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| Planetary Roll Call (October 14, 2009) |
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Three planets line up near the Moon on the mornings of October 15 and 16. This view is looking east about 40 minutes before sunrise, as the sky is starting to brighten. Venus, Saturn, and the Moon are in view earlier, when the sky is still dark, but Mercury won't climb into view until dawn. [Tim Jones] For more information, see our October 15 program. |
| Lighting Up the Darkside (October 7, 2009) |
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The Soviet Union's Luna 3 spacecraft snapped the first pictures of the far side of the Moon, which is often called the "darkside," in October 1959. The crude images showed several volcanic "seas" (the larger dark splotches) and several craters. The small spot at lower right is a crater that later was named in honor of Russian rocket pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovski. [NASA] For more information, see our October 7 program. |
| Cool Galaxy (October 5, 2009) |
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Knots and filaments of gas and dust are giving birth to new stars in this busy region of the Milky Way, which is in the Southern Cross, hundreds of light-years from Earth. Europe's Herschel space observatory snapped this infrared image on September 3, shortly after it completed its orbital checkout. Although the image is colored in shades of red, yellow, and white, this region is actually fairly cold. Warmer regions glow more brightly. [ESA/PACS Consortium] |
| Martian Waystation (October 1, 2009) |
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Astronauts set up instruments on Phobos, the largest moon of Mars, in this artist's concept. Russia plans to launch a robotic probe to study the small moon, which could make a good outpost for observing and exploring Mars. [NASA/Pat Rawlings] For more information, see our October 1 program. |
| Lunar Water (September 25, 2009) |
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Instruments aboard several spacecraft have detected smatterings of water and related molecules mixed with the powdery soil on the surface of the Moon. This image shows a small section of the lunar surface (left), and regions with water (blue) and hydroxyl (red) molecules (right). Hydroxyl consists of one hydrogen atom and one oxygen atom. The amounts of water are minute, but are more than planetary scientists had expected to find. The quantity of water (in the form of individual molecules or small grains of ice) is greatest around the Moon's poles, where observations by earlier spacecraft had hinted at the presence of water ice in permanently shadowed craters. [ISRO/NASA/JPL/USGS/Brown Univ.] |
| Hotter Galaxy (September 23, 2009) |
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Hot stars, clouds of gas, star clusters, and disks of gas around black holes decorate the center of the Milky Way galaxy in this newly released X-ray image from Chandra X-Ray Observatory. The supermassive black hole at the galaxy's heart is in the bright cloud of material at the center of the image. The brightest X-rays, which are produced by the hottest objects, are white. Cooler objects are coded in yellow, orange, red, and blue. The center of the galaxy is about 27,000 light-years away. [NASA/CXC/U.Mass/D.Wang et al] |
| Hot Galaxy (September 18, 2009) |
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Hot young stars outline the spiral arms of M31, the Andromeda galaxy, in this ultraviolet view from the orbiting Swift observatory. The galaxy's core looks redder and smoother because it contains mainly older, cooler stars, which produce little ultraviolet light. Many of the stars in the spiral arms congregate in large clusters. This view, which was created by combining 330 individual images, spans almost 200,000 light-years. [NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler (GSFC)/Erin Grand (UMCP)] |
| High Moon (September 14, 2009) |
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The gibbous Moon climbs above Earth's atmosphere in this recent view from space shuttle Discovery, which ferried equipment and supplies to the International Space Station. [NASA] |
| Fly Like an Eagle (September 6, 2009) |
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The constellation Aquila, the eagle, soars high across the southern sky on September nights. Its brightest star, Altair, stands high in the south or southeast at nightfall. The constellation is home to many interesting stars, including one that expands and contracts like a beating heart (Eta Aquilae), and another that a derelict spacecraft will pass in several million years. [Tim Jones] For more information, see our September 8 program. |
| A Big Bang (September 1, 2009) |
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A solar flare erupts from the surface of the Sun in this false-color image from the Sun-watching TRACE spacecraft. A solar flare occurs when lines of magnetic force intertwine, releasing enormous amounts of energy. The largest solar flare ever recorded erupted on September 1, 1859. [NASA] For more information, see our September 1 program. |
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