APOD: 2009 November 6 - Ring Nebula Deep Field
It’s odd that something so utterly gruesome could be this pretty. It’s like driving by the rotting corpse of your neighbor’s father on the side of the road. This is the fate of our sun in another 5 billion years or so.
APOD: 2009 June 8 - Possible Jet Blown Shells Near Microquasar Cygnus X1
This is an annotated picture of a black hole with all sorts of interesting stuff happening around it.
APOD: 2009 April 11 - The Big Picture
As I’ve said before, it’s hard to place in context the amazing pictures you see of deep space with the sky you see every night. This helps.
APOD: 2009 February 9 - Anemic Galaxy NGC 4921 at the Edge
It’s cool to see three very distinct regions of space in a single picture. The focus of the picture is the large galaxy, but you can also see “nearby” stars in our own Milky Way as well as even more distant galaxies behind the big one in the picture.
APOD: 2002 January 21 - Volcano and Aurora in Iceland
I can’t imagine what it must be like to live somewhere where you can see things like this.
APOD: 2008 November 14 - Fomalhaut b
Since I got interested in astronomy as an impressionable young man, I’ve understood that most stars probably have planets around them. It’s been really rewarding to watch the progress over the last few years as more and more planets have actually been observed (for the most part indirectly—until now). I even understood that to directly observe a planet around another star, the exact technique used in his photograph would have to be used.
This planet is 3 times the size of Jupiter and 14 times farther away than Jupiter is from our sun. It’s also a mere 25 light years away (basically in our cosmic backyard). That means it is an enormous (probably uninhabitable) planet really far away from its star, which is very close to us. So it’s probably about as easy to visually observe as any planet in our immediate neighborhood. It’s an incredibly important step in the exploration of our galaxy, but there’s still a ways to go.
It’s amazing that so much has happened in this field in such a short time. I would not be surprised if within the next decade or so we observe a planet that is a potential target for an interplanetary mission.
It’s an exciting time to be alive.
APOD: 2008 October 17 - An Extraordinary Voyage
Apparently dumping trash into the atmosphere and taking video of it is APOD worthy. Who knew?
APOD: 2008 September 29 - A True Image from False Kiva
This one’s been making the rounds on Tumblr, so I thought I should make a place for it on the APOD Log. This is an amazing picture.
No PhotoShop here. Astrophotographer Wally Pacholka took this single exposure photograph at False Kiva in the Canyonlands National Park, Utah. He admits to being concerned about mountain lions as he waited in the dark cave to capture this beautiful view reaching from inside the Earth to infinity. (via Neatorama)
