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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Recorded from 2024 March 10, to 2025 March 1, this composited series of images reveals a pattern in the seasonal drift of the Sun's daily motion through planet Earth's sky. Known to some as an analemma, the figure-eight curve was captured in exposures taken on the indicated dates only at 18:38 UTC from the exact same location south of Stephenville, Texas. The Sun's position on the 2024 solstice dates of June 20 and December 21 would be at the top and bottom of the curve and correspond to the astronomical beginning of summer and winter in the north. Points that lie along the curve half-way between the solstices would mark the equinoxes. The 2024 equinox on September 22, and in 2025 the equinox on March 20 (today) are the start of northern fall and spring. And since one of the exposures was made on 2024 April 8 from the Stephenville location at 18:38:40 UTC, this analemma project also reveals the solar corona in planet Earth's sky during a total solar eclipse.

Photo by Hunter Wells

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

On March 14 the Full Moon slid through Earth's dark umbral shadow and denizens of planet Earth were treated to a total lunar eclipse. Of course, from the Moon's near side that same astronomical syzygy was seen as a solar eclipse. Operating in the Mare Crisium on the lunar surface, the Blue Ghost lander captured this video frame of Earth in silhouette around 3:30am CDT, just as the Sun was emerging from behind the terrestrial disk. From Blue Ghost's lunar perspective the beautiful diamond ring effect, familiar to earthbound solar eclipse watchers, is striking. Since Earth appears about four times the apparent size of the Sun from the lunar surface the inner solar corona, the atmosphere of the Sun most easily seen from Earth during a total solar eclipse, is hidden from view. Still, scattering in Earth's dense atmosphere creates the glowing band of sunlight embracing our fair planet.

Carl Edward Sagan (1934 – 1996) ~ American astronomer, planetary scientist and science communicator. He was one of the most well-known scientist of the 1970's and 1980's . He was controversial in scientific, political, and religious circles for his views on extraterrestrial intelligence, nuclear weapons, and religion. His best known scientific contribution is his research on the possibility of extraterrestrial life. He was an advocate for nuclear disarmament and co-wrote and hosted 'Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.'  He was widely regarded as a freethinker and one of his most famous quotations, in Cosmos, was, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. 

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

There is no sea on Earth large enough to contain the Shark nebula. This predator apparition poses us no danger as it is composed only of interstellar gas and dust. Dark dust like that featured here is somewhat like cigarette smoke and created in the cool atmospheres of giant stars. After expelling gas and gravitationally recondensing, massive stars may carve intricate structures into their birth cloud using their high energy light and fast stellar winds as sculpting tools. The heat they generate evaporates the murky molecular cloud as well as causing ambient hydrogen gas to disperse and glow red. During disintegration, we humans can enjoy imagining these great clouds as common icons, like we do for water clouds on Earth. Including smaller dust nebulae such as Van den Bergh 149 & 150, the Shark nebula, sometimes cataloged as LDN 1235, spans about 15 light years and lies about 650 light years away toward the constellation of the King of Aethiopia (Cepheus). Explore Your Universe: Random APOD Generator

Photo by Timothy Martin

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Thor not only has his own day (Thursday), but a helmet in the heavens. Popularly called Thor's Helmet, NGC 2359 is a hat-shaped cosmic cloud with wing-like appendages. Heroically sized even for a Norse god, Thor's Helmet is about 30 light-years across. In fact, the cosmic head-covering is more like an interstellar bubble, blown by a fast wind from the bright, massive star near the bubble's center. Known as a Wolf-Rayet star, the central star is an extremely hot giant thought to be in a brief, pre-supernova stage of evolution. NGC 2359 is located about 15,000 light-years away toward the constellation of the Great Overdog. This sharp image is a mixed cocktail of data from narrowband filters, capturing not only natural looking stars but details of the nebula's filamentary structures. The star in the center of Thor's Helmet is expected to explode in a spectacular supernova sometime within the next few thousand years.

Photo by Brian Hopkins (East Coast Astronomer)

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