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Comment by Michel on May 2, 2012 at 10:25am

Saturn's Moon Helene in Color 
Image Credit: NASA/JPL/SSI; Color Composite: Daniel Machácek

Explanation: Although its colors may be subtle, Saturn's moon Helene is an enigma in any light. The moon was imaged in unprecedented detail last June as the robotic Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn swooped to within a single Earth diameter of the diminutive moon. Although conventional craters and hills appear, the above image also shows terrain that appears unusually smooth and streaked. Planetary astronomers are inspecting these detailed images of Helene to glean clues about the origin and evolution of the 30-km across floating iceberg. Helene is also unusual because it circles Saturn just ahead of the large moon Dione, making it one of only four known Saturnian moons to occupy a gravitational well known as a stable Lagrange point.

Comment by Chris on May 1, 2012 at 1:24am

That is a beautiful picture doone. I saved it for later use (maybe a screensaver). The aurora coming from true north makes sense since that's where the weakest magnetic field is.

Comment by Neal on April 30, 2012 at 11:44pm

That's fun.

Comment by doone on April 30, 2012 at 10:06pm

"Doctor Who" Metal Cover Is The Awesomest Thing In The Universe

Traveling through time and space has never sounded so badass. Let's open this time vortex up

Comment by Michel on April 30, 2012 at 9:28am

Moon, Milky Way, and ALMA TelescopeCredit: ESO/S. Guisard (www.eso.org/~sguisard)This amazing panorama depicts the site of ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, in the Chilean Andes. When ALMA is complete, it will have 54 of the 12-meter-diameter dishes shown. Above the array, the arc of the Milky Way glistens while the moon bathes the scene in an eerie light. ESO Photo Ambassador Stéphane Guisard took the shot, released April 23, 2012. Click the picture to see a larger version of the astounding image.

Comment by Michel on April 30, 2012 at 9:08am

This is spectacular!!

I've been to the north of Iceland for a few days but it was snowing heavily... no sky to speak of. 

Comment by Adriana on April 30, 2012 at 9:07am

What a beautiful photo!

Comment by doone on April 30, 2012 at 8:07am

Aurora Over Raufarhöfn 
Image Credit & Copyright: Stephane Vetter (Nuits sacrees)

Explanation: It was all lined up even without the colorful aurora exploding overhead. If you follow the apex line of the recently deployed monuments of Arctic Henge in Raufarhöfn in northern Iceland from this vantage point, you will see that they point due north. A good way to tell is to follow their apex line to the line connecting the end stars of the Big Dipper, Merak and Dubhe, toward Polaris, the bright star near the north spin axis of the Earth projected onto the sky. By design, from this vantage point, this same apex line will also point directly at the midnight sun at its highest point in the sky just during the summer solstice of Earth's northern hemisphere. In other words, the Sun will not set at Arctic Henge during the summer solstice in late June, and at its highest point in the skyit will appear just above the aligned vertices of this modern monument. The above image was taken in late March during a beautiful auroral storm.

Comment by doone on April 29, 2012 at 10:58am

A Dangerous Sunrise on Gliese 876d 
Illustration Credit & Copyright: Inga Nielsen (Hamburg Obs., Gate to Nowhere)

Explanation: On planet Gliese 876d, sunrises might be dangerous. Although nobody really knows what conditions are like on this close-in planet orbiting variable red dwarf star Gliese 876, the above artistic illustration gives one impression. With an orbit well inside Mercury and a mass several times that of Earth, Gliese 876d might rotate so slowly that dramatic differences exist between night and day. Gliese 876d is imagined above showing significant volcanism, possibly caused by gravitational tides flexing andinternally heating the planet, and possibly more volatile during the day. The rising red dwarf star shows expected stellar magnetic activity which includes dramatic and violent prominences. In the sky above, a hypothetical moon has its thin atmosphere blown away by the red dwarf's stellar wind. Gliese 876d excites the imagination partly because it is one of the few extrasolar planets known to be in or near to the habitable zone of its parent star.

Comment by Dallas the Phallus on April 28, 2012 at 7:21pm

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