Foto kampelis...

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Bright Galaxy NGC 2903

Explanation: Spiral galaxy NGC 2903 is only some 20 million light-years distant in the constellation Leo. One of the brighter galaxies visible from the northern hemisphere, it is surprisingly missing from Charles Messier's famous catalog of celestial sights. This impressively sharp color image shows off the galaxy's beautiful blue spiral arms. Included in the ground-based telescopic view are intriguing details of NGC 2903's central regions -- a remarkable mix of old and young star clusters with immense dust and gas clouds. In fact, NGC 2903 exhibits an exceptional rate of star formation activity near its center, also bright in radio, infrared, ultraviolet, and x-ray bands. Just a little smaller than our own Milky Way, NGC 2903 is about 80,000 light-years across.

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Infrared Trifid

Explanation: The Trifid Nebula, aka 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.

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The Eskimo Nebula from Hubble

Explanation: In 1787, astronomer William Herschel discovered the Eskimo Nebula. From the ground, NGC 2392 resembles a person's head surrounded by a parka hood. In 2000, the Hubble Space Telescope imaged the Eskimo Nebula. From space, the nebula displays gas clouds so complex they are not fully understood. The Eskimo Nebula is clearly a planetary nebula, and the gas seen above composed the outer layers of a Sun-like star only 10,000 years ago. The inner filaments visible above are being ejected by strong wind of particles from the central star. The outer disk contains unusual light-year long orange filaments.

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Saulė 19,5 nm spektro diapazone...

[ziko]

ka čia bepridursi-gražu

[Juozelis]

Vakar, antros dienos pusej, teko stebeti Saules spinduliu zaisma debesyje. Grazus dangaus reiskinukas, debeselis atrode kaip kometa.

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Star Factory Messier 17

Explanation: Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, the star factory known as Messier 17 lies some 5,500 light-years away in the nebula-rich constellation Sagittarius. At that distance, this 30 arcminute field of view spans almost 50 light-years. Stellar winds and energetic light from hot, massive stars formed from M17's stock of cosmic gas and dust have slowly carved away at the remaining interstellar material producing the cavernous appearance and undulating shapes. Colors in the gorgeous image were picked to emphasize light emitted by specific elements in the nebula excited by the energetic starlight. Red indicates emission from sulfur, green from hydrogen, and blue from oxygen. M17 is also known as the Omega Nebula or the Swan Nebula.

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The Trifid Nebula in Stars and Dust

Explanation: Unspeakable beauty and unimaginable bedlam can be found together in the Trifid Nebula. Also known as M20, this photogenic nebula is visible with good binoculars towards the constellation of Sagittarius. The energetic processes of star formation create not only the colors but the chaos. The red-glowing gas results from high-energy starlight striking interstellar hydrogen gas. The dark dust filaments that lace M20 were created in the atmospheres of cool giant stars and in the debris from supernovae explosions. Which bright young stars light up the blue reflection nebula is still being investigated. The light from M20 we see today left perhaps 3000 years ago, although the exact distance remains unknown. Light takes about 50 years to cross M20.

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The Tail of a Wonderful Star

Explanation: To seventeenth century astronomers, Omicron Ceti or Mira was known as a wonderful star, a star whose brightness could change dramatically in the course of about 11 months. Mira is now seen as the archetype of an entire class of long-period variable stars. Surprisingly, modern astronomers have only recently discovered another striking characteristic of Mira -- an enormous comet-like tail nearly 13 light-years long. The discovery was made using ultraviolet image data from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) satellite. Billions of years ago Mira was likely similar to our Sun, but has now become a swollen red giant star, its outer layers of material blowing off into interstellar space. Fluorescing in ultraviolet light, the cast off material trails behind the giant star as it plows through the surrounding interstellar medium at 130 kilometers per second. The amount of material in Mira's tail is estimated to be equivalent to 3,000 times the mass of planet Earth. About 400 light-years away toward the constellation Cetus, Mira is presently too faint to be seen by the unaided eye, but will become visible again in mid-November.

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Unusual Cratering on Saturn's Dione

Explanation: Why does one half of Dione have more craters than the other? Start with the fact that Saturn's moon Dione always has one side that faces Saturn, and always has one side that faces away. This is similar to Earth's Moon. This tidal locking means that one side of Dione always leads as the moon progresses in its orbit, while the other side always trails. Dione should therefore have undergone a significant amount of impacts on its leading half. But the current leading half of Dione is less cratered than the trailing half! A possible explanation is that some impacts were so large they spun Dione, sometimes changing the part that suffered the highest impact rate before the moon's spin again became locked. Pictured above, it is the top part of Dione that appears significantly more cratered than the bottom half.

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The Four Suns of HD 98800

Explanation: How would it look to have four suns in the sky? Planets of the HD 98800 system, if they exist, would experience such a view. HD 98800 is a multiple star system about 150 light years from Earth -- right in our section of the Milky Way Galaxy. For years it has been known that HD 98800 consists of two pairs of double stars, with one pair surrounded by a disk of dust. The star pairs are located about 50 AU from each other -- in comparison just outside the orbit of Pluto. Recent data from the Earth-trailing Spitzer Space Telescope in infrared light, however, indicate that the dust disk has gaps that appear consistent with being cleared by planets orbiting in the disk. If so, one planet appears to be orbiting at a distance similar to Mars of our own Solar System. Pictured above is an artist's drawing of how the HD 98800 system might appear to a nearby observer.

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The Most Distant Sun

Explanation: When is the Sun most distant from Earth? It happened again just this past weekend. A common misconception is that the Sun is most distant during the winter, when it's the coldest. In truth, however, the seasonal temperatures are more greatly influenced by the number of daylight hours and how high the Sun rises. For example, during northern winter, the tilt of the Earth causes the Sun to be above the horizon for a shorter time and remain lower in the sky than in northern summer. The picture compares the relative size of the Sun during Earth's closest approach in January (northern winter) on the left, and in July (northern summer) on the right. The angular size of the Sun is noticeably smaller during July, when it is farther away. If the Earth's orbit was perfectly circular, the Sun would always appear to be the same size. These two solar images were taken from Spain during 2006, but the same effect can be seen in any year from any Earth-bound location.

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Venus Near the Moon

Explanation: The two brightest objects in the night sky appeared to go right past each other last week. On the night of May 19, Earth's Moon and the planet Venus were visible in the same part of the sky, and at closest approach were less than one degree apart. The conjunction was captured in the above image taken from near Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. Venus appears on the lower left of the above photo. The spires that appear to emanate from Venus are diffraction spikes caused by the camera itself. The image is so clear that craters on the Moon are resolved. Of course, the real physical distance between the two heavenly bodies was not unusually small -- the apparent conjunction was really just an illusion of perspective. Although Earth's Moon passes Venus once each month, such a close passing visible in the evening sky is more rare.

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NGC 6302_Big, Bright, Bug Nebula

Explanation: The bright clusters and nebulae of planet Earth's night sky are often named for flowers or insects, and NGC 6302 is no exception. With an estimated surface temperature of about 250,000 degrees C, the central star of this particular planetary nebula is exceptionally hot though -- shining brightly in ultraviolet light but hidden from direct view by a dense torus of dust. Above is a dramatically detailed close-up of the dying star's nebula recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope. Cutting across a bright cavity of ionized gas, the dust torus surrounding the central star is in the upper right corner of this view, nearly edge-on to the line-of-sight. Molecular hydrogen has recently been detected in this hot star's dusty cosmic shroud. NGC 6302 lies about 4,000 light-years away in the arachnologically correct constellation Scorpius.

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Great Mountain Moonrise

Explanation: On May 31st, a gorgeous Full Moon rose over Uludag Mountain in Bursa Province, Turkey. This alluring telephoto view of the twilight scene is a composite of images taken roughly every two minutes beginning shortly after Sunset, following the rising Moon as it moves up and to the right. Of course, as the Moon rises it gets brighter and changes color, becoming less reddened as the sight-line through the dense atmosphere is steadily reduced. Each of the final two exposures also captured a rising planet Jupiter. Like the Full Moon, the bright, wandering planet is nearly opposite the Sun in Earth's sky and was caught on the lefthand side of the picture in two places, just above a small peak in the mountain side. Intriguingly, some considered this Full Moon a Blue Moon.

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Dark Lunar Eclipse

Explanation: The Moon passed close to the center of Earth's shadow on August 28th. Seen best by skywatchers in western North America, and the Pacific region, the resulting total lunar eclipse was a dark one, lasting about 90 minutes. In this telescopic image taken near mid totality from Yass, NSW Australia, the 85 kilometer wide ray crater Tycho lies near the top right of the shadowed lunar surface. Of course, even during a total lunar eclipse,the Moon is not completely dark. Instead the Moon remains visible during totality, reflecting reddened light filtering into the Earth's shadow. The light comes from all the sunsets and sunrises, as seen from the lunar perspective, around the edges of a silhouetted Earth.

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The Moon's Saturn

Explanation: On May 22nd, just days after sharing the western evening sky with Venus, the Moon moved on to Saturn - actually passing in front of the ringed planet when viewed in skies over Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia. Because the Moon and bright planets wander through the sky near the ecliptic plane, such occultation events are not uncommon, but they are dramatic, especially in telescopic views. For example, in this sharp image Saturn is captured emerging from behind the Moon, giving the illusion that it lies just beyond the Moon's bright edge. Of course, the Moon is a mere 400 thousand kilometers away, compared to Saturn's distance of 1.4 billion kilometers. Taken with a digital camera and 20 inch diameter telescope at the Weikersheim Observatory in southern Germany, the picture is a single exposure adjusted to reduce the difference in brightness between Saturn and the cratered lunar surface.

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Eiffel Moon

Explanation: Celestial and terrestrial lights are featured in this stunning image that includes the Moon in phases of the total lunar eclipse of March 3rd. In the foreground, the distinctively-shaped Eiffel Tower, over 300 meters tall, is a well-known tourist destination and one of the most visited buildings in the world. Of course the Moon is even more recognizable, but harder to visit. The last lunar tour was undertaken nearly 35 years ago, during the Apollo 17 mission.

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Solar Eclipse from the Moon

Explanation: Parts of Saturday's (March 3) lunar eclipse will be widely visible. For example, skywatchers in Europe, Africa, and western Asia will be able to see the entire spectacle of the Moon gliding through Earth's shadow, but in eastern North America the Moon will rise already in its total eclipse phase. Of course if you traveled to the Moon's near side, you could see the same event as a solar eclipse, with the disk of our fair planet Earth completely blocking out the Sun. For a moon-based observer's view, graphic artist Hana Gartstein (Haifa, Israel) offers this composite illustration. In the cropped version of her picture, an Apollo 17 image of Earth is surrounded with a red-tinted haze as sunlight streams through the planet's dusty atmosphere. Earth's night side remains faintly visible, still illuminated by the dark, reddened Moon, but the disk of the Earth would appear almost four times the size of the Sun's disk, so the faint corona surrounding the Sun would be largely obscured. At the upper left, the Sun itself is just disappearing behind the Earth's limb.

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Touran Sunrise

Explanation: Clouds covered the eastern horizon on Monday, when the Sun rose over the expansive Touran Wildlife Reserve in northeastern Iran. Of course, on that day the Moon rose with the Sun, creating a widely enjoyed partial solar eclipse. Along with a mountainous horizon, the cloud cover lent a dramatic aspect to this eclipse sunrise and made it possible for astronomer Babak Tafreshi to record these telephoto images without using a filter. Advancing north in planet Earth's sky, the Sun itself was also approaching the equinox, the astronomical marker for the first day of northern hemisphere spring and the beginning of Norouz, the Persian New Year.

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A Total Lunar Eclipse Over North Carolina

Explanation: This coming Tuesday, our Moon will appear to disappear. A similar total lunar eclipse is seen above in a time lapse image captured in 2003 over North Carolina, USA. As the Earth moves between the Moon and the Sun, the Earth's shadow fell on the moon, making it quite dark. In the above picture the Earth's rotation, multiple exposures, and digital enhancements are used to create a time-lapse effect that dramatizes how the Moon looked as it faded out and re-appeared during the three hour lunar eclipse. As the Earth's shadow engulfed the Moon, the lunar images became less and less bright, practically disappearing during totality. At this time, the Moon, which normally shines by reflecting direct sunlight, shone only by sunlight refracted through the Earth's atmosphere. The next total lunar eclipse won't be visible from Earth until February 2008.

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Io...The Prometheus Plume...

Explanation: What's happening on Jupiter's moon Io? Two sulfurous eruptions are visible on Jupiter's volcanic moon Io in this color composite image from the robotic Galileo spacecraft that orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003. At the image top, over Io's limb, a bluish plume rises about 140 kilometers above the surface of a volcanic caldera known as Pillan Patera. In the image middle, near the night/day shadow line, the ring shaped Prometheus plume is seen rising about 75 kilometers above Io while casting a shadow below the volcanic vent. Named for the Greek god who gave mortals fire, the Prometheus plume is visible in every image ever made of the region dating back to the Voyager flybys of 1979 - presenting the possibility that this plume has been continuously active for at least 18 years. The above digitally sharpened image was originally recorded in 1997 on June 28 from a distance of about 600,000 kilometers.

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Janus_Potato Shaped Moon of Saturn...

Explanation: Janus is one of the stranger moons of Saturn. First, Janus travels in an unusual orbit around Saturn where it periodically trades places with its sister moon Epimetheus, which typically orbits about 50 kilometers away. Janus, although slightly larger than Epimetheus, is potato-shaped and has a largest diameter of about 190 kilometers. Next, Janus is covered with large craters but strangely appears to lack small craters. One possible reason for this is a fine dust that might cover the small moon, a surface also hypothesized for Pandora and Telesto. Pictured above, Janus was captured in front of the cloud tops of Saturn in late September.

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Mars Express Close-Up of the Face on Mars...

Explanation: Wouldn't it be fun if clouds were turtles? Wouldn't it be fun if the laundry on the bedroom chair was a friendly monster? Wouldn't it be fun if rock mesas on Mars were faces or interplanetary monuments? Clouds, though, are small water droplets, floating on air. Laundry is cotton, wool, or plastic, woven into garments. Famous Martian rock mesas known by names like the Face on Mars appear quite natural when seen more clearly, as the above recently-released digital-perspective image shows. Is reality boring?

Nobody knows how clouds make lightning. Nobody knows the geological history of Mars. Nobody knows why the laundry on the bedroom chair smells like root beer. Understanding reality brings more questions. Mystery and adventure are never far behind. Perhaps fun and discovery are just beginning.

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Spitzer's Orion...

Explanation: Few cosmic vistas excite the imagination like the Orion Nebula, an immense stellar nursery some 1,500 light-years away. Also known as M42, the nebula is visible to the unaided eye, but this stunning infrared view from the Spitzer Space Telescope penetrates the turbulent cosmic gas and dust clouds to explore the region in unprecedented detail. At full resolution, the remarkable image data yields a census of new stars and potential solar systems. About 2,300 young stars surrounded by planet-forming disks were detected based on the infrared glow of their warm dust, along with about 200 stellar embryos, stars too young to have developed disks. This 0.8 by 1.4 degree false-color image is about 20 light-years wide at the distance of the Orion Nebula.