Monicks: Unleashed

Tag: photo

  • Picture of the Day – Io Transit of Jupiter

    Io is roughly the size of Earth’s moon but 2,000 times farther away. In two of the images, Io appears to be skimming Jupiter’s cloud tops, but it’s actually 310, 000 miles (500,000 kilometers) away. Io zips around Jupiter in 1.8 days, whereas the moon circles Earth every 28 days.

    Io Transit of Jupiter. Credit: J. Spencer (Lowell Observatory) and NASA/ESA

    via spacefellowship.com

    The conspicuous black spot on Jupiter is Io’s shadow and is about the size of the moon itself (2,262 miles or 3,640 kilometers across). This shadow sails across the face of Jupiter at 38,000 mph (17 kilometers per second). The smallest details visible on Io and Jupiter measure 93 miles (150 kilometers) across, or about the size of Connecticut.

    Posted via web from Monicks: Unleashed

  • Astronomy Picture of the Day | Magnificent Starburst Galaxy Messier 82

  • Astronomy Picture of the Day – Hubble Peers Inside a Celestial Geode

    In this unusual image, the Hubble Space Telescope captures a rare view of the celestial equivalent of a geode – a gas cavity carved by the stellar wind and intense ultraviolet radiation from a young hot star.

    Hubble Peers Inside a Celestial Geode. Credit: ESA/NASA, Yäel Nazé (University of Liège, Belgium) and You-Hua Chu (University of Illinois, Urbana, USA)

    via spacefellowship.com

    Real geodes are handball-sized, hollow rocks that start out as bubbles in volcanic or sedimentary rock. Only when these inconspicuous round rocks are split in half by a geologist, do we get a chance to appreciate the inside of the rock cavity that is lined with crystals. In the case of Hubble’s 35 light-year diameter “celestial geode” the transparency of its bubble-like cavity of interstellar gas and dust reveals the treasures of its interior.