Astronomy Picture of the Day - October 21st, 2021 - SH2-308: The Dolphin-Head Nebula (Narrated by Joanna) Blown by fast winds from a hot, massive star, this cosmic bubble is huge. Cataloged as Sharpless 2-308 it lies some 5,000 light-years away toward the constellation of the Big Dog (Canis Major) and covers slightly more of the sky than a Full Moon. That corresponds to a diameter of 60 light-years at its estimated distance. The massive star that created the bubble, a Wolf-Rayet star, is the bright one near the center of the nebula. Wolf-Rayet stars have over 20 times the mass of the Sun and are thought to be in a brief, pre-supernova phase of massive star evolution. Fast winds from this Wolf-Rayet star create the bubble-shaped nebula as they sweep up slower moving material from an earlier phase of evolution. The windblown nebula has an age of about 70,000 years. Relatively faint emission captured by narrowband filters in the deep image is dominated by the glow of ionized oxygen atoms mapped to a blue hue. Presenting a mostly harmless outline, SH2-308 is also known as The Dolphin-head Nebula. Image Credit & Copyright: Nik Szymanek Source: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap211021.html This video was auto generated using data from NASA Open API. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b19zP7N8I0

Wikipedia Picture of the Day - October 20th, 2022 - Abraham Bradley Jr. (Narrated by Joanna) Abraham Bradley Jr. (1767–1838) was an American lawyer, judge, and cartographer who served as Assistant Postmaster General for 30 years during the earliest history of the United States Post Office Department. He was responsible for moving the federal government's post office from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to the new capital at Washington, D.C., and briefly hosted the national post office in his own home. The continuity brought by Bradley's long employment during the tenures of five United States postmasters general helped establish the budding postal service as a reliable provider; he also drew detailed and innovative postal route maps that built the office's efficiency. He drew one of the first comprehensive maps of the United States in 1796; it "represented the first clear cartographic break in European-dominated map making and introduced a new, more distinctly American style of cartography to the United States". In 1804, Bradley drew this map of American post roads and post offices, spanning the Orleans Territory (now Louisiana) in the southwest to Maine in the northeast. The hand-colored map measures 98 by 132 centimeters (39 in × 52 in). Map credit: Abraham Bradley Jr. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:POTD/2022-10-20 This video was auto generated using data and media from Wikipedia. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ls30EWXtTXU