Jul 07, 2015 Lights on a Christmas tree depend on electric power. So do the lights in space. The Christmas Tree cluster contains about 40 stars and lies in the constellation Monoceros, along with the Cone Nebula. Both were discovered by William Herschel between 1783 and 1786, although the Cone…
Jul 6, 2015 Auroral substorms on Jupiter are not caused by the solar wind, alone. A previous Picture of the Day published in late 2012 quoted Jonathan Nichols from the University of Leicester: “The main aurora oval on Jupiter we think should dim when the solar wind blows harder,…
Jul 3, 2015 Titan’s characteristics support Electric Universe ideas about planet formation. Titan is the second largest moon in the Solar System, with a mean diameter of 5150 kilometers. Only Ganymede is larger, at 5262 kilometers. The planet Mercury is smaller than Titan (4879 kilometers), as is the Moon…
Jul 1, 2015 Saturn’s moons sport colorful bands. Mars is a faint yellowish-red color when seen with the naked eye, and its rusty surface hue is visible through the lenses of robotic rovers traveling across its landscape. Iapetus, one of Saturn’s moons, has a reddish-black deposit covering one hemisphere….
Jun 29, 2015 Hidden water on Mars? Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt. — Mark Twain A recent press release reiterates the hope that water was once abundant on Mars and may yet be, locked in frozen vaults beneath several meters of planetary regolith. The percentages of deuterium…
Jun 26, 2015 New Horizons is days away from Pluto. At 7:49:57 AM Eastern Daylight Time on July 14, 2015 the New Horizons space probe will fly by the dwarf planet Pluto at a distance of 9656 kilometers. It is expected that RALPH (named after Alice’s husband in the…
Jun 24, 2015 Galactic magnetic fields continue to be a mystery. Recently, astronomers using the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), and the MPIfR’s 100 meter Effelsberg radio telescope in Germany observed galaxy IC 342. Both of the radio telescopes’ capabilities were merged in order…
Jun 23, 2016 A ring of gas is said to be orbiting the center of our galaxy. Previous Pictures of the Day discuss the active nucleus in galaxy Centaurus A. The conclusion was that active galaxies display characteristic axial jets and transverse, donut-shaped plasma discharges. According to information from the…
Jun 22, 2015 Gamma ray bursts might not be so far away. Astrophysicists describe gamma-ray bursts (GRB) as due to the “merging of neutron stars” or gamma-ray light radiating from supernova explosions. Recently, the SWIFT satellite’s Burst Alert Telescope detected a beam of gamma radiation so intense that it…
Jun 19, 2015 “Plasma phenomena are complicated and can be understood only with the help of a very sophisticated diagnostics.” — Hannes Alfvén According to consensus opinions, the Sun accelerates charged particles into space in the same way that sound waves are amplified. The interior solar energy travels outward…
