This image of Saturn through the 20″ diameter telescope at the Weikersheim Observatory in southern Germany just after it emerged from behind the moon was the NASA APOD for April 7, 2013. It was composited together from two different exposures by Jens Hackmann. Hi, Summer Stargazers! Here are your Astronomy Skylights for the week of…
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This beautiful annotated image of the summer Milky Way arching over the Great Wall of China was captured by Steed Yu. The bright star at centre far right is Antares. It’s little claw stars shine to its upper right. The dark dust patches and lanes are apparent. It was the NASA APOD for July 3,…
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A comparison of images of Stephan’s Quintet of galaxies in Pegasus, taken in infrared by the James Webb Space Telescope in 2022 (left) and the visible and near-infrared wavelengths by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009 (right). The spiral galaxy at left is NGC 7320. It is only 40 million light-years away. The rest of…
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On Friday, July 23, the moon will reach its full phase. On that evening, the libration of the moon will cause the moon to appear to tilt downwards and twist to the left a bit, allowing Earthlings to see features along the moon’s northeastern limb that are normally not visible (green labels). Major lunar features…
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This simulated view of Saturn for this month shows how the rings are closed enough now to reveal a bit of Saturn’s southern polar region. Hello, mid-July Stargazers! Here are your Astronomy Skylights for the week of July 11th, 2021 by Chris Vaughan. Feel free to pass this along to your friends and send me…
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Ian Wheelband captured this close-up view of comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) at 4:17 am on July 11, 2020 from his home in Nova Scotia. Note the brighter tail composed of dropped particles, and the slightly offset ion tail to its left. The stacked, combined 4- and 10-second exposure photograph was taken using his Nikon D7100…
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