Monicks: Unleashed

Tag: nebula

  • Astronomy Picture of the Day | Eclipse on the Beach

    Eclipse on the Beach
    Credit & Copyright: Guillaume Blanchard

    Explanation: As the New Moon’s shadow slid across the southern Pacific on July 11, people gathered along the white, sandy Anakena Beach on the north side of Easter Island to watch a total solar eclipse. The experience was captured in this tantalizing composite image, constructed from a sequence of 50 consecutive exposures. At their center is the totally eclipsed Sun surrounded by a shimmering solar corona. From the well chosen viewpoint, palm trees appear in silhouette against a darkened sky and the faint light reflected in the water. Of course, towering above the onlookers, at the boundaries of land, ocean, and sky are Moai, the island’s mysterious monolithic statues.

    via apod.nasa.gov

  • Astronomy Picture of the Day | Diamond Ring and Shadow Bands

    Diamond Ring and Shadow Bands
    Credit & Copyright: Stephen Schneider (UMass Astronomy Dept.)

    Explanation: As the total phase of July 11’s solar eclipse came to an end, sunlight streaming past the edge of the Moon’s silhouette created the fleeting appearance of a glistening diamond ring in the sky. Seen through a thin cloud layer from the French Polynesian atoll of Hao it also produced remarkable shadow bands, flickering across the dramatic scene. Projected onto the cloud layer, the shadow bands are parallel to the sliver of sunlight emerging from behind the Moon’s edge. Caused by turbulence in Earth’s atmosphere refracting the sliver of sunlight, the narrow bands were captured in this brief, 1/400th second exposure. Shining through the cloud droplets, the sunlight also produced a luminous atmospheric corona, not to be confused with the solar corona seen during eclipse totality. The atmospheric corona is centered on the bright diamond of emerging sunlight.

    via apod.nasa.gov

  • Astronomy Picture of the Day | Tycho’s Supernova Remnant

    This composite image of the Tycho supernova remnant combines infrared and X-ray observations obtained with the Spitzer and Chandra space observatories and the Calar Alto observatory. It shows the scene more than 4 centuries after the brilliant explosion witnessed by Tycho Brahe and other contemporary astronomers as “Stella Nova”. The thermonuclear explosion of the white dwarf star has left a several million degree hot cloud of expanding debris (green, yellow). The location of the blast’s outer shock wave can be seen as blue sphere of ultra-energetic electrons. Newly synthesized dust in the ejecta as well as heated pre-existing dust from the circumstellar medium of the supernova radiates at a wavelength of 24 micron (red). Fore- and background star in the image are white. Observers were Prof. John P. Hughes, Dr. Jeonghee Rho and Dr. Oliver Krause.

    via mpia-hd.mpg.de