Astronomy Picture of the Day

1995-11-17

1995-11-16

The first Hubble Space Telescope (HST) servicing mission, STS-61, was one of the most complicated shuttle missions ever planned. Launched on December 2, 1993 in the Space Shuttle Endeavor, the astronauts were required to make 5 space walks to ...

1995-11-15

Five closely grouped galaxies are visible in this image made using the

1995-11-14

Looking toward the south from low Earth orbit, the crew of the

1995-11-13

Pictured are several galaxies of the Virgo Cluster, the closest cluster of galaxies to the Milky Way. The Virgo Cluster spans more than 5 degrees on the sky - about 10 times the angle made by a full Moon. It contains over 100 galaxies of many ...

1995-11-12

Recently two new types of lightning have been verified: red sprites and blue jets. These atmospheric discharges occur very high in the Earth's atmosphere - much higher than the familiar form of lightning. Blue jets appear blue in color and go ...

1995-11-11

Recently two new types of lightning have been verified: red sprites and blue jets. These atmospheric discharges occur very high in the Earth's atmosphere - much higher than the familiar form of lightning. Red sprites appear red in color and go ...

1995-11-10

There are many things about lightning that are not understood. Lightning has been seen in the atmospheres of Venus, Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn. A leading theory is that collisions of particles in clouds cause large areas of positive and negative ...

1995-11-09

The famous Sombrero galaxy (M104) is a bright nearby spiral galaxy. The prominent dust lane and halo of stars and globular clusters give this galaxy its name. Something very energetic is going on in the Sombrero's center, as much X-ray light has ...

1995-11-08

The above cube represents a chunk of our universe as simulated by the Grand Challenge Cosmology Consortium (GC3). The cube is huge - it would take light 500 million years to cross it. Low density gas is shown as blue, and high density gas as ...