Astronomy Picture of the Day: March 10th of 2015

Aurora over Icelandic Glacier
Image Credit & Copyright: James Boardman Woodend (Images Inspired by Nature)
Explanation: Several key conditions came together to create this award-winning shot. These included a dark night, few clouds, an epic auroral display, and a body of water that was both calm enough and unfrozen enough to show reflected stars. The featured skyscape of activity and serenity appeared over Iceland's Vatnajökull Glacier a year ago January, with the Jökulsárlón Iceberg Lagoon captured in the foreground. Aurora filled skies continue to be common near Earth's poles as our Sun, near Solar Maximum, continues to expel energetic clouds of plasma into the Solar System.

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National Geographic Photo of the Day: March 10th of 2015

March 10, 2015

Grooming the Young

Photograph by Masanobu Oka, National Geographic Your Shot

A snow monkey grooms a youngster while soaking in a hot spring at the Jigokudani Monkey Park in Nagano Prefecture, Japan. “When I visited, about 30 monkeys were in the hot spring,” writes Your Shot member Masanobu Oka. “I realized that the mother was taking care of her kid just like a human. I watched them for a while before capturing the baby as it opened its eyes.”

Astronomy Picture of the Day: March 9th of 2015

Galaxy and Cluster Create Four Images of Distant Supernova
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and S. Rodney (JHU) and the FrontierSN team; T. Treu (UCLA), P. Kelly (UC Berkeley), and the GLASS team; J. Lotz (STScI) and the Frontier Fields team; M. Postman (STScI) and the CLASH team; and Z. Levay (STScI)
Explanation: What are the unusual spots surrounding that galaxy? They are all images of the same supernova. For the first time, a single supernova explosion has been seen split into multiple images by the gravitational lens deflections of intervening masses. In this case the masses are a large galaxy and its home galaxy cluster. The featured image was captured last November by the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. The yellow-hued quadruply-imaged Supernova Refsdal occurred in the early universe far behind the cluster. Measuring the locations and time-delays between the supernova images should allow astrophysicists to recover the amount of dark matter in the galaxy and cluster. With patience and luck, a fifth image of the supernova will also be recovered nearby in the next few years.

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National Geographic of the Day: March 9th of 2015

March 9, 2015

Rocket Land

Photograph by Kevin Kunstadt

Strobe rockets light up the night sky in Mason City, Iowa. Mason City is home to the Iowa Thunderstorm, the Pyrotechnics Guild International’s small fireworks convention.

Astronomy Picture of the Day: March 8th of the 2015

Stars at the Galactic Center
Image Credit: Susan Stolovy (SSC/Caltech) et al., JPL-Caltech, NASA
Explanation: The center of our Milky Way Galaxy is hidden from the prying eyes of optical telescopes by clouds of obscuring dust and gas. But in this stunning vista, the Spitzer Space Telescope's infrared cameras, penetrate much of the dust revealing the stars of the crowded galactic center region. A mosaic of many smaller snapshots, the detailed, false-color image shows older, cool stars in bluish hues. Reddish glowing dust clouds are associated with young, hot stars in stellar nurseries. The very center of the Milky Way was only recently found capable of forming newborn stars. The galactic center lies some 26,000 light-years away, toward the constellation Sagittarius. At that distance, this picture spans about 900 light-years.

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National Geographic Photo of the Day: March 8th of 2015

March 8, 2015

The Pitcher and the Carpenter

Photograph by Christian Ziegler

The fanged pitcher plant and the carpenter ant (seen here in Borneo) have a mutualistic relationship: While the plant’s pitcher stem provides a home for small ant colonies of up to 30 individuals, the ants keep the chemistry of the pitcher’s liquid balanced by removing large insects that have found their way inside. If the insects were to rot in the liquid, it would spoil.

Astronomy Picture of the Day: March 7th of 2015

NGC 602 in the Flying Lizard Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: Don Goldman
Explanation: Near the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy some 200 thousand light-years distant, lies 5 million year young star cluster NGC 602. Surrounded by natal gas and dust, NGC 602 is just below center in this telescopic field of view with the angular size of the Full Moon on the sky. The cluster itself is about 200 light-years in diameter. Glowing interior ridges and swept back shapes strongly suggest that energetic radiation and shock waves from NGC 602's massive young stars have eroded the dusty material and triggered a progression of star formation moving away from the cluster's center. Of course, the more extended wings of emission in the region suggest a popular name for the complex cosmic environment, The Flying Lizard Nebula.

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National Geographic Photo of the Day: March 7th of 2015

March 7, 2015

Hellenic Cadets

Photograph by Alex Majoli, National Geographic

Cadets from the Hellenic Military Academy tour the Parthenon in Athens, Greece. Degraded by pollution, the ancient temple to the goddess Athena atop the Acropolis is being restored.

Astronomy Picture of the Day: March 6th of 2015

Cometary Globule CG4
Image Credit & Copyright: CEDIC Team - Processing: Christoph Kaltseis
Explanation: The faint and somehow menacing cometary globule CG4 reaches through the center of this deep southern skyscape. About 1,300 light-years from Earth toward the constellation Puppis, its head is about 1.5 light-years in diameter and its tail about 8 light-years long. That's far larger than the Solar System's comets that it seems to resemble. In fact, the dusty cloud contains enough material to form several Sun-like stars and likely has ongoing star formation within. How its distinctive form came about is still debated, but its long tail trails away from the Vela Supernova remnant near the center of the Gum Nebula, while its head could represent the rupture of an originally more spherical cloud. Still, the edge-on spiral galaxy also near picture center is not actually being threatened by CG4. The galaxy lies in the distant background more than 100 million light-years away.

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National Geographic Photo of the Day: March 6th of 2015

March 6, 2015

Light in Winter

Photograph by David Stoker, National Geographic Your Shot

Predawn sunlight strikes the South Rim of Arizona’s Grand Canyon in this picture submitted to the recent Your Shot assignment First Light. “A cold winter storm had passed through the region the day prior,” writes photographer David Stoker. “I had driven to the Grand Canyon in anticipation of the storm. I remember the morning being particularly cold as I hiked along the rim awaiting the arrival of the sun. The skies were still overcast, but a small break in the clouds allowed a single ray of sunlight to shine through, illuminating a small portion of the butte below.”

Astronomy Picture of the Day: March 5th of 2015

Enhanced Color Caloris
Image Credit: NASA, Johns Hopkins Univ. APL, Arizona State U., CIW
Explanation: The sprawling Caloris basin on Mercury is one of the solar system's largest impact basins, created during the early history of the solar system by the impact of a large asteroid-sized body. The multi-featured, fractured basin spans about 1,500 kilometers in this enhanced color mosaic based on image data from the Mercury-orbiting MESSENGER spacecraft. Mercury's youngest large impact basin, Caloris was subsequently filled in by lavas that appear orange in the mosaic. Craters made after the flooding have excavated material from beneath the surface lavas. Seen as contrasting blue hues, they likely offer a glimpse of the original basin floor material. Analysis of these craters suggests the thickness of the covering volcanic lava to be 2.5-3.5 kilometers. Orange splotches around the basin's perimeter are thought to be volcanic vents.

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National Geographic Photo of the Day: March 5th of 2015

March 5, 2015

Catch of the Day

Photograph by Yoh Fong Chan, National Geographic Your Shot

“The polar bears were usually playing, sleeping, and sometimes nursing,” writes Your Shot member Yoh Fong Chan of observing the bears in Kaktovik, Alaska. “They were hanging out near the shore during this time of the year, waiting for the sea to freeze before they could go out hunting for seals. On this very rare occasion, this bear came proudly from the horizon with its catch of the day.” Chan, who had long dreamed of photographing polar bears in the wild, says patience and endurance were important. “It was bitterly cold out there. As with most wildlife photography, hours were spent observing and waiting to capture that one special moment.”

Astronomy Picture of the Day: March 4th of 2015

Pillars and Jets in the Pelican Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: Larry Van Vleet (LVVASTRO)
Explanation: What dark structures arise from the Pelican Nebula? Visible as a bird-shaped nebula toward the constellation of a bird (Cygnus, the Swan), the Pelican Nebula is a place dotted with newly formed stars but fouled with dark dust. These smoke-sized dust grains formed in the cool atmospheres of young stars and were dispersed by stellar winds and explosions. Impressive Herbig-Haro jets are seen emitted by a star on the right that is helping to destroy the light year-long dust pillar that contains it. The featured image was scientifically-colored to emphasize light emitted by small amounts of ionized nitrogen, oxygen, and sulfur in the nebula made predominantly of hydrogen and helium. The Pelican Nebula (IC 5067 and IC 5070) is about 2,000 light-years away and can be found with a small telescope to the northeast of the bright star Deneb.

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National Geographic Photo of the Day: March 4th of 2015

March 4, 2015

Mixed Roots

Photograph by Felipe Jacome

The mangroves of the Cayapas Mataje Mangrove Reserve in northwestern Ecuador are the tallest in the world. The area is home to many Afro-Ecuadorian communities who rely on gathering black cockles that can be found in the mud of the mangroves and sold as a culinary delicacy. Picking shells is a tremendously arduous task, as concheros have to crouch down for hours in knee-deep mud.

Astronomy Picture of the Day: March 3rd of 2015

A Dust Devil on Mars
Image Credit: HiRISE, MRO, LPL (U. Arizona), NASA
Explanation: It was late in the northern martian spring when the HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spied this local denizen. Tracking across the flat, dust-covered Amazonis Planitia in 2012, the core of this whirling dust devil is about 140 meters in diameter. Lofting dust into the thin martian atmosphere, its plume reaches about 20 kilometers above the surface. Common to this region of Mars, dust devils occur as the surface is heated by the Sun, generating warm, rising air currents that begin to rotate. Tangential wind speeds of up to 110 kilometers per hour are reported for dust devils in other HiRISE images.

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National Geographic Photo of the Day: March 3rd of 2015

March 3, 2015

High-Foraging Chamois

Photograph by Stefano Unterthiner, National Geographic

Springtime is when high-foraging chamois give birth; there are now about 8,000 in Italy’s Gran Paradiso National Park.
See more photos from the February 2015 feature story “Paradise Found.”

Astronomy Picture of the Day: March 2nd of 2015

Lenticular Cloud, Moon, Mars, Venus
Image Credit & Copyright: Nuno Serrão
Explanation: It is not every day that such an interesting cloud photobombs your image. The original plan was to photograph a rare angular conjunction of Mars and Venus that occurred a week and a half ago, with the added bonus of a crescent Moon and the International Space Station (ISS) both passing nearby. Unfortunately, on Madeira Island, Portugal, this event was clouded out. During the next day, however, a spectacular lenticular cloud appeared before sunset, so the industrious astrophotographer quickly formulated a new plan. A close look at the resulting image reveals the Moon visible toward the left of the frame, while underneath, near the bottom, are the famous planets with Venus being the brighter. It was the unexpected lenticular cloud, though, perhaps looking like some sort of futuristic spaceship, that stole the show. The setting Sun illuminated the stationary cloud (and everything else) from the bottom, setting up an intricate pattern of shadows, layers, and brightly illuminated regions, all seen evolving in a corresponding video. Mars and Venus will next appear this close on the sky in late August, but whether any place on Earth will catch them behind such a photogenic cloud is unknown.