenticular cloud with a strongly layered appearance. The above picture was taken in 2002 looking southwest over the Tarurua Range mountains from North Island, New Zealand. Amazing!!!!   I love to watch the skies...at night and in the daytime...lenticular clouds are totally cool!!!   But that's not astronomy...that's meteorology!! It looks like evil is stirring in Mordor. Cool as hell photo. I need to find this image larger for a new desktop image.   Sent... Check your email.

[Gompers]

QUOTE (RushRevisited @ Mar 26 2009, 06:34 PM)

QUOTE (Gompers @ Mar 26 2009, 03:38 PM) QUOTE (Lerxster @ Feb 25 2009, 09:40 PM) QUOTE (Prince Sphinc-Tor @ Jan 24 2009, 08:20 AM) QUOTE (RushRevisited @ Jan 21 2009, 09:41 AM) http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0901/lenticular_picking.jpg Explanation: What's happening above those mountains? Several clouds are stacked up into one striking lenticular cloud. Normally, air moves much more horizontally than it does vertically. Sometimes, however, such as when wind comes off of a mountain or a hill, relatively strong vertical oscillations take place as the air stabilizes. The dry air at the top of an oscillation may be quite stratified in moisture content, and hence forms clouds at each layer where the air saturates with moisture. The result can be a lenticular cloud with a strongly layered appearance. The above picture was taken in 2002 looking southwest over the Tarurua Range mountains from North Island, New Zealand. Amazing!!!!   I love to watch the skies...at night and in the daytime...lenticular clouds are totally cool!!!   But that's not astronomy...that's meteorology!! It looks like evil is stirring in Mordor. Cool as hell photo. I need to find this image larger for a new desktop image.   Sent... Check your email. Got it. Damn, nature is great. Thanks!

[RushRevisited]

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0903/sn94d_highz.jpg

 

 

Explanation: Eleven years ago results were first presented indicating that most of the energy in our universe is not in stars or galaxies but is tied to space itself. In the language of cosmologists, a large cosmological constant is directly implied by new distant supernovae observations. Suggestions of a cosmological constant (lambda) were not new -- they have existed since the advent of modern relativistic cosmology. Such claims were not usually popular with astronomers, though, because lambda is so unlike known universe components, because lambda's value appeared limited by other observations, and because less- strange cosmologies without lambda had previously done well in explaining the data. What is noteworthy here is the seemingly direct and reliable method of the observations and the good reputations of the scientists conducting the investigations. Over the past eleven years, independent teams of astronomers have continued to accumulate data that appears to confirm the existence of dark energy and the unsettling result of a presently accelerating universe. The above picture of a supernova that occurred in 1994 on the outskirts of a spiral galaxy was taken by one of these collaborations.

[baxtrice]

QUOTE (RushRevisited @ Mar 30 2009, 10:21 AM)

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0903/sn94d_highz.jpg Explanation: Eleven years ago results were first presented indicating that most of the energy in our universe is not in stars or galaxies but is tied to space itself. In the language of cosmologists, a large cosmological constant is directly implied by new distant supernovae observations. Suggestions of a cosmological constant (lambda) were not new -- they have existed since the advent of modern relativistic cosmology. Such claims were not usually popular with astronomers, though, because lambda is so unlike known universe components, because lambda's value appeared limited by other observations, and because less- strange cosmologies without lambda had previously done well in explaining the data. What is noteworthy here is the seemingly direct and reliable method of the observations and the good reputations of the scientists conducting the investigations. Over the past eleven years, independent teams of astronomers have continued to accumulate data that appears to confirm the existence of dark energy and the unsettling result of a presently accelerating universe. The above picture of a supernova that occurred in 1994 on the outskirts of a spiral galaxy was taken by one of these collaborations.

Wow! That's amazing. Actually there's alot of amazing in all these pics. Thanks for posting RR!

[RushRevisited]

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0903/tarantula2_hst.jpg

 

Explanation: In the heart of monstrous Tarantula Nebula lies huge bubbles of energetic gas, long filaments of dark dust, and unusually massive stars. In the center of this heart, is a knot of stars so dense that it was once thought to be a single star. This star cluster, labeled as R136 or NGC 2070, is visible just above the center of the above image and home to a great number of hot young stars. The energetic light from these stars continually ionizes nebula gas, while their energetic particle wind blows bubbles and defines intricate filaments. The above representative-color picture of this great LMC nebula details its tumultuous center. The Tarantula Nebula, also known as the 30 Doradus nebula, is one of the largest star-formation regions known, and has been creating unusually strong episodes of star formation every few million years.

[Tinwoodsman]

 

This is one of my favorite threads to visit ... thanks for sharing this!

 

 

It's like going to watch the fireworks when I was just a kid

[Gompers]

These pictures never fail to astound. So much to learn and understand...life is too short.

[RushRevisited]

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0904/ngc7049_hst.jpg

 

Explanation: How was this unusual looking galaxy created? No one is sure, especially since spiral galaxy NGC 7049 looks so strange. NGC 7049's strikingly appearance is primarily due to an unusually prominent dust ring seen mostly in silhouette. The opaque ring is much darker than the din of millions of bright stars glowing behind it. Besides the dark dust, NGC 7049 appears similar to a smooth elliptical galaxy, although featuring surprisingly few globular star clusters. NGC 7049 is pictured above as imaged recently by the Hubble Space Telescope. The bright star near the top of NGC 7049 is an unrelated foreground star in our own Galaxy. Not visible here is unusual central polar ring of gas circling out of the plane near the galaxy's center. Since NGC 7049 is the brightest galaxy in its cluster of galaxies, its formation might be fostered by several prominent and recent galaxy collisions. NGC 7049 spans about 150 thousand light years and lies about 100 million light years away toward the constellation of Indus.

[workingcinderellaman]

cool!

[*Limelight*]

QUOTE (RushRevisited @ Apr 8 2009, 06:51 AM)

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0904/ngc7049_hst.jpg Explanation: How was this unusual looking galaxy created? No one is sure, especially since spiral galaxy NGC 7049 looks so strange. NGC 7049's strikingly appearance is primarily due to an unusually prominent dust ring seen mostly in silhouette. The opaque ring is much darker than the din of millions of bright stars glowing behind it. Besides the dark dust, NGC 7049 appears similar to a smooth elliptical galaxy, although featuring surprisingly few globular star clusters. NGC 7049 is pictured above as imaged recently by the Hubble Space Telescope. The bright star near the top of NGC 7049 is an unrelated foreground star in our own Galaxy. Not visible here is unusual central polar ring of gas circling out of the plane near the galaxy's center. Since NGC 7049 is the brightest galaxy in its cluster of galaxies, its formation might be fostered by several prominent and recent galaxy collisions. NGC 7049 spans about 150 thousand light years and lies about 100 million light years away toward the constellation of Indus.

Wow, that is amazing.

[Lerxster]

http://i267.photobucket.com/albums/ii282/Lerxster/atlantisun2.jpg

 

In this tightly cropped image, the NASA space shuttle Atlantis is seen in silhouette during solar transit, Tuesday, May 12, 2009, from Florida. This image was made before Atlantis and the crew of STS-125 had grappled the Hubble Space Telescope.

 

The phtographer made this image using a solar-filtered Takahashi 5-inch refracting telescope and a Canon 5D Mark II digital camera.

 

Image Credit: NASA/Thierry Legault

 

[Ya_Big_Tree]

QUOTE (Lerxster @ May 27 2009, 05:27 AM)

http://i267.photobucket.com/albums/ii282/Lerxster/atlantisun2.jpg In this tightly cropped image, the NASA space shuttle Atlantis is seen in silhouette during solar transit, Tuesday, May 12, 2009, from Florida. This image was made before Atlantis and the crew of STS-125 had grappled the Hubble Space Telescope. The phtographer made this image using a solar-filtered Takahashi 5-inch refracting telescope and a Canon 5D Mark II digital camera. Image Credit: NASA/Thierry Legault

Wow that really reminds you of how tiny and insignificant we really are in this vast universe.

[RushRevisited]

Had to pop in to post this one, as it relates to Cygnus X-1:

 

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0906/cygx1bubble_cullen_annotated.jpg

 

 

Explanation: What happens to matter that falls toward an energetic black hole? In the case of Cygnus X-1, perhaps little of that matter actually makes it in. Infalling gas may first collide not only with itself but with an accretion disk of swirling material surrounding the black hole. The result may be a microquasar that glows across the electromagnetic spectrum and produces powerful jets that expel much of the infalling matter back into the cosmos at near light speed before it can even approach the black hole's event horizon. Confirmation that black hole jets may create expanding shells has come recently from the discovery of shells surrounding Cygnus X-1. Pictured above on the upper right is one such shell quite possibly created by the jet of microquasar and black hole candidate Cygnus X-1. Rolling your cursor over the image will bring up an annotated version. The physical processes that create the black hole jets is a topic that continues to be researched.

[EveryNerveAware]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1008/NGC1365_pugh900c.jpg

 

Explanation: Barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 is truly a majestic island universe some 200,000 light-years across. Located a mere 60 million

light-years away toward the chemical constellation Fornax, NGC 1365 is a dominant member of the well-studied Fornax galaxy cluster.

This impressively sharp color image shows intense star forming regions at the ends of the bar and along the spiral arms, and details of dust

lanes cutting across the galaxy's bright core. At the core lies a supermassive black hole. Astronomers think NGC 1365's prominent bar plays a

crucial role in the galaxy's evolution, drawing gas and dust into a star-forming maelstrom and ultimately feeding material into the central black hole.

[EveryNerveAware]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1009/vela_lorenzi_c0.jpg

 

Explanation: 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 four frame mosaic is over 10 degrees wide, centered on the glowing filaments of the Vela Supernova Remnant, the 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.