Martian Dust Devils

The markings in the Martian dirt are caused by Dust Devils that lift up the red silt, leaving behind the darker colored material. Amazing!

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap091021.html

APOD: Summer Night in Astronomy Town

Saturday's APOD was gorgeous. Check it out: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090912.html

Hubble got an upgrade!?

So I guess I wasn't aware that the near-death telescope actually received an upgrade recently. I know several months ago they successfully sent astronauts up to work on it, but had no idea that they improved its performance beyond extending its life.

Check out today's APOD to help drive the point home, the Butterfly Nebula:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090910.html

Absolutely gorgeous!

APOD: Milky Way over Devils Tower

Sweet APOD today, I've seriously gotta look up tutorials on how to achieve photography like this.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090729.html

APOD: Kaguya's decent to the moon

Ooo sweet APOD today. The Japanese spacecraft successfully impacted the moon last week. Here's a great movie showing the lunar surface as it barely cleared a few of the peaks.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090629.html

I do have an idea for future missions though... HEADLIGHTS!

APOD: Above Earth

Gorgeous APOD today.

APOD: Dripping dunes

Very cool effect on today's APOD. Check it out:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090420.html

Orange Sun Oozing

Check this out:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090405.html

Its so completely intriguing to me that each one of the "little" granules in that picture is the size of a continent on earth. Also, check out the scale in the upper left. You could fit four Earth's side by side in this one shot of the sun.

Brilliant, and awe-inspiring for a geek at heart.

Milky Way over Mauna Kea

Fantastic pic!!

Martian Sunset

I caught this APOD a few weeks ago. Apparently the red planet doesn't always appear red! This gorgeous shot was taken by the Spirit Rover in May of 2005. The colors have been shifted slightly to show what it might look like from a human's perspective.


Catch the original post here: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090110.html

Orion's Belt

Orion's belt is easily spotted in the night sky. From left to right, the stars are named: Alnitak, Alnilam, & Mintaka. I had no idea the Horse Head Nebula and Flame Nebula were that close to Alnitak...


Today's APOD is shown above, unlike the first image, this was taken with a digital camera affixed to a telescope, and so the colors are a bit more what you'd expect to see when looking through a telescope.

I'll never look at Orion's Belt in the same way. In fact, this might be a good spot to train the telescope this summer...

Centaurus A

This is a spectacular shot of galaxy Centaurus A. This galaxy is the 5th brightest in the sky, and we're seeing it edge on. The jets seen below are being expelled from the center of the super massive black hole are in x-ray and radio wavelengths at about half the speed of light, or about 150,000,000 meters per second...


http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080110.html
http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2009/cena/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centaurus_A

APOD: Methane discovered on Mars

Interesting implications from today's APOD article:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090119.html

It seems that Methane has been discovered leaking out of Mars' atmosphere. Quoted:

Why is there methane on Mars? No one is sure. An important confirmation that methane exists in the atmosphere of Mars occurred last week, bolstering previous controversial claims made as early as 2003. The confirmation was made spectroscopically using large ground-based telescopes by finding precise colors absorbed on Mars that match those absorbed by methane on Earth. Given that methane is destroyed in the open martian air in a matter of years, the present existence of the fragile gas indicates that it is currently being released, somehow, from the surface of Mars. One prospect is that microbes living underground are creating it, or created in the past. If true, this opens the exciting possibility that life might be present under the surface of Mars even today. Given the present data, however, it is also possible that a purely geologic process, potentially involving volcanism or rust and not involving any life forms, is the methane creator. Pictured above is an image of Mars superposed with a map of the recent methane detection.

Beautiful APOD today...

Check out today's APOD, very neat indeed. Also, here is the original source, looks like an awesome place to grab full size images directly from Hubble

http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/html/heic0822.html