Astronomy Picture of the Day |
APOD: 2023 August 19 - Ringed Ice Giant Neptune
Explanation:
Ringed ice giant Neptune
lies near the center of this sharp
near-infrared image from the
James Webb Space Telescope.
The dim and distant world is the
farthest planet from the Sun,
about 30 times farther away than planet Earth.
But in the stunning Webb view, the planet's dark and ghostly appearance
is due to atmospheric methane that absorbs infrared light.
High altitude clouds that reach above most of Neptune's absorbing methane
easily stand out in the image though.
Coated with frozen nitrogen, Neptune's largest moon Triton is
brighter than Neptune in reflected sunlight,
seen at the upper left sporting the Webb telescope's characteristic
diffraction spikes.
Including Triton, seven of Neptune's 14 known moons can be
identified
in the field of view.
Neptune's faint rings
are striking in this space-based
planetary portrait.
Details of the complex ring system are seen here for the first
time since Neptune was visited by the
Voyager 2 spacecraft in August 1989.
APOD: 2023 June 25 – Lightning on Jupiter
Explanation:
Does lightning occur only on Earth?
No.
Spacecraft in our Solar System have detected lightning on other planets, including
Mars,
Jupiter and
Saturn,
and lightning is likely on
Venus,
Uranus, and Neptune.
Lightning is a
sudden rush
of electrically charged particles from one location to another.
On Earth, drafts of colliding ice and water droplets usually create lightning-generating charge separation, but what happens on Jupiter?
Images and data from NASA's
Jupiter-orbiting Juno
spacecraft
bolster previous speculation that
Jovian lightning is also created in clouds containing water and ice.
In the featured Juno photograph, an optical flash was captured in a
large cloud vortex near
Jupiter's north pole.
During the next few months, Juno will perform
several close sweeps over Jupiter's night side, likely allowing the
robotic probe to capture more data and images of
Jovian lightning.
APOD: 2023 May 27 - Crescent Neptune and Triton
Explanation:
Gliding through the outer
Solar System,
in 1989 the
Voyager 2 spacecraft
looked toward the Sun to find this view of most distant planet Neptune
and its moon
Triton together in a crescent phase.
The elegant image of
ice-giant planet
and
largest moon
was taken from behind just after Voyager's
closest approach.
It could not have been taken from
Earth because the most distant planet never shows a crescent phase
to sunward eyes.
Heading for the
heliopause and beyond,
the spacecraft's
parting vantage
point also robs Neptune of its familiar blue hue.
APOD: 2023 May 11 - Fomalhaut's Dusty Debris Disk
Explanation:
Fomalhaut
is a bright star, a 25 light-year
voyage
from planet Earth in the direction
of the constellation
Piscis
Austrinus.
Astronomers first
noticed
Fomalhaut's excess infrared emission in the 1980s.
Space and ground-based telescopes
have since
identified the infrared emission's source as a disk of dusty debris,
evidence for
a planetary system surrounding the hot, young star.
But this sharp infrared image
from the James Webb Space Telescope's MIRI camera
reveals details of Fomalhaut's debris disk never before seen,
including a large dust cloud in the outer ring that is possible
evidence for colliding bodies,
and
an inner dust disk and gap likely shaped and
maintained by embedded but unseen planets.
An image scale bar in au
or astronomical units, the average Earth-Sun distance,
appears at the lower left.
Fomalhaut's outer circumstellar dust ring lies
at about twice the distance of our own Solar System's
Kuiper Belt of
small icy bodies and debris beyond the orbit of Neptune.
APOD: 2023 January 2 – After Sunset Planet Parade
Explanation:
Look up tonight and see a whole bunch of planets.
Just after sunset, looking west, planets
Venus,
Saturn,
Jupiter and
Mars will all be
simultaneously visible.
Listed west to east, this planetary lineup will have Venus nearest the horizon, but setting shortly after the Sun.
It doesn't matter where on
Earth you live because this early evening
planet parade will be visible
through clear skies all around the globe.
Taken late last month, the featured image captured
all of these planets and more: the
Moon and planet
Mercury were also simultaneously visible.
Below visibility were the planets
Neptune and
Uranus,
making this a nearly
all-planet panorama.
In the foreground are hills around the small village of Gökçeören,
KaÅŸ,
Turkey, near the
Mediterranean coast.
Bright stars
Altair,
Fomalhaut, and
Aldebaran
are also prominent, as well as the
Pleiades star cluster.
Venus will
rise higher in the sky at sunset as January continues,
but Saturn will descend.
APOD: 2022 September 23 - Ringed Ice Giant Neptune
Explanation:
Ringed, ice giant Neptune
lies near the center of this sharp
near-infrared image from the
James Webb Space Telescope.
The dim and distant world is the
farthest planet from the Sun,
about 30 times farther away than planet Earth.
But in the stunning Webb view the planet's dark and ghostly appearance
is due to atmospheric methane that absorbs infrared light.
High altitude clouds that reach above most of Neptune's absorbing methane
easily stand out in the image though.
Coated with frozen nitrogen, Neptune's largest moon Triton is
brighter than Neptune in reflected sunlight and is seen at upper left
sporting the Webb's characteristic
diffraction spikes.
Including Triton, seven of Neptune's 14 known moons can be
identified
in the field of view.
Neptune's faint rings
are striking in this new space-based planetary portrait.
Details of the complex ring system are seen here for the first
time since Neptune was visited by the
Voyager 2 spacecraft in August 1989.
APOD: 2022 July 1 - The Solar System's Planet Trails
Explanation:
Stars trail through a clear morning sky in
this postcard from
a rotating planet.
The timelapse image is constructed from consecutive exposures made
over nearly three hours with a camera fixed to a tripod beside
the Forbidden City in Beijing, China on June 24.
Arcing above the eastern horizon after the series of
exposures began,
a waning crescent Moon left the brightest streak and watery reflection.
On that date the
planets of the Solar System
were also
lined up along the ecliptic
and left their own trails before sunrise.
Saturn was first to rise on that morning and the ringed planet's trail
starts close to the top right edge, almost out of the frame.
Innermost planet Mercury rose only just before the Sun though.
It left the shortest trail, visible against the twilight
near the horizon at the far left.
Uranus and Neptune are faint and hard to find,
but mingled with the star trails the
Solar System's
planet trails are all labeled in the scene.
APOD: 2022 June 29 - Solar System Family Portrait
Explanation:
Yes, but have you ever seen all of the planets at once?
A rare roll-call of planets has
been occurring in the morning sky for
much of June.
The featured fisheye all-sky image, taken a few mornings ago near the town of
San Pedro de Atacama in
Chile,
caught not only the entire planet parade, but the Moon between Mars and Venus.
In order, left to right along the
ecliptic plane,
members of this
Solar System family portrait are
Earth,
Saturn,
Neptune,
Jupiter,
Mars,
Uranus,
Venus,
Mercury, and
Earth.
To emphasize their locations, Neptune and Uranus have been artificially enhanced.
The volcano just below Mercury is
Licancabur.
In July, Mercury will move into the Sun's glare but
reappear a few days later on the evening side.
Then, in August,
Saturn will drift past the direction
opposite the Sun
and so become visible at dusk instead of dawn.
The next time that all eight planets will be
simultaneously visible in the evening sky will be in 2122.
APOD: 2022 June 25 - Planets of the Solar System
Explanation:
Simultaneous
images from four cameras were combined to construct this
atmospheric predawn skyscape.
The cooperative astro-panorama
captures all the
planets of the Solar System,
just before sunrise on June 24.
That foggy morning found innermost planet Mercury close to the horizon
but just visible against the twilight, below and left of brilliant Venus.
Along with the waning crescent Moon, the other
bright naked-eye planets,
Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn
lie near the ecliptic, arcing up and to the right across
the wide field of view.
Binoculars would have been required to spot the much fainter
planets Uranus and Neptune, though
they also were along the ecliptic in the sky.
In the foreground are excavations at an ancient Roman villa near
Marina di San Nicola, Italy,
planet Earth.
APOD: 2021 July 25 - Crescent Neptune and Triton
Explanation:
Gliding silently through the outer
Solar System, the
Voyager 2 spacecraft camera captured
Neptune and
Triton together in crescent phase.
The elegant picture of the
ice-giant planet and its
cloudy moon was taken from behind just after
closest approach in 1989.
It could not have been taken from
Earth because
Neptune never shows a crescent phase to sunward Earth.
The
unusual vantage point also robs
Neptune of its familiar blue hue,
as sunlight seen from here is scattered forward,
and so is reddened like the
setting Sun.
Neptune is smaller but more massive than
Uranus, has several
dark rings, and
emits more light than it receives from the Sun.
APOD: 2020 May 19 - Posters of the Solar System
Explanation:
Would you like a NASA astronomy-exploration poster?
You are just one page-print away.
Any of the panels you see on
the featured image can appear on your
wall.
Moreover,
this NASA page has, typically,
several more posters of each of the
Solar System objects depicted.
These posters highlight many of the places humanity, through
NASA, has explored in the past 50 years,
including our
Sun, and planets
Mercury,
Venus,
Earth,
Mars,
Jupiter,
Saturn,
Uranus, and
Neptune.
Moons of Jupiter that have been posterized include
Europa,
Ganymede,
Callisto, and
Io,
while moons of Saturn that can be framed include
Enceladus and
Titan.
Images of
Pluto,
Ceres,
comets and asteroids are also presented, while six deep space scenes --
well beyond
our Solar System -- can also be prominently displayed.
If you
lack wall space or blank poster sheets don't despair --
you can still print many of these out as
trading cards.
APOD: 2020 January 1 - Betelgeuse Imagined
Explanation:
Why is Betelgeuse fading?
No one knows.
Betelgeuse,
one of the brightest and
most recognized stars
in the night sky, is only
half as bright as it used to be only five months ago.
Such variability is likely just
normal behavior for this famously variable
supergiant,
but the recent dimming has rekindled discussion on how long it may be before
Betelgeuse does go supernova.
Known for its red color,
Betelgeuse is one of the few stars to be
resolved by modern telescopes, although only barely.
The
featured artist's illustration imagines how
Betelgeuse might look up close.
Betelgeuse is thought to have a
complex and
tumultuous surface that frequently throws impressive flares.
Were it to replace the Sun
(not recommended), its surface would extend out near the orbit of
Jupiter, while gas plumes would bubble out past
Neptune.
Since
Betelgeuse
is about 700 light years away,
its eventual supernova will not endanger life on Earth
even though its brightness
may rival that of a full Moon.
Astronomers -- both amateur and professional -- will surely
continue to monitor
Betelgeuse as this new decade unfolds.
APOD: 2019 October 16 - BHB2007: A Baby Binary Star in Formation
Explanation:
How do binary stars form?
To help find out, the
Atacama Large Millimeter Array
(ALMA) recently captured one of the highest resolution images yet taken of a binary star system in formation.
Most stars are not alone -- they typically form as part of a multiple star systems where star each orbits a common center of gravity.
The two bright spots in the
featured image are small disks that surround the forming proto-stars in [BHB2007] 11, while the surrounding pretzel-shaped filaments are gas and dust that have been
gravitationally pulled
from a larger disk.
The circumstellar filaments span roughly the radius of the orbit of
Neptune.
The
BHB2007 system
is a small part of the
Pipe Nebula (also known as
Barnard 59), a
photogenic network of
dust and gas that protrudes from
Milky Way's spiral disk in the
constellation of Ophiuchus.
The binary star formation process should be complete within a few million years.
APOD: 2019 February 14 - Solar System Family Portrait
Explanation:
On Valentine's
Day in 1990,
cruising four billion miles from the Sun, the
Voyager 1 spacecraft looked back one last time to make this first ever
Solar
System family portrait.
The complete portrait is a
60 frame mosaic
made from a vantage point 32 degrees above the
ecliptic plane.
In it, Voyager's wide angle camera frames sweep through the
inner Solar System at the left, linking up with gas giant Neptune,
the Solar System's
outermost planet, at the far right.
Positions for Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune
are indicated by letters, while the Sun is the
bright spot near the center of the circle of frames.
The
inset frames for each of the planets are
from Voyager's narrow field camera.
Unseen in the portrait are Mercury, too close
to the Sun to be detected, and Mars, unfortunately hidden by sunlight
scattered in the camera's optical system.
Closer to the Sun than Neptune at the time,
small, faint Pluto's
position was not covered.
APOD: 2018 July 28 - One Night, One Telescope, One Camera
Explanation:
Taken on the same night, from the same place, with the same telescope
and camera, these postcards from our
Solar System are shown at
the same scale to provide an
interesting comparison of apparent sizes.
Spanning about
half a degree in planet Earth's sky, the Moon
is a stitched mosaic of six images.
The others are the result of digitally stacked frames or
simple single exposures, with the real
distances to
the objects indicated along the bottom of each insert.
Most of the Solar System's planets with their brighter moons, and Pluto
were captured during the telescopic expedition,
but elusive Mercury was missed because of clouds near the horizon.
The International Space Station
was successfully hunted, though.
The night was July 21st.
Telescope and camera were located at the
Centro Astronomico de Tiedra
Observatory in Spain.
APOD: 2017 February 25 - All Planets Panorama
Explanation:
For 360 degrees,
a view along the plane of the ecliptic is captured in
this remarkable panorama, with seven planets in a starry sky.
The mosaic was constructed using images taken
during January 24-26, from Nacpan Beach, El Nido in Palawan, Philippines.
It covers the eastern horizon (left) in dark early morning hours
and the western horizon in evening skies.
While the ecliptic
runs along the middle traced by
a faint band of zodiacal light,
the Milky Way also cuts at angles through the frame.
Clouds and the Moon join fleeting planet Mercury in the east.
Yellowish Saturn, bright star Antares, and Jupiter lie near the
ecliptic farther right.
Hugging
the ecliptic near center are Leo's alpha star Regulus
and star cluster M44.
The evening planets gathered along the ecliptic above the western
horizon, are faint Uranus, ruddy Mars, brilliant Venus, and
even fainter Neptune.
A well labeled version of the panorama can be viewed by
sliding your cursor over the picture, or just
following this
link.
APOD: 2017 February 11 - Solar System Portrait
Explanation:
On Valentine's
Day in 1990,
cruising four billion miles from the Sun, the
Voyager 1 spacecraft looked back one
last time
to make this first ever
Solar
System family portrait.
The complete portrait is a
60 frame mosaic
made from a vantage point 32 degrees above the
ecliptic plane.
In it, Voyager's wide angle camera frames sweep through the
inner Solar System at the left, linking up with gas giant Neptune,
the Solar System's
outermost planet, at the far right.
Positions for Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune
are indicated by letters, while the Sun is the
bright spot near the center of the circle of frames.
The
inset frames for each of the planets are
from Voyager's narrow field camera.
Unseen in the portrait are
Mercury, too close
to the Sun to be detected, and Mars, unfortunately hidden by sunlight
scattered in the camera's optical system.
Closer to the Sun than Neptune at the time,
small, faint Pluto's
position was not covered.
APOD: 2017 January 13 - When Mars met Neptune
Explanation:
On January 1, a
Mars-assisted
viewing opportunity allowed
binocular-equipped skygazers to cross an
ice giant off their life list.
Remarkably, the line-of-sight to the bright Red Planet could guide
you to within 0.02 degrees of a faint,
pale Neptune
in Earth's night skies.
Taken within 3 hours of their closest conjunction, these
panels capture the odd couple's appearance in skies over
Brisbane, Australia.
A wide field view includes the new year's
slender crescent
moon near the western horizon and Venus as the brilliant
evening star.
Mars and Neptune are indicated at the upper right.
The two inset magnified views were taken with the same telephoto lens
and so do show the Mars-Neptune conjunction and the apparent size of
the crescent moon at the same scale.
This week Neptune
hangs out near Venus on the western sky.
APOD: 2016 November 30 - Milky Way over Shipwreck
Explanation:
What happened to this ship?
It was carried aground by a giant storm that struck the coast of
Argentina in 2002.
The pictured abandoned boat, dubbed
Naufragio del Chubasco,
wrecked near the nearly abandoned town of
Cabo Raso (population: 1).
The rusting ship
provides a picturesque but perhaps creepy foreground for the beautiful sky above.
This sky is crowned by the grand arch of our
Milky Way and features galaxies including the
Large and
Small Magellanic Clouds, stars including
Canopus and
Altair, planets including
Mars and
Neptune,
and nebulas including the
Lagoon,
Carina, and the
Coal Sack.
The mosaic was composed from over 80 images taken in early September.
A 360-degree interactive panoramic version of this image is also available.
The adventurous astrophotographer reports that the creepiest part of taking this picture was not the abandoned ship, but the unusual prevalence of black and hairy
caterpillars.
APOD: 2016 June 22 - Cirrus over Paris
Explanation:
What's that over Paris?
Cirrus.
Typically,
cirrus clouds
appear white or gray when reflecting sunlight, can appear dark at sunset (or sunrise) against a better lit sky.
Cirrus are among the
highest types of clouds and are usually thin enough to see stars through.
Cirrus clouds
may form from moisture released above
storm clouds
and so may herald the arrival of a significant
change in weather.
Conversely,
cirrus clouds have also been seen on
Mars,
Jupiter,
Saturn,
Titan,
Uranus, and Neptune.
The featured image was taken two days ago from a window in
District 15,
Paris,
France,
Earth.
The brightly lit
object on the lower right is, of course, the
Eiffel Tower.
APOD: 2015 June 22 - New Horizons
Explanation:
In three weeks, the robotic New Horizons spacecraft will reach Pluto.
As the
featured video
makes clear, though, humanity has been on an unprecedented
epoch of robotic exploration of
our Solar System's planets for the past half century.
The video highlights artistic illustrations of
Mariner 2 flying by Venus in 1962,
Mariner 4 flying past Mars in 1965,
Pioneer 10 flying past
Jupiter in 1973,
Mariner 10 flying past
Mercury in 1974,
Pioneer 11 flying past
Saturn in 1979, and
Voyager
2 flying past
Uranus in 1986 and then
Neptune in 1989.
Next is a hypothetical sequence depicting
New Horizons flying past Pluto next month.
Assuming things work as planned,
dwarf planet
Pluto will then become the
farthest world yet explored by humans.
Of course, these
Pluto illustrations are only a guess.
How Pluto and its moons will really look may be a mixture of familiar things, such as
craters, and unfamiliar things, such as …
APOD: 2015 May 27 - Approaching Pluto
Explanation:
Here comes Pluto.
NASA's robotic
New Horizons
spacecraft is
now beyond the orbit of
Neptune and closing fast on the
Solar System's most famous
unexplored world.
The featured time lapse video
shows
Pluto and Pluto's largest moon,
Charon, orbiting their common
center of mass
in 13 frames taken from April 12 to April 18.
Although blurry,
images in the video now rival even the
best images of Pluto yet taken from Earth.
New Horizons
remains on
schedule to zoom
past the distant dwarf planet on July 14.
APOD: 2015 February 15 - Two Hours Before Neptune
Explanation:
Two hours before closest approach to
Neptune in 1989, the
Voyager 2 robot spacecraft snapped
this
picture.
Clearly visible for the first time were long light-colored
cirrus-type clouds floating high in
Neptune's atmosphere. Shadows of these clouds can even
be seen on lower cloud decks.
Most of
Neptune's atmosphere is made of
hydrogen and
helium, which is invisible.
Neptune's blue color
therefore comes from smaller amounts of atmospheric
methane,
which preferentially absorbs red light.
Neptune has the fastest winds in the
Solar System,
with gusts reaching 2000 kilometers per hour.
Speculation holds that
diamonds may be created in the
dense hot conditions that exist under the cloud tops of
Uranus and
Neptune.
Twenty-six years later,
NASA's
New Horizons
is poised to be the first spacecraft
to zoom past
Pluto this July.
APOD: 2015 February 14 - Solar System Portrait
Explanation:
On another
Valentine's
Day 25 years ago,
cruising four billion miles from the Sun, the
Voyager 1 spacecraft looked back one
last time
to make this first ever
Solar
System family portrait.
The complete portrait is a
60 frame mosaic
made from a vantage point 32 degrees above the
ecliptic plane.
In it, Voyager's wide angle camera frames sweep through the
inner Solar System at the left, linking up with gas giant Neptune,
the Solar System's
outermost planet, at the far right.
Positions for Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune
are indicated by letters, while the Sun is the
bright spot near the center of the circle of frames.
The
inset frames for each of the planets are
from Voyager's narrow field camera.
Unseen in the portrait are
Mercury, too close
to the Sun to be detected, and Mars, unfortunately hidden by sunlight
scattered in the camera's optical system.
Closer to the Sun than Neptune at the time,
small, faint Pluto's
position was not covered.
APOD: 2014 August 26 - Flying Past Neptune's Moon Triton
Explanation:
What would it look like to fly past Triton, the largest moon of planet Neptune?
Only one spacecraft has ever done this -- and now, for the first time, images of this dramatic encounter have been
gathered into a
movie.
On 1989 August 25, the Voyager 2 spacecraft shot through the Neptune system with
cameras blazing.
Triton is slightly smaller than Earth's Moon but has
ice volcanoes
and a surface rich in
frozen nitrogen.
The first sequence in
the video
shows Voyager's approach to
Triton, which, despite its
unusual green tint, appears in approximately true color.
The mysterious terrain seen under the spacecraft soon changed from light to dark, with the
terminator of night soon crossing underneath.
After closest approach,
Voyager pivoted to see the departing moon, now visible as a diminishing
crescent.
Next July, assuming all goes well, the robotic
New Horizons
spacecraft will make a similar flight past
Pluto, an orb of similar size to Triton.
APOD: 2014 May 15 - Voyager's Neptune
Explanation:
Cruising through the outer solar system, the Voyager 2
spacecraft made its closest
approach
to Neptune on August 25, 1989,
the only spacecraft to visit the most distant
ice giant planet.
Based on the images recorded during its close encounter
and in the following days,
this inspired composited scene covers the
dim outer planet, largest
moon Triton, and faint system of rings.
From just beyond Neptune's orbit, the interplanetary perspective
looks back toward the Sun, capturing
the planet and Triton as thin
sunlit crescents.
Cirrus clouds and a dark band
circle Neptune's south polar region,
with a cloudy vortex above the pole
itself.
Parts of the very
faint ring system along with
the three bright ring arcs were first imaged by Voyager during the
fly-by, though the faintest segments are modeled in this
composited picture.
Spanning 7.5 degrees, the background starfield is composed
from sky survey data centered on the constellation Camelopardalis,
corresponding to the outbound Voyager's view of the
magnificent Neptunian system.
APOD: 2014 January 16 - Despina, Moon of Neptune
Explanation:
Despina is a tiny moon
of Neptune.
A mere 148 kilometers across,
diminutive Despina was
discovered in 1989, in images from the
Voyager 2 spacecraft
taken during its encounter with the solar system's most
distant gas giant planet.
But looking
through the Voyager 2 data 20 years later, amateur image processor
and philosophy professor Ted Stryk discovered something no
one had recognized before -- images that show the shadow of Despina
in transit across Neptune's blue cloud tops.
His composite view of Despina and its shadow is composed of four
archival
frames taken on August 24, 1989, separated by nine minutes.
Despina itself has been artificially brightened to make it easier
to see.
In ancient Greek mythology,
Despina is a daughter of Poseidon,
the Roman god Neptune.
APOD: 2013 September 10 - Extrasolar Super Earth Gliese 1214b Might Hold Water
Explanation:
Might this distant planet hold water?
Actually, given how close
Gliese 1214b is to its parent star, any water, if it exists, would surely be in the form of steam.
In the
above artist's illustration, the super-Earth Gliese 1214b is imagined passing in front of its parent star, creating a mini-eclipse that alerted humanity to its presence.
Gliese 1214b, also designated
GJ 1214b, has been designated a
super-Earth because it is larger than the Earth but smaller a planet like
Neptune.
The entire Gliese 1214 planetary system is of the closest known systems to our Sun, located only 42 light years away.
The parent star, Gliese 1214 is a slightly smaller and
cooler version of our Sun.
Recent observations from the
Subaru telescope in Hawaii found very little
scattering of blue light from the parent star by the planet.
This appears
most consistent with a planet that has a watery atmosphere -- although it is
still possible that the super-Earth has clouds so thick that little of any color of light was scattered.
Detecting water on
exoplanets is important partly because most lifeforms on Earth need water to survive.
APOD: 2013 April 14 - Crescent Neptune and Triton
Explanation:
Gliding silently through the outer
Solar System, the
Voyager 2 spacecraft camera captured
Neptune and
Triton together in crescent phase in 1989.
The elegant picture of the
gas giant planet and its
cloudy moon
was taken from behind just after
closest approach.
It could not have been taken from
Earth because
Neptune never shows a crescent phase to sunward Earth.
The
unusual vantage point also robs
Neptune of its familiar
blue hue,
as sunlight seen from here is scattered forward,
and so is reddened like the
setting Sun.
Neptune is smaller but more massive than
Uranus, has several
dark rings, and emits more light than it receives from the Sun.
APOD: 2013 February 14 - Solar System Portrait
Explanation:
On another
Valentine's Day
(February 14, 1990), cruising four billion miles from the Sun, the
Voyager 1 spacecraft looked back to make this
first
ever family portrait of our Solar System.
The complete portrait is a
60 frame mosaic
made from a vantage point 32 degrees above the
ecliptic plane.
In it, Voyager's wide angle camera frames sweep through the
inner Solar System at the left, linking up with gas giant Neptune,
at the time
the Solar System's
outermost planet, at the far right.
Positions for Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune
are indicated by letters, while the Sun is the
bright spot near the center of the circle of frames.
The
inset frames for each of the planets are
from Voyager's narrow field camera.
Unseen in the portrait are Mercury, too
close to the Sun
to be detected, and Mars, unfortunately hidden by sunlight
scattered in the camera's optical system.
Small, faint Pluto's
position was not covered.
APOD: 2012 May 9 - Shuttle Enterprise Over New York
Explanation:
What's that in the background?
Two famous New York City icons stand tall in the
above photo
taken last week.
On the left looms the
Statue of Liberty,
a universal symbol of freedom, while on the right rises the
Empire State Building,
now the second largest building in the city.
What's unique about this once-in-a-lifetime photograph, though, is the third icon that appears to Lady Liberty's left.
High in the air and far in the background
flies the space shuttle Enterprise --
perched atop a 747 jet --
on the way to its new home.
New Yorkers and visitors to the
Big Apple can visit the
test space shuttle at the
Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum on the West Side of Manhattan starting July 19.
APOD: 2011 October 7 - The Comet Hartley 2 Cruise
Explanation:
Early last November, small but active Comet Hartley 2
(103/P Hartley) became the
fifth comet
imaged close-up by a
spacecraft
from planet Earth.
Still cruising
through
the solar system with a 6 year
orbital period, Hartley 2 is making
astronomical headlines again.
New
Herschel
Space Observatory measurements indicate that the water
found in this comet's thin atmosphere or coma has the same ratio
of the hydrogen
isotope
deuterium (in heavy water)
as the oceans of our fair planet.
Hartley 2 originated in the
distant Kuiper Belt,
a region beyond the orbit of Neptune that is a reservoir
of icy cometary bodies and dwarf planets.
Since the ratio of deuterium is related to the solar system
environment where the comet formed, the Herschel results
indicate that Kuiper Belt comets could have
contributed substantial amounts of water to Earth's oceans.
Comet Hartley 2 appears in
this starry skyscape from last November
sporting a tantalizing greenish coma appropriately sailing through the
nautical
constellation Puppis.
Below the comet are open star clusters M47 (right) and
M46 (left).
APOD: 2011 August 27 - Hurricane Irene Forms
Explanation:
How does a hurricane form?
Although a complete picture is still being researched, insight into this process might be gleaned by watching the
above time lapse movie of the formation of
Hurricane Irene, a large storm system currently threatening the
eastern seaboard of the USA.
Starting as a
slight pressure difference visible as nondescript clouds on the lower right, Hurricane Irene is shown growing into large spiraling storm system of low pressure off the coast of
South Carolina.
A hurricane is powered by
evaporating ocean water, and so typically gains strength over warm water and loses strength over land.
Besides Earth, other planets that have hurricane-like storm systems include
Venus,
Saturn,
Jupiter,
Uranus, and
Neptune.
Much remains unknown about
hurricanes and cyclones, including the exact path they will take.
APOD: 2011 July 14 - Neptune: Once Around
Explanation:
Neptune rotates
once on its axis in about 16 hours.
So, spaced about 4 hours apart
these 4 images
of the solar system's most distant gas giant
cover one Neptune day.
Recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope in late June they
combine exposures made with visible and near-infrared filters to
show high-altitude clouds composed of
methane ice crystals against
the planet's normally blue
cloud tops.
Because Neptune's axis of rotation is tilted to its orbital
plane by 29 degrees, compared to Earth's 23.5 degrees,
Neptune experiences
seasons analogous to Earth's.
As early summer comes to Neptune's
southern hemisphere and winter
to the north, Hubble observations have shown cloud activity shifting
to the northern hemisphere.
In fact the progression of Neptune's seasons has come around once since
its position
was predicted by French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier
and British mathematician
John Couch Adams,
and the planet was subsequently discovered
by German astronomer Johann Galle on September 23, 1846.
With an orbital period of approximately 165 years, this week on
July 12, Neptune
has been once around the Sun since its discovery date.
APOD: 2011 February 23 - The Solar System from MESSENGER
Explanation:
If you looked out from the center of the Solar System, what would you see?
Nearly
such a view was taken recently from the
MESSENGER spacecraft currently orbiting the Sun from the distance of
Mercury.
The Sun's planets all appear as points of light, with the closest and largest planets appearing the brightest.
The planets
all appear to orbit in the same direction and are (nearly) confined to the same
great circle around the sky -- the
ecliptic plane.
Mercury,
Venus,
Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are all visible in the above horizontally
compressed image, while the positions of Uranus and Neptune are labeled even though they are too faint to make out.
Pluto, which has had its
planetary status recently called into question, is much too faint to see.
Earth's Moon is visible, however, as are the
Galilean moons of Jupiter.
The above image is the reverse of
one taken from the outside of the Solar System in 1990 by
Voyager 1.
MESSENGER, which has
flown by Mercury three times now, is on schedule to
enter orbit
around the Solar System's innermost planet next month.
APOD: 2010 August 25 - HD 10180: Richest Yet Planetary System Discovered
Explanation:
Do other rich planetary systems exist?
Our Solar System has the most planets of any known star, most probably because it is so hard to detect
planets around other stars.
Sensitive measurements, though, have
now uncovered a slight but complex wobble of the Sun-like star
HD 10180 indicating that it has at least five planets
and possibly more, making it the richest
extra-solar planetary system yet known.
HD 10180's planets were discovered in years of data using the sensitive
HARPS spectrograph attached to the
ESO's 3.6-meter telescope in
La Silla,
Chile.
The planetary system appears quite different than
our Solar System,
since all of HD 10180's discovered planets have
Neptune-like masses but orbit inside the
distance of Mars.
An artist's depiction of flying into this system is shown in the
above video.
In the future, more sensitive data taken over longer time periods may extend the
star-wobble detection technique
into the realm of uncovering more distant and
more Earth-like planets.
APOD: 2010 August 8 - Two Hours Before Neptune
Explanation:
Two hours before closest approach to
Neptune in 1989, the
Voyager 2 robot spacecraft snapped
this
picture.
Clearly visible for the first time were long light-colored
cirrus-type clouds floating high in
Neptune's atmosphere. Shadows of these clouds can even
be seen on lower cloud decks.
Most of
Neptune's atmosphere is made of
hydrogen and
helium, which is invisible.
Neptune's blue color
therefore comes from smaller amounts of atmospheric
methane,
which preferentially absorbs red light.
Neptune has the fastest winds in the
Solar System, with gusts reaching 2000 kilometers per hour.
Speculation holds that
diamonds may be created in the
dense hot conditions that exist under the cloud tops of
Uranus and
Neptune.
APOD: 2010 May 6 - Northern and Southern Owls
Explanation:
Captured in colorful telescopic portraits,
two cosmic owls
glare back toward planet Earth in this
intriguing comparison of
planetary nebulae.
On the left is M97 in the
constellation Ursa Major,
also known in the northern hemisphere as the Owl Nebula.
On the right is its visual counterpart, the
southern Owl Nebula
in the constellation Hydra, cataloged as PLN 283+25.1.
Both nebulae are remarkably
symmetric, round, and similar in size,
some 2 light-years across or about 2,000 times the diameter
of Neptune's orbit.
Planetary nebulae
are produced during a final phase in the
life of a sun-like star, an example of the fate that awaits
the Sun when it runs out of nuclear fuel in another 5 billion years.
Both images were made using narrowband
filters and different color mappings.
The image of the southern Owl also includes broadband data,
bringing out the surrounding star field.
APOD: 2009 December 13 - Crescent Neptune and Triton
Explanation:
Gliding silently through the outer
Solar System, the
Voyager 2 spacecraft camera captured
Neptune and
Triton together in crescent phase in 1989.
The above picture of the
gas giant planet and its
cloudy moon
was taken from behind just after
closest approach.
It could not have been taken from
Earth because
Neptune never shows a crescent phase to sunward Earth.
The
unusual vantage point also robs
Neptune of its familiar
blue hue,
as sunlight seen from here is scattered forward,
and so is reddened like the
setting Sun.
Neptune is smaller but more massive than
Uranus, has several
dark rings, and emits more light than it receives from the Sun.
APOD: 2009 September 3 - Despina, Moon of Neptune
Explanation:
Despina is a tiny moon
of Neptune.
A mere 148 kilometers across,
diminutive Despina was
discovered in 1989, in images from the
Voyager 2 spacecraft
taken during its encounter with the solar system's most
distant gas giant planet.
But looking
through the Voyager 2 data 20 years later, amateur image processor
(and philosophy professor) Ted Stryk discovered something no
one had recognized before -- images that show the shadow of Despina
in transit across Neptune's blue cloud tops.
His composite view of Despina and its shadow is composed of four
archival
frames taken on August 24, 1989, separated by nine minutes.
Despina itself has been artificially brightened to make it easier
to see.
In ancient Greek mythology,
Despina is a daughter of Poseidon
(the Roman god Neptune).
APOD: 2009 May 15 - M97: The Owl Nebula
Explanation:
The Owl Nebula is perched in the sky about 2,600 light-years away
toward the bottom of the
Big Dipper's bowl.
Also
cataloged as M97,
the 97th object in Messier's well-known
list, its round shape along with the placement of
two large, dark "eyes" do suggest the face of a
staring owl.
One of the fainter objects in
Messier's catalog,
the Owl Nebula is a
planetary nebula,
the glowing gaseous
envelope shed by
a dying sun-like star as it runs out of
nuclear fuel.
In fact, the Owl Nebula offers an example of the fate of our
Sun as it runs out of fuel in another 5 billion years.
As we see it, the nebula spans over 2 light-years making it
roughly 2,000 times the diameter of Neptune's orbit.
Beautiful to look at,
this
color image shows impressive details within the cosmic owl.
The composite includes images made through
narrow-band filters for a total of 24 hours
of exposure time.
APOD: 2009 March 25 - Orcus of the Outer Solar System
Explanation:
A newly discovered object in the outer Solar System moves like an anti-Pluto.
90482 Orcus was
first discovered
in 2004 and is slightly smaller than
Pluto, although still one of the largest
Kuiper belt
objects known.
Orcus may one day have the same
IAU designation as Pluto: a
dwarf planet.
Orcus and Pluto have similar orbits: each achieves nearly the same
maximum and minimum distances
from the Sun,
each orbits
on a similarly shaped ellipse,
and each orbital ellipse is tilted toward the other planets' orbital
ellipse by roughly the same angle.
The great mass of
Neptune causes each to circle the Sun twice for every three Neptune orbits.
Orcus
is like an
anti-Pluto,
however, because the two objects always remain across the
Solar System
from each other.
Orcus
can be found as the spot near the center of these
discovery frames moving slightly down from the top.
Until the end of next week, the discoverers of Orcus
ask for your help in naming
its newly discovered moon.
APOD: 2009 January 2 - Alpine Conjunction
Explanation:
Did you see it?
The last conjunction
of Moon and bright planets in 2008
featured a young crescent Moon
and brilliant Venus in the west after sunset on December 31st.
Seen here in dark, clear, mountain air from Mönichkirchen,
Austria, are the
two celestial beacons that dominate
planet Earth's night sky.
That pair was hard to miss, but
skygazers
watching lower along
the western horizon in early twilight might also have glimpsed
a pairing of Jupiter and Mercury as they both
wandered closer to the
Sun in the sky at year's end.
Still, while this single, 5 second long exposure seriously
overexposes the Moon's sunlit crescent, it does capture another
planet not visible to the unaided eye.
The tiny pinprick of light just above the photographer's head
in the picture is the distant
planet Neptune.
APOD: 2008 November 17 - HR 8799: Discovery of a Multi planet Star System
Explanation:
How common are planetary systems like our own Solar System?
In the twelve years previous to 2008,
over 300 candidate planetary systems have been found orbiting nearby stars.
None, however, were directly imaged, few showed evidence for multiple planets, and many had a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting inside the orbit of Mercury.
Last week, however, together with
recent images of
Fomalhaut b, the
above picture was released showing one of first confirmed images of planets orbiting a distant Sun-like star.
HR 8799 has a mass about 1.5 times that of our own Sun, and lies about 130 light years from the Sun -- a distance similar to many stars easily visible in the night sky.
Pictured above, a 10-meter
Keck telescope in
Hawaii
captured in infrared light three planets orbiting an artificially obscured central star.
The 8-meter
Gemini North
telescope captured a
similar image.
Each planet likely contains several times the mass of
Jupiter, but even the innermost planet,
labelled d, has an orbital radius near the equivalent of the Sun-
Neptune distance.
Although the
HR 8799 planetary system has significant differences with our Solar System, it is a
clear demonstration that complex planetary systems exist, systems that could conceivable contain an
Earth-like planet.
APOD: 2008 September 10 - The Anthe Arc around Saturn
Explanation:
What created this unusual partial ring around Saturn?
Discovered last year, the arc was captured in
clear detail
only two months ago by the Saturn-orbiting
Cassini spacecraft.
Since the arc occupies the same orbit as the
small moon Anthe,
a leading hypothesis holds that the arc was created by, and is replenished by,
meteor impacts on Anthe.
Similar arcs have been previously discovered, including an
arc associated with the small Saturnian moon
Methone, one
arc related to Saturn's G ring, and several arcs orbiting
Neptune.
Pictured above,
Anthe, only two kilometers across, is seen as the bright point near the top of the Anthe arc.
The Anthe arc
was imaged by the
robotic space probe
as it swooped to within 1.5 million kilometers of the small moon.
APOD: 2007 March 4 - Triton: Neptunes Largest Moon
Explanation:
In October of 1846,
William Lassell
was observing the newly discovered planet
Neptune.
He was attempting to confirm his observation, made just the previous week,
that Neptune had a ring.
But this time he discovered that Neptune had a satellite as well.
Lassell soon proved that the ring was a product of his new
telescope's distortion, but the satellite
Triton
remained.
The above picture of
Triton
was taken in 1989 by the only spacecraft ever to pass
Triton:
Voyager 2.
Voyager 2 found fascinating terrain,
a thin atmosphere, and even evidence for
ice volcanoes
on this world of peculiar orbit and spin.
Ironically, Voyager 2 also confirmed the existence of
complete thin rings around Neptune
- but these would have been quite
invisible
to Lassell!
APOD: 2006 September 18 - Eris: The Largest Known Dwarf Planet
Explanation:
Is Pluto the largest dwarf planet? No!
Currently, the largest known dwarf planet is
(136199) Eris,
renamed last week from 2003 UB313.
Eris is just slightly larger than Pluto, but orbits as far as twice
Pluto's distance from the Sun.
Eris is shown above in an image taken by a 10-meter
Keck Telescope from
Hawaii,
USA.
Like Pluto, Eris has a moon, which has been
officially named by the
International Astronomical Union
as (136199) Eris I (Dysnomia).
Dysnomia is visible above just to the right of Eris.
Dwarf planets
Pluto and Eris are
trans-Neptunian objects that orbit in the
Kuiper belt
of objects past Neptune.
Eris was discovered in 2003, and is likely composed of
frozen water-ice and
methane.
Since Pluto's recent demotion by the
IAU from planet to dwarf planet status,
Pluto
has recently also been given a new numeric designation: (134340) Pluto.
Currently, the only other officially designated "dwarf planet" is (1)
Ceres.
APOD: 2006 August 28 - Eight Planets and New Solar System Designations
Explanation:
How many planets are in the Solar System?
This popular question now has a new formal answer according the
International Astronomical Union (IAU): eight.
Last week, the IAU voted on a
new definition for planet and
Pluto did not make the cut.
Rather, Pluto was re-classified as a
dwarf planet and is considered as a prototype for a new category of
trans-Neptunian objects.
The eight planets now recognized by the IAU are:
Mercury,
Venus,
Earth,
Mars,
Jupiter,
Saturn,
Uranus, and
Neptune.
Solar System objects now classified as dwarf planets are:
Ceres,
Pluto, and the currently unnamed
2003 UB313.
Planets, by the new IAU definition, must be in orbit around the sun, be nearly spherical,
and must have cleared the neighborhood around their orbits.
The demotion of
Pluto to dwarf planet
status is a source of continuing
dissent and controversy in the astronomical community.
APOD: 2006 June 18 - Crescent Neptune and Triton
Explanation:
Gliding silently through the outer
Solar System, the
Voyager 2 spacecraft camera captured
Neptune and
Triton together in crescent phase in 1989.
The above picture of the
gas giant planet and its
cloudy moon
was taken from behind just after closest approach.
It could not have been taken from
Earth because
Neptune never shows a crescent phase to sunward Earth.
The
unusual vantage point also robs
Neptune of its familiar
blue hue,
as sunlight seen from here is scattered forward,
and so is reddened like the
setting Sun.
Neptune is smaller but more massive than
Uranus, has several
dark rings, and emits more light than it receives from the Sun.
APOD: 2006 February 12 - Phoebe: Comet Moon of Saturn
Explanation:
Was Saturn's moon Phoebe once a comet?
Images from the robotic
Cassini spacecraft taken two years ago when entering
the neighborhood of
Saturn indicate that
Phoebe
may have originated in the outer
Solar System.
Phoebe's
irregular surface,
retrograde orbit, unusually dark surface,
assortment of large and small craters, and low average density
appear consistent with the
hypothesis that Phoebe was once part of the
Kuiper belt of icy comets beyond Neptune before being
captured by Saturn.
Visible in the
above image of Phoebe are craters, streaks, and
layered deposits of light and dark material.
The image was taken from around 30,000 kilometers out from this
200-kilometer diameter moon.
Two weeks after taking the
above image,
Cassini fired its engines
to decelerate into orbit around Saturn.
APOD: 2005 November 3 - Possible Pluto Moons
Explanation:
In 1930, tiny, icy world Pluto was
discovered orbiting
in the distant solar system.
In 1978, its relatively large companion
Charon
was detected
by ground-based observations.
This year, the Hubble
Space Telescope may well have detected two
further members of
the Pluto system.
Provisionally designated S/2005 P1 and S/2005 P2,
the two potential new moons are seen
orbiting in
a counterclockwise direction about
44,000 kilometers (27,000 miles) from Pluto in
these deep Hubble images
recorded only three days apart.
The diminutive and faint companions are also apparently detected
on Hubble images of Pluto from 2002, but
this coming February follow-up observations are planned in an effort to
confirm the discovery of the new moons.
Compared to Pluto's and Charon's diameters of 2,300 and
1,300 kilometers respectively, these moons are estimated to be
between 60 and 200 kilometers across.
Well within the Kuiper Belt,
an extensive region beyond the orbit of Neptune,
the Pluto system could be the first quadruple
Kuiper
Belt object known.
APOD: 2004 September 1 - An Inner Neptune for 55 Cancri
Explanation:
Is our Solar System unique?
The discovery
of a Neptune-mass planet in an sub-Mercury orbit around nearby
Sun-like star
55 Cancri,
announced yesterday along with the discovery of other similar systems, gives a new indication that planetary systems as complex as our own
Solar System
likely exist elsewhere.
The planet,
discovered in data from the
Hobby-Eberly telescope in Texas, the
Lick Observatory
in California, and the orbiting
Hubble Space Telescope,
is one of four planets now known to orbit
55 Cancri
-- the others being similar in mass to Jupiter.
The finding involved noting
subtle changes in the speed of the star caused by its orbiting planets.
The above drawing depicts what this planet might look like,
assuming a mass similar to
Neptune, but a
composition similar to Earth.
The star
55 Cancri, only 40 light-years distant, is
visible with
binoculars towards the constellation of Cancer.
APOD: 2004 June 30 - Phoebe: Comet Moon of Saturn
Explanation:
Was Saturn's moon Phoebe once a comet?
Images from the robotic
Cassini spacecraft taken two weeks ago when entering
the neighborhood of
Saturn indicate that
Phoebe
may have originated in the outer
Solar System.
Phoebe's
irregular surface,
retrograde orbit, unusually dark surface,
assortment of large and small craters, and low average density
appear consistent with the
hypothesis that Phoebe was once part of the
Kuiper belt of icy comets beyond Neptune before being
captured by Saturn.
Visible in the
above image of Phoebe are craters, streaks, and
layered deposits of light and dark material.
The image was taken from around 30,000 kilometers out from this
200-kilometer diameter moon.
Late today, Cassini will begin to
fire its engines
to decelerate into orbit around Saturn.
APOD: 2004 June 26 - Neptune: Still Springtime After All These Years
Explanation:
In the 1960s spring came to the southern hemisphere of
Neptune,
the Solar System's outermost gas giant planet.
Of course, since Neptune orbits the Sun once every 165
earth-years,
it's still springtime for southern Neptune, where
each
season lasts over four decades.
Astronomers
have found that in recent years
Neptune has been getting brighter
as illustrated in this Hubble Space Telescope image made in 2002.
Compared
to Hubble
pictures taken as early as 1996,
the 2002 image shows a dramatic increase in reflective
white cloud bands in Neptune's southern hemisphere.
Neptune's
equator is tilted 29 degrees from the plane of its orbit,
about the same as Earth's 23.5 degree tilt, and
Neptune's weather
seems to be dramatically responding to the
similar relative seasonal increase in sunlight -- even though
sunlight is 900 times
less intense for the distant gas giant than for planet Earth.
Meanwhile, summer is really just around the
corner, coming to
Neptune's southern hemisphere in 2005.
APOD: 2004 February 14 - Solar System Portrait
Explanation:
On another
Valentine's Day
(February 14, 1990), cruising four billion
miles from the Sun, the
Voyager 1
spacecraft looked back to make this
first ever family portrait
of our Solar System.
The complete portrait is a
60 frame mosaic
made from a vantage point 32 degrees above the
ecliptic plane.
Voyager's wide angle camera frames sweep through the
inner Solar System (far left) linking up with
gas giant Neptune, at the time
the
Solar System's outermost planet (scroll right).
Positions
for Venus,
Earth, Jupiter,
Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune
are indicated by the corresponding letters while the Sun is the
bright spot near the center of the circle of frames.
The inset frames
for each of the planets are
from Voyager's narrow field camera.
Unseen in the portrait are
Mercury, too close to the Sun
to be detected, and Mars, unfortunately hidden by sunlight
scattered in the camera's optical system.
Small, faint Pluto's
position was not covered.
APOD: 2003 October 20 - Neptune and Triton from Palomar
Explanation:
How's the weather on Neptune?
Tracking major
weather patterns on the
Solar System's outermost gas giant can help in the
understanding of global weather patterns here on
Earth.
Each summer for the past five years,
Neptune has been imaged and major weather patterns studied.
The latest picture, taken on September 15, is
shown above in false color.
Visible in pink near
Neptune's lower right is a
new storm dubbed Annabelle that is several times larger than her
terrestrial sister Isabel, a concurrent
storm system that occurred here on Earth.
Although Isabel lasted a few weeks, no one knows
how long Annabelle will endure.
On the upper right is
Neptune's largest moon
Triton, an
unusual moon that sports
volcanoes that spew ice.
APOD: 2003 October 3 - Cold Comet Halley
Explanation:
While this may not be the most esthetic image of
Comet Halley
that you have ever seen, it is likely the most unique.
The tiny cluster of pixels circled is the
famous
comet along its orbit over
4 billion (4,000,000,000) kilometers or 28
AU
from the Sun --
a record distance for a comet observation.
Its last passage through
our neck of the woods in 1986,
Comet Halley
presently cruises through the dim reaches of the outer solar
system, almost as far away as outermost gas giant Neptune, and shows no
sign of activity.
Captured in March, this negative image is a composite of
digital exposures made with three
of ESO's Very Large Telescopes.
The exposures are registered on the
moving comet, so the
picture shows background stars and galaxies as elongated smudges.
An earth-orbiting satellite appears as a dark streak at the top.
Comet
Halley is clearly extremely faint here, but large earthbound
telescopes will be able to
follow
it as it grows fainter still, reaching
the most distant point in its orbit, more than 5 billion kilometers
(35 AU) from the Sun, in 2023.
APOD: 2003 June 13 - Neptune: Still Springtime After All These Years
Explanation:
In the 1960s spring came to the southern hemisphere of
Neptune,
the Solar System's outermost gas giant planet.
Of course, since Neptune orbits the Sun once every 165
earth-years,
it's still springtime for southern Neptune, where
each
season lasts over four decades.
Astronomers
have found that in recent years
Neptune has been
getting
brighter, as illustrated in
this Hubble Space Telescope image made in 2002.
Compared
to Hubble
pictures taken as early as 1996,
the 2002 image shows a dramatic increase in reflective
white cloud bands in Neptune's southern hemisphere.
Neptune's
equator is tilted 29 degrees from the plane of its orbit,
about the same as Earth's 23.5 degree tilt, and
Neptune's weather
seems to be dramatically responding to the
similar relative seasonal increase in sunlight -- even though
sunlight is 900 times
less intense for the distant gas giant than for planet Earth.
Meanwhile, summer is really just around the
corner, coming to
Neptune's southern hemisphere in 2005.
APOD: 2002 September 22 - Two Hours Before Neptune
Explanation:
Two hours before closest approach to
Neptune in 1989, the
Voyager 2 robot spacecraft snapped
this picture.
Clearly visible for the first time were long light-colored
cirrus-type clouds floating high in
Neptune's atmosphere. Shadows of these clouds can even
be seen on lower cloud decks.
Most of
Neptune's atmosphere is made of
hydrogen and
helium, which is invisible.
Neptune's blue color therefore comes from
smaller amounts of atmospheric
methane,
which preferentially absorbs red light.
Neptune has the fastest winds in the
Solar System, with gusts reaching 2000 kilometers per hour.
Speculation holds that
diamonds may be created in the
dense hot conditions that exist under the clouds-tops of Uranus and Neptune.
APOD: 2002 June 24 - The Sun's Heliosphere and Heliopause
Explanation:
Where does the Sun's influence end? Nobody is sure.
Out past the orbits of
Neptune and
Pluto
extends a region named the
heliosphere where the
Sun's magnetic field and particles from the
Solar Wind continue to dominate.
The surface where the
Solar Wind drops below
sound speed is called the termination shock and is depicted as the inner oval in the
above computer-generated illustration.
It is thought that this surface occurs as close as 75-90
AU -- so close that a
Pioneer or
Voyager spacecraft may soon glide through it as they exit the
Solar System at about 3 AU/year.
The actual contact sheet between the Sun's
ions and the Galaxy's ions is called the
heliopause and is thought to occur at about 110 AU.
It is depicted above as the middle surface.
The Sun's heliopause moves through the
local interstellar medium
much as a boat moves on water, pushing a
bow shock out in front,
thought to occur near 230 AU.
APOD: 2002 June 7 - Portrait of an Infant Solar System
Explanation:
This infant solar system
was discovered posing along the lonely
outskirts of the Rho Ophiuchi
dark cloud,
a star forming region 500 light-years from Earth.
Enlarged in an infrared false-color portrait from the European
Southern Observatory's
Antu
telescope, the dark dusty disk of
planet-forming
material lies edge-on, neatly dividing
two small nebulae which reflect light from a hidden, youthful
central star.
Enthusiastically nicknamed the "Flying Saucer", the
circumstellar
disk is about 300 astronomical units across
(1 a.u.
is the Earth-Sun distance)
or about 5 times the diameter of Neptune's orbit.
The twin reflection nebulae
have clearly different colors for
reasons which still remain a mystery, but the relatively
isolated neighborhood of the natal solar system is a stroke of luck.
Planets should
be able to develop within the dusty disk free from the
destructive influence
of radiation and winds from any
nearby massive hot stars usually found in young star clusters.
APOD: 2002 February 14 - Solar System Portrait
Explanation:
On another
Valentine's Day
(February 14, 1990), cruising four billion
miles from the Sun, the
Voyager 1
spacecraft looked back to make this
first ever family portrait
of our Solar System.
The complete portrait is a
60 frame mosaic
made from a vantage point 32 degrees above the
ecliptic plane.
Voyager's wide angle camera frames sweep through the
inner Solar System (far left) linking up with
gas giant Neptune, at the time
the
Solar System's outermost planet (scroll right).
Positions
for Venus,
Earth, Jupiter,
Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune
are indicated by the corresponding letters while the Sun is the
bright spot near the center of the circle of frames.
The inset frames
for each of the planets are
from Voyager's narrow field camera.
Unseen in the portrait are
Mercury, too close to the Sun
to be detected, and Mars, unfortunately hidden by sunlight
scattered in the camera's optical system.
Small, faint Pluto's
position was not covered.
APOD: 2001 December 1 - Neptune's Great Dark Spot: Gone But Not Forgotten
Explanation:
When NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft flew by
distant Neptune in August of 1989,
astronomers
were shocked.
Since Neptune receives only 3 percent
the sunlight Jupiter does, they
expected to find a dormant, dark, frigid planet.
Instead, the Voyager images revealed
evidence of a dynamic and turbulent world.
One of the most spectacular discoveries was of the Great Dark Spot, shown here in close-up.
Surprisingly, it was
comparable in size and at the same relative southern latitude as Jupiter's
Great Red Spot, appearing to be a
similar rotating storm system.
Winds near the spot were measured up to
1500 miles per hour, the strongest recorded on any planet.
The Voyager data also revealed that the Great
Dark Spot varied significantly in size during the brief flyby.
When the Hubble
Space Telescope viewed the planet in 1994, the spot had
vanished -- only to be replaced by another dark
spot in the planet's northern hemisphere!
APOD: 2001 October 18 - Pluto: New Horizons
Explanation:
Pluto's
horizon spans the foreground in this artist's vision,
gazing sunward across that distant and
not yet explored world.
Titled New Horizons, the painting also
depicts Pluto's
companion, Charon, as a darkened, ghostly apparition with
a luminous
crescent
against a starry background.
Beyond
Charon,
the diminished Sun is immersed in
a flattened cloud of zodiacal dust.
Here, Pluto's ruddy colors are based on existing
astronomical
observations while imagined but
scientifically tenable details
provided by the artist include high atmospheric cirrus and
dark plumes from surface vents, in analogy to Neptune's large moon
Triton
explored by the
Voyager
2 spacecraft in 1989.
Craters suggest bombardment by
Kuiper
Belt objects, a newly understood
population of
outer solar system bodies likely
related to the
Pluto-Charon system.
NASA is now considering a future robotic reconnaissance
mission
to Pluto-Charon and the Kuiper Belt which could reach the distant
worlds late in the next decade.
APOD: 2001 August 26 - Uranus: The Tilted Planet
Explanation:
Uranus is the third largest planet in our
Solar System after
Jupiter and
Saturn.
Uranus
is composed mostly of rock and ices,
but with a thick
hydrogen and
helium atmosphere.
The blue hue of Uranus' atmosphere arises from the small amount of
methane which preferentially absorbs red light.
This picture was snapped by the
Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1986 -
the only spacecraft ever to visit Uranus.
Uranus has many
moons and a
ring system.
Uranus, like
Venus, has a rotation axis that
is greatly tilted and sometimes points near the Sun.
It remains an astronomical mystery why
Uranus' axis is so tilted.
Uranus and
Neptune are quite similar:
Uranus is slightly larger but less massive.
APOD: 2001 August 21 - Dark Spots on Neptune
Explanation:
Neptune has spots.
The Solar System's outermost gas giant shows a
nearly uniform blue hue created by small amounts of
methane drifting in a thick atmosphere of
nearly colorless
hydrogen and
helium.
Dark spots do appear, however, that are
anti-cyclones:
large high-pressure systems that swirl in
Neptune's cold cloud tops.
Two dark spots are visible in the
above picture taken by the robot
Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1989: an
Earth-sized
Great Dark Spot located on the far left, and
Dark Spot 2 located near bottom.
A bright cloud dubbed
Scooter accompanies the Great Dark Spot.
Recent computer simulations indicate that
scooters are methane clouds that might commonly
be found near dark spots.
Subsequent
images of
Neptune by the
Hubble Space Telescope
in 1994 indicated that both of these
dark spots had dissipated, but
another had been created.
APOD: 2001 June 19 - Crescent Neptune and Triton
Explanation:
Gliding silently through the outer
Solar System, the
Voyager 2 spacecraft camera captured
Neptune and
Triton together in crescent phase in 1989.
The above picture of the
gas giant planet and its
cloudy moon
was taken from behind just after closest approach.
It could not have been taken from
Earth because
Neptune never shows a crescent phase to sunward Earth.
The
unusual vantage point also robs
Neptune of its familiar
blue hue,
as sunlight seen from here is scattered forward,
and so is reddened like the
setting Sun.
Neptune is smaller but more massive than
Uranus, has several
dark rings, and emits more light than it receives from the Sun.
APOD: 2000 October 6 - X-Rays From Sirius B
Explanation:
In visible light
Sirius A
(Alpha Canis Majoris) is the
brightest
star in the night sky, a closely watched celestial beacon throughout
recorded
history.
Part of a
binary star system only 8 light-years away,
it was known in modern times to have a small
companion star,
Sirius B.
Sirius B is much dimmer and
appears so close to the brilliant Sirius A
that it was not
actually
sighted until 1862,
during Alvan Clark's testing
of a large, well made optical
refracting telescope.
For orbiting x-ray telescopes, the
Sirius situation is exactly
reversed, though.
A smaller but hotter Sirius B appears as the overwhelmingly
intense x-ray source in this Chandra Observatory
x-ray
image (lines radiating from Sirius B are image artifacts).
The fainter source seen at the position of Sirius A
may be largely due to ultraviolet light from the star leaking
into the x-ray detector.
With a surface temperature of 25,000
kelvins,
the mass of the Sun, and a radius just less than Earth's, Sirius B
is the closest known
white dwarf star.
Can you guess what makes
Sirius B like
Neptune,
the Sun's most distant gas giant planet?
While still unseen, the presence of both celestial
bodies was detected based on their gravitational
influence alone ... making them early examples of
dark
matter.
APOD: 2000 February 18 - Neptune through Adaptive Optics
Explanation:
From the Earth's surface,
Neptune usually appears as a fuzzy blotch.
The
blurring effects of the Earth's atmosphere deny clearer images.
By
distorting mirrors in the telescope itself in
time with the changing atmosphere, however,
these effects can be greatly reduced.
Many of the
world's largest telescopes are
now implementing
these "rubber mirror" adaptive optics (AO) systems to bring out the finest details that these telescopes can resolve.
Recently the 10-meter
Keck II telescope
in Hawaii came
on-line with AO capability.
The above image of Neptune in three
infrared colors demonstrates the clarity of the new technique -
as compared to an image of Neptune from
Keck II
without AO.
APOD: October 25, 1999 - Neptune in Infrared
Explanation:
Neptune has never looked so clear in
infrared light.
Neptune is the eighth most distant planet from the Sun,
thirty times the Earth-Sun distance.
Neptune is the fourth largest planet,
almost four times Earth's diameter.
Surprisingly, Neptune
radiates about twice as much energy as it receives from the Sun.
A fascinating feature of the above photograph is that it was taken far from distant
Neptune,
through the Earth's normally blurry atmosphere.
The great clarity of this recently released image was made
possible by "rubber mirror"
adaptive optics technology.
Here, mirrors in the new
Palomar High Angular Resolution Observer
(PHARO) instrument connected to the
200-inch Hale Telescope
flex to remove the effects of turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere.
APOD: October 10, 1999 - Triton: Neptune's Largest Moon
Explanation:
One hundred and fifty three years ago, on October 10th, 1846,
William Lassell
was observing the newly discovered planet
Neptune.
He was attempting to confirm his observation, made just the previous week,
that Neptune had a ring.
But this time he discovered
that Neptune had a satellite as well.
Lassell soon proved that the ring was a product of his new
telescope's distortion, but the satellite
Triton
remained.
The above picture of
Triton
was taken in 1989 by the only spacecraft ever to pass
Triton:
Voyager 2.
Voyager 2 found fascinating terrain,
a thin atmosphere, and even evidence for
ice volcanoes
on this world of peculiar orbit and spin.
Ironically, Voyager 2 also confirmed the existence of complete thin rings around Neptune
- but these would have been quite invisible to Lassell!
APOD: October 5, 1999 - Two Hours Before Neptune
Explanation:
Two hours before closest approach to
Neptune in 1989, the
Voyager 2 robot spacecraft snapped
this picture.
Clearly visible for the first time were long light-colored
cirrus-type clouds floating high in
Neptune's atmosphere. Shadows of these clouds can even
be seen on lower cloud decks.
Most of
Neptune's atmosphere is made of
hydrogen and
helium, which is invisible.
Neptune's blue color therefore comes from
smaller amounts of atmospheric
methane,
which preferentially absorbs red light.
Neptune has the fastest winds in the
Solar System, with gusts reaching 2000 kilometers per hour.
Recent speculation holds that
diamonds may be created in the
dense hot conditions that exist under the clouds-tops of Uranus and Neptune.
APOD: July 10, 1999 - Southern Neptune
Explanation:
Neptune, the Solar System's outermost gas giant planet, is 30 times
farther from the Sun than Earth.
Twelve years after
a 1977 launch, Voyager 2 flew by Neptune and
found surprising activity on a planet
that receives only 3 percent as much sunlight as
Jupiter.
In its brief but tantalizing close-up
glimpse of this dim and distant world,
the robot spacecraft recorded pulses of
radio emission, zonal cloud bands,
and large scale storm systems with up to
1500 mile per hour winds - the strongest measured on any planet.
This mosaic of 5 Voyager images shows Neptune's Southern Hemisphere.
Cloud bands and the Earth-sized,
late "Great Dark Spot" with trailing
white clouds located at
about 22 degrees southern latitude are clearly visible.
The distance from the Great Dark Spot feature to Neptune's
South Pole
(image center) is about 17,000 miles.
APOD: May 5, 1999 - A Solar System Portrait
Explanation:
As the
Voyager 1 spacecraft headed out of our
Solar System,
it looked back and took a parting family portrait of the
Sun and planets.
From beyond
Pluto,
our Solar System looks like a bright star
surrounded by faint dots. In the
above picture, the Sun is so bright
it is blocked out for contrast.
The innermost dots visible, labeled E and V for
Earth and
Venus, are particularly hard to discern.
Gas giants
Jupiter (J) and
Saturn (S) are much more noticeable.
The outermost planets visible are
Uranus (U) and
Neptune (N).
Each planet is shown labeled and
digitally enhanced in an inset image.
Voyager 1 is only one of four
human-made objects to leave our Solar System,
the other three being Voyager 2,
and Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11.
APOD: February 13, 1999 - Pluto: The Frozen Planet
Explanation:
This portrait of Pluto and its companion
Charon was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1994.
Pluto is usually the most distant planet from the
Sun but because of its
eccentric orbit Pluto crossed inside
of Neptune's orbit in 1979.
On Thursday, February 11th, it crossed back out, recovering
its status as
the most distant of
nine planets.
Pluto is
still considered to be a planet, although very little
is known about it compared to other planets.
Pluto is smaller than any
other planet and even smaller than
several other planet's moons.
Pluto is probably composed of frozen rock and ice,
much like Neptune's moon Triton.
Pluto has not yet been
visited by a spacecraft, but a
mission is being planned for the next decade.
APOD: February 7, 1999 - Titan: Saturns Smog Moon
Explanation:
The largest moon of
Saturn is a rare wonder.
Titan is the only one of Saturn's moons
with an atmosphere, and one of only two moons in the
Solar System with this distinction
(Neptune's
Triton is the other).
Titan's thick cloudy atmosphere is mostly nitrogen,
like Earth's, but contains much
higher percentages of "smog-like" chemicals
such as methane and ethane. The smog may be so thick
that it actually rains "gasoline-like" liquids.
The organic nature of some of the chemicals found in
Titan's
atmosphere cause some to speculate that
Titan may harbor life!
Because of its thick cloud cover,
however, Titan's actual surface properties remain mysterious.
Voyager 1 flew by in 1980 taking the
above picture, and more recently much has been learned from
observations by the
Hubble Space Telescope.
The
Cassini mission
launched in 1997 will map Titan's surface in 2004, helping to solve some
of its mysteries.
APOD: February 5, 1999 - HR 4796A: Not Saturn
Explanation:
These are not false-color renderings of the latest observations of
Saturn's magnificent rings.
Instead, the panels show a strikingly similar
system on a much larger scale -
a ring around the young, Vega-like star,
HR 4796A, located about 200 light-years from Earth.
Probably composed of dusty debris ground from colliding planetesimals,
this ring is confined to a zone less than 17 AU wide
(1 AU equals the Earth-Sun distance) and
girdles the star at a radius of about 70 AU,
roughly twice the orbital radius of Neptune.
In analogy with the relationship
of Saturn's rings and moons,
this circumstellar ring could be held in place by
forces due to planets - shepherding
planetary bodies or the gravitational influence of larger planets
orbiting closer to the parent star.
In any event, because the ring would not survive long without something
to keep it there, astronomers consider its presence strong
evidence for unseen planetary bodies around HR 4796A.
The top panels show
the false-color images at two infrared wavelengths
from the Hubble Space Telescope's
NICMOS instrument,
and the bottom panels trace the corresponding image contours.
At the center of each,
the overwhelming light of HR 4796A has been masked
to reveal the fainter circumstellar ring.
APOD: January 20, 1999 - Possible Planets And Infrared Dust
Explanation:
These near-infrared Hubble images of dust
surrounding young stars
offer the latest tantalizing evidence for planets
beyond our Solar System.
At left, the dark
gap seen in the dust disk is reminiscent of a similar
large gap in
Saturn's rings
believed to be sculpted by orbiting moons.
By analogy, the gap in
the dust disk of HD 141569 may be a larger scale
result of unseen orbiting planets.
At right is a relatively thin stellar dust ring
suggestive of planetary rings held in
place by orbiting moons.
On a much larger scale this ring around
the star HR 4796A could also
indicate the presence of orbiting planet-sized bodies too faint to be
directly visible.
For a distance comparison, the orbit of Neptune is drawn at the lower right
of each picture.
The overwhelmingly bright starlight at the center has
been blocked out to reveal the dim dust features.
APOD: June 27, 1998 - Southern Neptune
Explanation:
Neptune, the Solar System's outermost gas giant planet, is 30 times
farther from the Sun than Earth.
Twelve years after
a 1977 launch, Voyager 2 flew by Neptune and
found surprising activity on a planet
that receives only 3 percent as much sunlight as
Jupiter.
In its brief but tantalizing close-up
glimpse of this dim and distant world,
the robot spacecraft recorded pulses of
radio emission, zonal cloud bands,
and large scale storm systems with up to
1500 mile per hour winds - the strongest measured on any planet.
This mosaic of 5 Voyager images shows Neptune's Southern Hemisphere.
Cloud bands and the Earth-sized,
late "Great Dark Spot" with trailing
white clouds located at
about 22 degrees southern latitude are clearly visible.
The distance from the Great Dark Spot feature to Neptune's
South Pole
(image center) is about 17,000 miles.
APOD: May 17, 1998 - Our Solar System from Voyager
Explanation:
After taking spectacular pictures of our Solar
System's outer planets, Voyager 1 looked back at six planets
to take our Solar System's first family portrait.
Here Venus,
Earth, Jupiter,
Saturn,
Uranus, and Neptune, were all visible across the sky.
Each, however, was now just a small speck of light,
dimmer than many of the stars in the sky. Voyager
1 is only one of four human-made objects to leave our Solar System,
the other three being Voyager 2,
and Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11.
APOD: February 21, 1998 - Neptune: Big Blue Giant
Explanation:
This picture was taken by the Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1989 - the only spacecraft
ever to visit Neptune. Neptune will be the farthest planet from the
Sun until 1999, when the
elliptical orbit of
Pluto
will cause it to once again resume this status. Neptune, like Uranus, is composed mostly of liquid water,
methane and ammonia, is surrounded by a thick gas
atmosphere of mostly hydrogen and helium,
and has many moons and rings. Neptune's moon
Triton is unlike any
other and has active volcanoes. The nature of
Triton's unusual orbit around
Neptune
is the focus of much discussion and speculation.
APOD: December 28, 1997 - Pluto: The Frozen Planet
Explanation:
The Hubble Space Telescope
imaged Pluto and its moon Charon in 1994.
Pluto is usually the most distant planet from the
Sun but because of its elliptic orbit Pluto crossed inside of
Neptune's
orbit in 1979 and will cross back out again in 1999.
Compared to the other planets,
very little is known about Pluto.
Pluto is smaller than any
other planet and even smaller than
several other planet's moons.
From Pluto, the Sun is just a tiny point of light.
Pluto is probably composed of frozen rock and ice,
much like Neptune's moon
Triton. Pluto has not yet been
visited by a spacecraft, but a
mission is being planned for the next decade.
APOD: December 4, 1997 - A Sky Full Of Planets
Explanation:
Look up tonight.
Just after sunset, the crescent moon and
all five "naked-eye" planets
(Mercury,
Venus,
Mars,
Jupiter,
and Saturn)
will be visible (depending on your latitude), lying near
our solar system's ecliptic plane.
Venus and Jupiter will shine brilliantly as the brightest "stars"
in the sky, but Mercury will be near the horizon and hard to see.
A pair of binoculars will also reveal Uranus and Neptune and
observers with a telescope and a good site may even be able
to glimpse faint Pluto just above the
Western horizon in the fading twilight (not shown on the chart above).
Enjoy this lovely spectacle
any clear night through about December 8.
A similar gathering is expected in May 2000
but the planets will be hidden from view by the solar glare.
A night sky as full of planets as this one will occur
again though ... in about 100 years.
APOD: November 23, 1997 - Triton: Neptune's Largest Moon
Explanation:
On October 10th, 1846,
William Lassell
was observing the newly discovered
planet Neptune. He was attempting
to confirm his observation, made just the previous week,
that Neptune had a ring.
But this time he discovered
that Neptune
had a satellite as well. Lassell soon proved that the ring
was a product of his new telescope's distortion, but the satellite
Triton
remained. The above picture of Triton
was taken in 1989 by the only spacecraft ever to pass Triton:
Voyager 2. Voyager 2 found fascinating terrain,
a thin atmosphere, and even evidence for ice volcanoes on this
world of peculiar orbit and spin. Ironically, Voyager 2 also confirmed the existence of complete thin rings around Neptune
- but these would have been quite invisible to Lassell!
APOD: November 15, 1997 - Uranus: The Tilted Planet
Explanation:
Uranus is the third largest planet after
Jupiter and
Saturn. This picture was snapped by the
Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1986 - the only
spacecraft ever to visit
Uranus. Uranus
has many moons and a ring system.
Uranus is composed mostly of rock and ices, but
with a thick
hydrogen and
helium atmosphere.
Uranus is
peculiar in that its rotation axis is greatly tilted and
sometimes points near the
Sun. It remains an
astronomical mystery why Uranus' axis is so tilted. Uranus and
Neptune are very similar.
APOD: November 3, 1997 - Irregular Moons Discovered Around Uranus
Explanation:
Where did these two irregular moons of
Uranus originate? Last week two
previously undiscovered moons of the distant gas planet were
confirmed,
the first in irregular orbits.
All fifteen
previously known moons of
Uranus
are 'regular', circling near the planet's equator.
Most of these were discovered by the passing
Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1986. These newly discovered moons are thought to be odd-shaped and
about 100 km across. They are considered irregular, though,
because they orbit in odd directions and far from
Uranus. If Uranus' irregular moons
have the same origin as those orbiting
Jupiter,
Saturn,
and Neptune, then they were probably caught from orbits around the
Sun. Moons like this are discovered by their motion.
One of these moons is
shown above
as the circled point of light moving from left to right.
(To stop the movie from repeating, click "stop" on most browsers.)
APOD: June 9, 1997 - An Auroral Ring on Jupiter
Explanation:
Do other planets have aurora?
Terrestrial
and spacecraft observations have found evidence for aurora on
Venus,
Mars,
Jupiter,
Saturn,
Uranus, and
Neptune.
In the
above
false-color photograph, a good portion of an
auroral ring was captured recently in optical light by the
Galileo spacecraft
in orbit around
Jupiter.
Auroral rings
encircle a planet's magnetic pole, and result from charged particles
spiraling down magnetic field lines. Although the surroundings near
Jupiter are much different than
Earth, the
auroral rings appear similar.
APOD: May 29, 1997 - Southern Neptune
Explanation:
Neptune, the Solar System's outermost gas giant planet, is 30 times
farther from the Sun than Earth.
Twelve years after
a 1977 launch, Voyager 2 flew by Neptune and
found surprising activity on a planet
that receives only 3 percent as much sunlight as
Jupiter.
In its brief but tantalizing close-up
glimpse of this dim and distant world,
the robot spacecraft recorded pulses of
radio emission, zonal cloud bands,
and large scale storm systems with up to
1500 mile per hour winds - the strongest measured on any planet.
This mosaic of 5 Voyager images shows Neptune's Southern Hemisphere.
Cloud bands and the Earth-sized,
late "Great Dark Spot" with trailing
white clouds located at
about 22 degrees southern latitude are clearly visible.
The distance from the Great Dark Spot feature to Neptune's
South Pole
(image center) is about 17,000 miles.
APOD: May 26, 1997 - Old Faithful Meets Hale-Bopp
Explanation:
As Comet Hale-Bopp leaves our Northern Skies, it provides us with
yet another burst of joy.
On May 11th the fading
comet
was photographed behind the famous
"Old Faithful" water geyser of
Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, USA, Planet Earth.
Perhaps more familiar to Earth Dwellers
than the dark geysers on
Neptune's moon
Triton, the gas geysers on
Jupiter's moon Io,
and the dirty water geysers hypothesized on Jupiter's
moon Europa,
Earth's Old Faithful is also reliable -
every 60-80 minutes it gushes a plume of water and
steam high into the air.
Comet Hale-Bopp
will continue to be visible
to observers in the Southern Hemisphere
as it moves away from the Sun towards the outer Solar System.
APOD: May 12, 1997 - Lightning on Jupiter
Explanation:
Does lightning occur only on Earth? Spacecraft in our
Solar System have detected radio signals consistent with
lightning on other planets, including
Venus,
Jupiter,
Saturn,
Uranus, and
Neptune.
In the
above photograph,
optical flashes from
Jupiter were photographed recently by the
Galileo orbiter.
Each of the circled dots indicates
lightning.
The numbers label lines of
latitude.
The size of the largest spot is about 500 kilometers across and
might be high clouds illuminated by several bright lightning strokes.
APOD: December 14, 1996 - Our Solar System from Voyager
Explanation: After taking spectacular pictures of our Solar
System's outer planets, Voyager 1 looked back at six planets
to take our Solar System's first family portrait. Here Venus,
Earth, Jupiter,
Saturn,
Uranus, and Neptune,
were all visible across the sky. Each, however, was now just a
small speck of light,
dimmer than many of the stars in the sky. Voyager
1 is only one of four human-made objects to leave our Solar System,
the other three being Voyager 2,
and Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11.
APOD: October 28, 1996 - The Weather on Neptune
Explanation: Today's weather on Neptune
will be typical. Highs in the upper atmosphere will be about
-150 Centigrade,
with winds ranging about 900 miles per hour near the equator.
Much was learned recently about Neptune's
weather by the release last week of time-lapse pictures
of the most distant gas giant in our Solar System.
These pictures
show how the weather differs between the two hemispheres of Neptune.
The overall blue color of Neptune
is caused by methane gas preferentially absorbing red light, while
the yellow spots are the highest clouds. It is still not known
why Neptune's Great Dark Spot disappeared.
APOD: October 10, 1996 - Triton: Neptune's Largest Moon
Explanation: Today marks the 150th anniversary of the
discovery of Triton. On October 10 1846, William Lassell
was observing the newly discovered
planet Neptune. He was attempting
to confirm his observation, made just the previous week,
that Neptune had a ring.
But this time he discovered
that Neptune
had a satellite as well. Lassell soon proved the ring
was product of his new telescope's distortion, but the satellite
Triton
remained. The above picture of Triton
was taken in 1989 by the only spacecraft ever to pass Triton:
Voyager 2. Voyager 2 found fascinating terrain,
a thin atmosphere, and even evidence for ice volcanoes on this
world of peculiar orbit and spin. Ironically, Voyager 2 also confirmed the existence of complete thin rings around Neptune
- but these would have been quite invisible to Lassell!
APOD: August 28, 1996 - NGC 5882: A Small Planetary Nebula
Explanation:
Will most stars one day look like this? Pictured above is the
planetary nebula
NGC 5882,
captured by the
Hubble Space Telescope.
Although
planetary
nebulae can appear similar to planets like
Uranus and
Neptune, they
are actually
gas
clouds surrounding stars typically hundreds of light years
away.
Planetary
nebula form when a typical
star completes
fusion in its
core and ejects an outer envelope of gas - usually about 10 percent of the
star's initial mass. This gas shell dims in about 50,000 years -
short compared to the lifetimes of stars.
Therefore, although only about 1000
planetary nebula are known in our
Galaxy, it is thought that most stars go
through this phase. Green light is emitted when
oxygen ions acquire
electrons from the surrounding gas.
APOD: May 8, 1996 - Neptune's Great Dark Spot: Gone But Not Forgotten
Explanation:
When NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft flew by distant Neptune in August of 1989,
astronomers were shocked. Since
Neptune receives only 3 percent
the sunlight Jupiter does, they expected to
find a dormant, dark, frigid planet. Instead, the
Voyager images
revealed evidence of
a dynamic and turbulent world.
One of the most
spectacular discoveries was of
the Great Dark Spot, shown here in close-up.
Surprisingly, it was comparable in size and
at the same relative southern latitude as
Jupiter's Great Red Spot, appearing
to be a similar rotating storm system.
Winds near the spot were measured up to 1500 miles per hour, the strongest
recorded on any planet.
The Voyager data also revealed that
the Great Dark Spot varied significantly in size during the brief
flyby. When the
Hubble Space Telescope viewed the planet in 1994,
the spot had vanished -- only to be replaced by
another dark spot in the planet's northern hemisphere!
APOD: May 7, 1996 - The Clouds of Neptune
Explanation:
These Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images reveal glimpses of the
dynamic
atmosphere of Neptune, the Solar System's
most distant gas giant planet.
The first close-up of Neptune's clouds was provided by
NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft during its August 1989 flyby, giving
a tantalizingly brief look.
From its vantage point in Earth orbit, HST can patiently
watch in detail as the
planet's massive weather systems change over time. These three
pictures, taken during October and November 1994 when
Neptune was
only 2.8 billion miles distant, show the planet's characteristic aqua-blue
colored atmosphere highlighted by pink, high altitude clouds and streaked
with dark bands. The aqua-blue color is caused by gaseous methane
which absorbs red light.
Here, the high altitude clouds were intentionally given a pink tint
to indicate that they were imaged in
near infrared light - in true color images they would appear white.
APOD: April 30, 1996 - Uranus' Ring System
Explanation:
The rings of
Uranus
are thin, narrow, and dark compared to other planetary
ring systems. Brightened artificially by computer, the ring particles
reflect as little light as charcoal, although they are really made of ice
chucks darkened by rock.
This false-color,
infrared picture from the
Hubble Space Telescope taken in
July 1995 shows the rings in conjunction to the planet. The
infrared
light allows one to see detail in different layers of
Uranus' atmosphere,
which has been digitally enhanced with false color.
Three other planets in our
Solar System are known to have rings:
Jupiter,
Saturn, and
Neptune.
Four of
Uranus' moons are visible outside the ring plane. The
rings of
Uranus were discovered from ground-based observations
in 1977.
APOD: March 4, 1996 - Uranus' Largest Moon: Titania
Explanation:
Titania's tortured terrain is a mix of valleys and craters. NASA's
interplanetary robot spacecraft Voyager 2 passed this moon of
Uranus in
1986 and took the above photograph. The photograph was then transmitted
back to earth by radio. The valleys of
Titania
resemble those on
Ariel indicate that Titania underwent some unknown
tumultuous resurfacing event in its distant past. Although
Titania is
Uranus' largest moon, it is still much smaller than
Triton - the largest
moon of Uranus' sister planet
Neptune. Titania is essentially a large dirty
iceball that orbits Uranus - it is composed of about half water-ice and
half rock. Titania was discovered by William Hershel in 1787.
APOD: November 4, 1995 - Neptune's Moon Proteus
Explanation:
Proteus is the second largest moon of
Neptune behind the mysterious
Triton.
Proteus was discovered only in 1982 by the Voyager 2 spacecraft. This is
unusual since Neptune has a smaller moon - Nereid - which was discovered
33 years earlier from Earth. The reason
Proteus was not discovered sooner
is that its surface is very dark and it orbits much closer to Neptune.
Proteus has an odd box-like shape and were it even slightly more
massive, its own gravity would cause it to reform itself into a sphere.
APOD: September 23, 1995 - Titan: Saturn's Smog Moon
Explanation:
The largest moon of
Saturn is a rare wonder. Titan is the only one of
Saturn's moons with an atmosphere, and one of only two moons in the
Solar System with this distinction
(Neptune's
Triton is the other).
Titan's
thick cloudy atmosphere is mostly nitrogen, like
Earth's, but contains much
higher percentages of "smog-like" chemicals such as methane and ethane.
The smog may be so thick that it actually rains
"gasoline-like" liquids. The organic nature of some of the chemicals found in
Titan's atmosphere cause some to speculate that Titan may harbor life!
Because of its thick cloud cover, however, Titan's actual surface properties
remain mysterious.
Voyager 1
flew by in 1980 taking the above picture,
and recently much has been learned from
Hubble Space Telescope
observations. The
Cassini mission
currently scheduled for launch in 1997 will map Titan's
surface, helping to solve some of its mysteries.
APOD: August 19, 1995 - Our Solar System from Voyager
Explanation:
After taking its spectacular pictures of the outer solar system planets,
Voyager 1
looked back at six planets
from the inner solar system. Here
Venus,
Earth,
Jupiter,
Saturn,
Uranus, and
Neptune,
were all visible across the sky. Each, however, was now just a small speck
of light, dimmer than many of the stars in the sky. Voyager 1 is only one
of four human-made objects to leave our Solar System, the other three being
Voyager 2, and
Pioneer 10 and 11.
APOD: August 18, 1995 - Pluto: The Frozen Planet
Explanation:
The Hubble Space Telescope
imaged
Pluto and its moon Charon in 1994.
Pluto is usually the most distant planet from the
Sun but because of its elliptic
orbit Pluto crossed inside of
Neptune's orbit in 1979 and will cross back
out again in 1999. Compared to the other planets, very little is known
about Pluto.
Pluto is smaller than any other planet and even smaller than
several other planet's moons. From Pluto, the Sun is just a tiny point of
light.
Pluto is probably composed of frozen rock and ice, much like
Neptune's moon
Triton. Pluto has not yet been visited
by a spacecraft, but a
mission is being planned
for the next decade.
APOD: August 17, 1995 - Neptune: Big Blue Giant
Explanation:
This picture was taken by the
Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1986 - the only spacecraft ever to visit
Neptune.
Neptune will be the farthest planet from the
Sun until 1999, when the elliptical orbit of
Pluto will cause it to once again resume this status.
Neptune, like Uranus,
is composed mostly of liquid water, methane
and ammonia, is surrounded by a thick gas atmosphere of mostly hydrogen and
helium, and has many moons and rings.
Neptune's moon Triton is unlike any
other and has active volcanoes. The nature of
Triton's unusual orbit around
Neptune is the focus of much discussion and speculation.
APOD: August 16, 1995 - Uranus: The Tilted Planet
Explanation:
This picture was snapped by the
Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1986 - the only
spacecraft ever to visit Uranus.
Uranus is the third largest planet after
Jupiter and Saturn.
Uranus has many moons and a ring system.
Uranus is composed mostly of liquid water, methane and ammonia,
surrounded by a thick gas atmosphere of mostly hydrogen and helium.
Uranus is peculiar in that its rotation axis is greatly tilted and
sometimes points near the sun. It remains an astronomical mystery why
Uranus' axis is so tilted. Uranus and Neptune are very similar.
APOD: August 5, 1995 - Geysers on Triton
Explanation:
In August of 1989 NASA's
Voyager 2
spacecraft passed by Neptune, the most distant of the solar system's gas
giant planets. Its encounter with Neptune climaxed with its closest approach
to Neptune's largest moon Triton. From a distance of about 24,000 miles
the robot space probe surveyed Triton's surface, whose temperature
averages nearly -400 degrees Fahrenheit, and discovered surprising evidence
of a complex and active world.
For example, the prominent dark streaks in this image seem to come from
small volcanoes and may
consist of nitrogen frost mixed with organic compounds ejected during
geyser-like eruptions.
APOD: August 2, 1995 - Jupiter's Rings
Explanation:
Astronomers using NASA's
Voyager
spacecraft to search for a ring system
around Jupiter discovered these faint rings in 1979.
Unlike Saturn's bright rings
which are composed of chunks of rock and ice,
Jupiter's rings
appear to consist of
fine particles of dust. One possibility is that the dust is produced
by impacts with Jupiter's inner moons. This false color image has
been computer enhanced.