What’s happening to this cirrus cloud? Ice crystals are acting like little floating prisms. Known informally as a fire rainbow for its flame-like appearance, a circumhorizon arc appears parallel to the horizon. For a circumhorizontal arc to be visible, the Sun must be at least 58 degrees high in a sky where cirrus clouds present below. The numerous, flat, hexagonal ice-crystals that compose the cirrus cloud must be aligned horizontally to properly refract sunlight in a similar manner. Therefore, circumhorizontal arcs are somewhat unusual to see. The featured fire rainbow was photographed earlier this month near West Virginia, USA.
The Moon is normally seen in subtle shades of grey or gold. But small, measurable color differences have been greatly exaggerated to make this telescopic, multicoloured, moonscape captured during a full moon. The different colors are recognized to correspond to differences in the surface’s chemical makeup. Blue hues reveal titanium rich areas while orange and purple colors show regions relatively poor in titanium and iron. The familiar Sea of Tranquility, or Mare Tranquillitatis, is the blue area toward the upper right. White lines radiate across the orange-hued southern lunar highlands from the ray-crater Tycho at bottom right. This image is made up of 272 different images!
The Ring Nebula (M57), is more complicated than it appears through a small telescope. The easily visible central ring is about one light-year across, but this remarkably deep exposure shows in detail the looping filaments of glowing gas extending much farther from the nebula’s central star. This image, taken by combining data from three different large telescopes, includes red light emitted by hydrogen as well as visible and infrared light. The Ring Nebula is an elongated planetary nebula, a type of nebula created when a Sun-like star evolves to throw off its outer atmosphere to become a white dwarf star. The Ring Nebula is about 2,500 light-years away from us here on Earth.
Image Credit: Hubble, Large Binocular Telescope, Subaru Telescope; Composition & Copyright: Robert Gendler
An amazing sky! The Milky Way Galaxy is visible along the left. If you’re near a dark sky, you can usually see part of our galaxy. There is also a bright meteor visible on the upper right, part of a very bright Perseid Meteor Shower from last week. Red sprites, a type of lightening visible on the lower right, also make an appearance in this image. Nova RS Ophiuchus discovered about a week ago, is visible just above the image center. Novas bright enough to be seen with the unaided eye occur every few years. It was such a special occurrence to capture all these things together, in a single night, on a single sky, above Zacatecas, Mexico.
Young blue stars circling the galactic center dominate the Andromeda Galaxy in this image taken in ultraviolet! About 2.5 million light-years away, the Andromeda Galaxy, also known as M31, really is our galactic neighbour. Spanning about 230,000 light-years, it took 11 different image fields from NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) satellite telescope to produce this gorgeous portrait of the spiral galaxy in ultraviolet light in 2003. Its spiral arms stand out in visible light images, Andromeda’s arms are sites of intense star formation. They have been interpreted as evidence that Andromeda collided with its smaller neighboring elliptical galaxy M32 more than 200 million years ago. The Andromeda galaxy and our own comparable Milky Way galaxy are the most massive members of the Local Group of galaxies and are projected to collide in several billion years – perhaps around the time that our Sun’s atmosphere will expand to engulf the Earth.
The red shadow of planet Earth is broadcasted across the moon in this image taken on May 26 near Sydney, Australia. On that crisp, clear autumn night a perigee full moon (the moon at its closest point to Earth) slid into the umbra. Its total phase lasted only about 14 minutes which is generally short for a lunar eclipse. The composite of 6 exposures also shows the wide range of brightness variations within Earth’s shadow against a faint background of stars.
Image Credit & Copyright: Peter Ward (Barden Ridge Observatory)
This insanely detailed scene of a portion of our universe has so many famous stars and nebulae in it! Let’s dive in!! Starting on the far upper left, toward the constellation of Auriga, is the picturesque Flaming Star Nebula (IC 405). Continuing down along the bright arc of our Milky Way Galaxy, from left to right crossing the constellations of the Twins and the Bull, notable appearing nebulas include the Tadpole, Simeis 147, Monkey Head, Jellyfish, Cone and Rosette nebulas. In the upper right quadrant of the image, toward the constellation of Orion, you can see Sh2-264, the half-circle of Barnard’s Loop, and the Horsehead and Orion nebulas. Famous stars in and around Orion include, from left to right, orange Betelgeuse (just right of the image center), blue Bellatrix (just above it), the Orion belt stars of Mintaka, Alnilam, and Alnitak, while bright Rigel appears on the far upper right. This region was captured on 34 separate images, taking over 430 hours of exposure, and digitally combined to reveal the featured image.
