What does the largest moon in the Solar System look like? Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, larger than even Mercury and Pluto, has an icy surface speckled with bright young craters overlying a mixture of older, darker, more cratered terrain laced with grooves and ridges. The cause of the grooved terrain remains a topic of research, with […]
Eclipses tend to come in pairs. Twice a year, during an eclipse season that lasts about 34 days, Sun, Moon, and Earth can nearly align. Then the full and new phases of the Moon separated by just over 14 days create a lunar and a solar eclipse. Often partial eclipses are part of any eclipse […]
The beauty of our home planet is shown in this long exposure photograph, taken from the International Space Station. via NASA https://ift.tt/3gecpyT
On June 10 a New Moon passed in front of the Sun. In silhouette only two days after reaching apogee, the most distant point in its elliptical orbit, the Moon’s small apparent size helped create an annular solar eclipse. The brief but spectacular annular phase of the eclipse shows a bright solar disk as a […]
A partial solar eclipse is seen as the Sun rises behind the United States Capitol Building, Thursday, June 10, 2021, as seen from Arlington, Virginia. via NASA https://ift.tt/3pR7eYV
Want to see a ring around the Sun? It’s easy to do in daytime skies around the world. Created by randomly oriented ice crystals in thin high cirrus clouds, circular 22 degree halos are visible much more often than rainbows. This one was captured by smart phone photography on May 29 near Rome, Italy. Carefully […]
One definition for goulash, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is mixture of heterogeneous elements, jumble. This 2017 image of Arp 299 is just that. via NASA https://ift.tt/3g47dxl
This moon appears multiply strange. This moon was a full moon, specifically called a Flower Moon at this time of the year. But that didn’t make it strange — full moons occur once a month (moon-th). This moon was a supermoon, meaning that it reached its full phase near its closest approach to the Earth in its […]
In this view from aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour, a pair of the International Space Station’s main solar seemingly arrays drape across the Earth’s horizon. via NASA https://ift.tt/3zf2CA6
What do you see in the clouds of Jupiter? On the largest scale, circling the planet, Jupiter has alternating light zones and reddish-brown belts. Rising zone gas, mostly hydrogen and helium, usually swirls around regions of high pressure. Conversely, falling belt gas usually whirls around regions of low pressure, like cyclones and hurricanes on Earth. […]