Saturn's Hyperion: A Moon with Odd Craters [apod.nasa.gov]
3D Bennu [apod.nasa.gov]
Put on your red/blue glasses and float next to asteroid 101955 Bennu.
Shaped like a spinning toy top with boulders littering its rough surface, the tiny Solar System world is about one Empire State Building (less than 500 meters) across.
Frames used to construct this 3D anaglyph were taken by PolyCam on the OSIRIS_REx spacecraft on December 3, 2018 from a distance of about 80 kilometers.
With a sample from the asteroid's rocky surface on board, OSIRIS_REx departed Bennu's vicinity in May of 2021 and is now enroute to planet Earth.
The robotic spacecraft is scheduled to return the sample to Earth this September.
Orion and the Running Man [apod.nasa.gov]
Few cosmic vistas excite the imagination like The Great Nebula in Orion.
Visible as a faint celestial smudge to the naked-eye, the nearest large star-forming region sprawls across this sharp telescopic image, recorded on a cold January night in dark skies from West Virginia, planet Earth.
Also known as M42, the Orion Nebula's glowing gas surrounds hot, young stars.
About 40 light-years across, it lies at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud only 1,500 light-years away within the same spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy as the Sun.
Along with dusty bluish reflection nebula NGC 1977 and friends near the top of the frame, the eye-catching nebulae represent only a small fraction of our galactic neighborhood's wealth of star-forming material.
Within the well-studied stellar nursery, astronomers have also identified what appear to be numerous infant solar systems.
DART vs Dimorphos [apod.nasa.gov]
On the first planetary defense test mission from planet Earth, the DART spacecraft captured this close-up on 26 September 2022, three seconds before slamming into the surface of asteroid moonlet Dimorphos.
The spacecraft's outline with two long solar panels is traced at its projected point of impact between two boulders.
The larger boulder is about 6.5 meters across.
While the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft had a mass of some 570 kilograms, the estimated mass of Dimorphos, the smaller member of a near-Earth binary asteroid system, was about 5 billion kilograms.
The direct kinetic impact of the spacecraft measurably altered the speed of Dimorphos by a fraction of a percent, reducing its 12 hour orbital period around its larger companion asteroid 65803 Didymos by about 33 minutes.
Beyond successfully demonstrating a technique to change an asteroid's orbit that can prevent future asteroid strikes on planet Earth, the planetary-scale impact experiment has given the 150-meter-sized Dimorphos a comet-like tail of material.
Artificial Night Sky Brightness [apod.nasa.gov]
Where have all the dim stars gone?
From many places on the Earth including major cities, the night sky has been reduced from a fascinating display of thousands of stars to a diffuse glow through which only a few stars are visible.
The featured map indicates the relative amount of light pollution that occurs across the Earth.
The cause of the pollution is artificial light reflecting off molecules and aerosols in the atmosphere.
Parts of the Eastern United States and Western Europe colored red, for example, have an artificial night sky glow over ten times that of the natural sky.
In any area marked orange or red, the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy is no longer visible.
The International Dark Sky Association suggests common types of fixtures that provide relatively little amounts of light pollution.
Deep Field: The Large Magellanic Cloud [apod.nasa.gov]
Is this a spiral galaxy?
No. Actually, it is the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), the largest satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way Galaxy.
The LMC is classified as a dwarf irregular galaxy because of its normally chaotic appearance.
In this deep and wide exposure, however, the full extent of the LMC becomes visible.
Surprisingly, during longer exposures, the LMC begins to resemble a barred spiral galaxy.
The Large Magellanic Cloud lies only about 180,000 light-years distant towards the constellation of the Dolphinfish (Dorado).
Spanning about 15,000 light-years, the LMC was the site of SN1987A, the brightest and closest supernova in modern times.
Together with the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), the LMC can be seen in Earth's southern hemisphere with the unaided eye.
Your Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday? (post 1995)
Jupiter and Venus from Earth [apod.nasa.gov]
It was visible around the world.
The sunset conjunction of Jupiter and Venus in 2012 was visible almost no matter where you lived on Earth.
Anyone on the planet with a clear western horizon at sunset could see them.
Pictured here in 2012, a creative photographer traveled away from the town lights of Szubin, Poland to image a near closest approach of the two planets.
The bright planets were then separated only by three degrees and his daughter struck a humorous pose.
A faint red sunset still glowed in the background.
Jupiter and Venus are together again this month after sunset, passing within a degree of each other about a week ago.
Jupiter & Venus Conjunction Gallery: Notable Submissions to APOD
Jupiter and Venus over Italy [apod.nasa.gov]
What are those two bright spots?
Planets.
A few days ago, the two brightest planets in the night sky passed within a single degree of each other in what is termed a conjunction.
Visible just after sunset in much of the world, the two bright spots were Jupiter (left) and Venus (right).
The featured image was taken near closest approach from Cirica, Sicily, Italy.
The week before, Venus was rising higher in the sunset sky to meet the dropping Jupiter.
Now they have switched places.
Of course, Venus remains much closer to both the Sun and the Earth than Jupiter — the apparent closeness between the planets in the sky of Earth was only angular.
You can still see the popular pair for an hour or so after sunset this month although they continue to separate, and Jupiter continues to set earlier each night.
Jupiter & Venus Conjunction Gallery: Notable Submissions to APOD
10 Days of Venus and Jupiter [apod.nasa.gov]
Venus and Jupiter may have caught your attention lately.
The impending close conjunction of the two brightest planets visible in clear evening skies has been hard to miss.
With Jupiter at the top, starting on February 21 and ending on March 2, their close approach is chronicled daily, left to right, in these panels recorded from Dhanbad, India.
Near the western horizon, the evening sky colors and exposures used for each panel depend on the local conditions near sunset.
On February 22, Jupiter and Venus were joined by the young crescent Moon.
The celestial pair appeared to be only the width of a full moon apart by March 2.
Of course on that date the two planets were physically separated by over 600 million kilometers in their orbits around the Sun.
In the coming days Jupiter will slowly settle into the glare at sunset, but Venus will continue to move farther from the Sun in the western sky to excel in its current role as the brilliant evening star.
Jupiter & Venus Conjunction Gallery: Notable Submissions to APOD
RCW 86: Historical Supernova Remnant [apod.nasa.gov]
In 185 AD, Chinese astronomers recorded the appearance of a new star in the Nanmen asterism.
That part of the sky is identified with Alpha and Beta Centauri on modern star charts.
The new star was visible to the naked-eye for months, and is now thought to be the earliest recorded supernova.
This deep telescopic view reveals the wispy outlines of emission nebula RCW 86, just visible against the starry background, understood to be the remnant of that stellar explosion.
Captured by the wide-field Dark Energy Camera operating at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, the image traces the full extent of a ragged shell of gas ionized by the still expanding shock wave.
Space-based images indicate an abundance of the element iron in RCW 86 and the absence of a neutron star or pulsar within the remnant, suggesting that the original supernova was Type Ia.
Unlike the core collapse supernova explosion of a massive star, a Type Ia supernova is a thermonuclear detonation on a white dwarf star that accretes material from a companion in a binary star system.
Near the plane of our Milky Way galaxy and larger than the full moon on the sky this supernova remnant is too faint to be seen by eye though.
RCW 86 is some 8,000 light-years distant and around 100 light-years across.
