Have you seen a great image or video somewhere that you think would make a great APOD? Nominate it for APOD! Please post as much information here as you have about the image/video with a link to any source(s) for it you know of here, and the editors will take a look.
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Swirls of green and red appear in an aurora over Whitehorse, Yukon
on the night of Sept. 3, 2012. (Image Courtesy of David Cartier, Sr.)
Re: Found Images: 2013 February
Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2013 8:42 pm
by geckzilla
Not suggesting this as an APOD, just sharing this because it's nice to look at. It's purely artistic (wrong) space visuals. Voyager into Stardust
Slate Blogs | Bad Astronomy | 2013 Feb 03
Aurora Australis: The southern lights illuminate Antarctica as seen from space.
The yellow line marks the Antarctic coast; the ice extends beyond to the north.
Image credit: NASA/NOAA/DoD/Jesse Allen & Robert Simmon
A Valentine Rose
National Optical Astronomy Observatory | 2013 Feb 12
This image of a planetary nebula, which may suggest a rose to some, was obtained with the wide-field view of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) Mosaic 1 camera on the Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory.
Sh2-174 is an unusual ancient planetary nebula. A planetary nebula is created when a low-mass star blows off its outer layers at the end of its life. The core of the star remains and is called a white dwarf. Usually the white dwarf can be found very near the center of the planetary nebula. But in the case of Sh2-174 it is off to the right. (It is the very blue star near the center of the blue gas). This asymmetry is due to the planetary nebula’s interaction with the interstellar medium that surrounds it.
The image was generated by Travis Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage) from observations taken through four different filters which are assigned colors that approximate what the human eye can see: B (blue), I (orange), Hydrogen-alpha (red) and Oxygen [OIII] (blue) filters. In this image, North is up, East is to the left.
Generations of stars can be seen in this infrared portrait from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. In this wispy star-forming region, called W5, the oldest stars can be seen as blue dots in the centers of the two hollow cavities (other blue dots are background and foreground stars not associated with the region).
Younger stars line the rims of the cavities, and some can be seen as pink dots at the tips of the elephant-trunk-like pillars. The white knotty areas are where the youngest stars are forming. Red shows heated dust that pervades the region's cavities, while green highlights dense clouds.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Harvard-Smithsonian CfA
This is an image of magnetic loops on the sun, captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). It has been processed to highlight the edges of each loop to make the structure more clear.
A series of loops such as this is known as a flux rope, and these lie at the heart of eruptions on the sun known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs.) This is the first time scientists were able to discern the timing of a flux rope's formation. (Blended 131 Angstrom and 171 Angstrom images of July 19, 2012 flare and CME.)
Image Credit: NASA/GSFC/SDO
Re: Found Images: 2013 February
Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2013 4:50 pm
by bystander
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
MESSENGER: Taking Mercury For a Spin
A global color map of Mercury's surface has been created by mosaicking thousands of sets of images obtained by the MESSENGER Wide Angle Camera (WAC). The colors shown here are related to variations in the spectral reflectance across the planet. This view captures both compositional differences and differences in how long materials have been exposed at Mercury's surface. Young crater rays, arrayed radially around fresh impact craters, appear light blue or white. Medium- and dark-blue areas are a geologic unit of Mercury's crust known as the "low-reflectance material," thought to be rich in a dark, opaque mineral. Tan areas are plains formed by eruption of highly fluid lavas. The large circular area near the top center is the Caloris impact basin, whose interior is filled with smooth, somewhat younger volcanic plains. Small orangish spots are materials deposited by explosive volcanic eruptions.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution for Science
Generations of stars can be seen in this infrared portrait from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. In this wispy star-forming region, called W5, the oldest stars can be seen as blue dots in the centers of the two hollow cavities (other blue dots are background and foreground stars not associated with the region).
Younger stars line the rims of the cavities, and some can be seen as pink dots at the tips of the elephant-trunk-like pillars. The white knotty areas are where the youngest stars are forming. Red shows heated dust that pervades the region's cavities, while green highlights dense clouds.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Harvard-Smithsonian CfA
‘Fly Me to the Moons’ — a view of the Moon with Jupiter and the four Galilean moons,
along with a passing airplane. Credit and copyright: Greg Gibb (Capturing the Night)
‘Fly Me to the Moons’ — a view of the Moon with Jupiter and the four Galilean moons,
along with a passing airplane. Credit and copyright: Greg Gibb (Capturing the Night)
