Explanation: This Rosetta spacecraft selfie was snapped on October 7th, 2014. At the time the comet-chasing spacecraft was about 472 million kilometers from planet Earth, but only 16 kilometers from the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Looming beyond the spacecraft near the top of the frame, dust and gas stream away from the comet’s curious double-lobed
Explanation: Looking toward the north from Mullion, New South Wales, Australia, the Andromeda Galaxy never gets more than a few degrees above the horizon. During the southern hemisphere spring, Andromeda is highest in the sky around midnight though. And in this telephoto scene from October 10/11, multiple exposures were used to reveal the spiral galaxy
Explanation: Star light, star bright: is there a green star out tonight? Other than the Sun, all stars are so far from Earth that they appear as points in the sky. They are mostly white, but sometimes noticeably red or blue. This color typically relates to the temperature: blue stars are hotter than red stars.
Explanation: Jinkies, look at all those ghosts! It took 100 hours of observation and a special oxygen filter for today’s image to capture three faint nebulas hidden in the Cassiopeia constellation. IC 59 and IC 63, the original Ghosts of Cassiopeia, haunt the region near multi-star system γ Cassiopeia. Energetic light from γ Cassiopeia causes
Explanation: This is an unusual rainbow. For one thing, the rainbow is not complete, appearing only in a sunlit fan — but that by itself is not very unusual. What is most unusual is the fake location of the Sun. The Sun appears to be toward the front, just below those hills — but it is not. That is
Explanation: Explanation : What is Treble Clef? This unusual radio structure extends over 2 million light-years and resembles a common musical symbol — but has its visible light hidden by our own Milky Way Galaxy. Examined in 2004, the nature of VLSS J0318.9+5755, dubbed Treble Clef, remained unknown. Recent observations by the Chandra X-ray Observatory